Genre and Narrative Voice. - HSC Standard



A Beautiful Mind – Genre and Narrative Voice.What is a biopic? What is narrative voice?What features of the film A Beautiful Mind conform the to the “biopic” genre? How does the narrative voice or point of view from which the narrative is told reveal the biographical features of his life? How does it subvert the “biopic” genre? What are the four key scenes you would use to analyse narrative voice in A Beautiful Mind?Tropes of the “biopic” film and Howard’s Destabilisation of Expectation in A Beautiful Mind.Narrative told in flashback – the narrative in A Beautiful Mind is actually told chronologically which is unusual for a “biopic”Narrative told by voice over- the narrative is told through the camera techniques and the unique constructive of Nash’s narrative voice so instead of using voice over and flashback Howard uses the camera and the chronological three act structure to tell a linear narrative. Why? I think this is because of the questions of the clash between reality and truth and Nash’s appreciation that his life has been a delusion and the audience is constructed / manipulated (as you lot think!) to understand truth and reality and the confusion and frightening experience of mental illness that Nash experiences. It is not that we were tricked!!! It was that Howard wanted us to see the confusion between reality and delusion.Tropes in characters – the Sidekick – “Charles”; the Mentor – “Parcher”, the patient helpmeet-wife – Alicia Nash (she is constructed as more than that as a sacrificing intelligent strong woman), The strongest criticism is that biopics compress and “change and mix up truth” concerning the life of their subject for “dramatic purposes” – Howard freely acknowledges Nash’s life is compressed in this film and to some extent “sanitised”. “Biopics” have some foundation in reality. No “biopic” is a simple recount of the facts of a man’s life. But was that Howard’s purpose? To tell the exhaustive biography of John Nash, or was the purpose to show the terrifying experience of mental illness through this brilliant, if eccentric man and his destruction and restoration as brilliant genius. Howard – subverts the two main tropes of “biopics” that is “narrative told in flashback” and “narrative told in voice over by protagonist” and uses shifting narrative voice to understand the experience of brilliance and schizophrenia. That is, that Nash sees the world very differently and for the first half of the film we adopt that rather amazing yet increasingly terrifying world. Generally “biopics” concern “great men (only occasionally women) destined to achieve great things” films. Narratives of success. Traditionally “biopic” films are concerned to show a great visionary and celebrate the protagonists great success and usually their priceless contribution to society and the world. A Beautiful Mind subverts / challenges / disrupts the “great man” narrative. Here is a great visionary who struggles to see “reality” and lives in a world of “delusion” and his “great success” and celebration of that success, in winning the Noble Peace Prize is actually a postscript in the film to the more important success and that is overcoming a debilitating and disturbing mental illness.terrifyingPuzzle Film / Mind Game Films – Howard’s Manipulation of Narrative Voice and StructurePuzzle films are notable for complex storytelling techniquesEvent though Howard uses a “simple” plot in terms of chronology and the three act structure and so the film is deceptively simple in his narrative structure the narrative voice and narrative perspective is complexComplexity in narrative involves “reversal” and “recognition” – Artistotle, PoeticsSo when the narrative voice shifts and changes when the perspective then alternates between Nash and Alica – there is a reversal or corrective of perspective and we find that as an audience we have been subsumed within John Nash’s delusional and thus unreal narrative voice. He is an “unreliable narrator”. Following his relapse Nash also has a moment of “recognition” in which he acknowledges “They can’t be real. She never changes. Marcee never gets old.” It is the moment that the “hero” or the protagonist recognises that he has been subject to a “reversal”. The “reversal” usually something that has serious negative impacts on the life of the hero. And in this sense Howard uses this complexity in the narrative.So in a sense this film goes even further beyond the complexity of the linear, chronological narrative. The “puzzle plot” is intricate in the sense that the events are perplexing and bewildering. The audience is disorientated. The events in A Beautiful Mind are deceptively simple, a simple “Life Magazine” view of reality. The audience comes to realise that this was deceptively simple for Nash and in reality he lived in a horrifying world of delusion, notably marked by the use of “film noir” stylistics. It is only when the narrative voice is corrected, or shared with Alicia does the film adopt the “harsh light of day” naturalistic lighting, setting and mise-en-scene.So Howard uses narrative voice / perspective, the way the film is told, the way the story is told, most importantly through the use of film styles and POV camera work to build in a bewildering complexity where truth is destabilised and the audience is caught-off-balance by the recognition of Nash’s schizophrenia.So one type of “puzzle film” is the “mind game film”The audience through narrative voice is “seduced into entering another mind, and seeing the world from his or her perspective”So through using POV and camera work to construct Nash’s point of view – the frame of “normal” has been removed and the hero’s behaviour cannot be measured by the audience – because we are indeed in Nash’s head and normal has disappeared. In the case of A Beautiful Mind, the rather surreal fusion of brilliance and insanity leads the audience to share Nash’s unique and problematic understanding of reality and truthThe film has an unreliable narrator whose unstable delusions lead the audience to experience his terror“…A Beautiful Mind begins with a character who, while shy and withdrawn, seems different only be degrees from the Princeton freshmen he shares his time with. Awkward social behaviour is here compensated by the mind – at once more acute and more dissociative – that makes some astonishing discoveries, which beings as relatively harmless, like spotting patterns and resemblances where no one would expect them (between neck ties and cut-class fruit bowls) or being able to translate the random scurrying pigeons for breadcrumbs in the quad into mathematical formulas. The apotheosis of this paradox of the supremely gifted misfit comes in a scene where he and his friends are trying to seduce some girls in a pub and John Nash comes up with a formula that guarantees success, but which inadvertently lays the foundation for a whole branch of mathematics – game theory – to which the “Nash equilibrium” makes a major contribution. During the first half of the film, as John is inducted into the rarefied and highly competitive world of Princeton’s mathematics department, he has a room-mate, whom we only much later realise is a figment of his troubled mind, aggravated by his involvement in the shadowing world of the Rand Corporation and Cold War espionage. Yet A Beautiful Mind is about mind-games (as played by mathematics and US government agencies) …..” (Buckland, 2009:the first half of the film plays a mind game with the audience where we as the audience share John Nash’s experience of “delusion” and “irrationality” and assume it to be normal.Howard dismantles the narrative voice and the “delusional” plot peaking at the Car Chase scene – In the first half of the movie, the audience has shared the special insights and exhilaration of brilliance and special insight into patterns and forming meaning from chaos – just as Nash is rescued by his schizoid delusions and self-deceptions by Alicia Nash so to is the audience “rescued” from the “lie” or “deception”BibliographyBuckland, Warren, 2009, Puzzle Film: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, John Wiley and Sons.I disagree with Buckland’s conclusion that A Beautiful Mind is not a “mind game” or “puzzle film”. I think it definitely does contain elements. But as with Howard’s use of film styles and genres, this film is a hybrid film. And Howard deliberately uses hybridity, styles and genre to heighten our “seduction” into ................
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