Up the coolly keystone answers

New Examples Appeal to Movie Buffs of Today — and Tomorrow Eye-catching new part and chapter openers spotlight recent movies like Man of Steel, Fruitvale Station, The Avengers, The Great Gatsby, The Heat, and Inception alongside classics like The Wizard of Oz, Psycho, and City of God, linking film’s rich history to contemporary cinema.

Reading about Film: Critical Theories and Methods C h A p T E R 1 1 427

new technology can be seen as merely enhancing the film experience as we have known it (for example, the return of 3-D technologies), in other ways it alters both the medium and our experience of it (for example, the puzzles, interactivity, and convergence culture of video games). Scholars continue to draw on the lega- cies of previous inquiries in film theory in order to identify the salient questions our contemporary audiovisual experience raises and to develop tools with which to address those questions.

11.33 The Matrix (1999). “What is the matrix?” the film’s ad campaign asked. Postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard is quoted in the film.

This chapter has aimed to demystify the field of film theory, which is not to imply that readers will not have to struggle with theory or do some work to understand film on a more abstract plane. Because film theory is a notoriously difficult discourse, any summary gives it much more continuity than it actu- ally warrants. The film journals in which filmmakers like Eisenstein or Louis Delluc debated the new medium are not unlike film blogs that today consider the future of cinema in an age of media convergence. In reading and pick- ing apart theorists’ work, it is important to recall that referring to “theory” in the abstract is misleading. In reviewing Stuart Hall’s approach to reception theory or Fredric Jameson’s definition of postmodernism, we look at concrete responses to intellectual challenges. The term “theory" is a useful, shorthand way to refer to a body of knowledge and a set of questions. We study this corpus to gain historical perspective — on how realist theory grew from the effects of World War II, for example; to acquire tools for decoding our experi- ences of particular films — like the close analysis of formalism; and above all to comprehend the hold that movies have on our imaginations and desires.

■ Consider whether cinematic specificity is affected by watching films across platforms.

■ Think of insights from other academic disciplines or artistic pursuits that seem to be missing from this account of film theory, and consider what we might learn from these new approaches.

■ How might the formalist and realist film theorists debate the return of 3-D technology?

■ Consider how debates about race and representation raised by a film like 12 Years a Slave (2013) could be reframed by drawing on film theory.

Activities ■ Do a shot-by-shot analysis of the opening sequence of a film. What

codes — of lighting, camera movement, framing, or figure movement — are used to create meaning?

■ Compare reviews of a film from a number of different sources (and periods, if relevant). Pay particular attention to the time and place each review appeared. What does the range of reviews tell you about the film’s reception context(s)?

C O n C E p T S A T w O R K

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Concepts at Work Feature Better Connects Ideas and Films The chapter-ending Concept at Work feature clearly connects each key concept mentioned in the chapter to specific films — both those mentioned in the chapter and other notable examples.

Proven Learning Tools That Foster Critical Viewing and Analysis The Film Experience’s learning tools have been updated for this edition, including new Viewing Cues in every chapter, in-depth Film in Focus essays on films like Stories We Tell and Minority Report, Form in Action boxes with analysis of multiple films, and the very best coverage of writing about film.

Francis Ford Coppola directed Apocalypse Now (1979), one of Hollywood’s most ambitious film narratives, not long after his blockbuster successes The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II and his ingenious The Conversa- tion. Coppola and his first successful films were part of an American renaissance in moviemaking during the 1960s and 1970s, revealing the marked influence of the French New Wave filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and others who brought decidedly experimental and ironic attitudes to film narrative. Apocalypse Now is also one of the first serious attempts by a U.S. director to confront the lingering anger and pain of the Vietnam War, a then-recent and traumatic memory that Americans struggled to make sense of.

The film’s story is deceptively simple: during the Vietnam War, Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen) and his crew journey into the jungle to find a maverick and rebellious U.S. Army colonel named Kurtz (Mar- lon Brando). The story describes Willard’s increasingly strange encounters in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. Eventually he finds and confronts the

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bizarre rebel Kurtz at his riverside encamp- ment in Cambodia.

Apocalypse Now constructs its story through a particular plot with a particular nar- rative point of view. The story of Willard and Kurtz could be plotted in a variety of other ways — by offering more information about the crew that accompanies Willard, for instance, or by showing events from an objective point of view rather than from one man’s percep- tions and thoughts. However, the film’s plot concentrates less on the war or on how Kurtz became what he is (which is the main topic of the characters’ conversations) than on Willard and his quest to find Kurtz.

The plot begins with the desperate and shell-shocked Willard being given the assignment to seek out and kill Kurtz, to “terminate with extreme prejudice,” and then fol- lows Willard on his journey as he encounters a variety of strange and surreal people, sights, and activities [Figure 6.43]. In one sense, the plot’s logic is linear and progres- sive: for Willard, each new encounter reveals more about the Vietnam War and about Kurtz. At the same time, the plot creates a regressive temporal pattern: Willard’s journey up the river takes him farther and farther away from a civilized world, returning him to his most primitive instincts.

The mostly first-person voiceover narration of Apoca- lypse Now focuses primarily on what Willard sees around him and on his thoughts about those events. At times, the narration extends beyond Willard’s perspective, showing actions from the perspective of other characters or from a more objective perspective, while still representing the other characters and events as part of Willard’s confused impressions. Bound mostly to Willard’s limited point of view, the narration colors events and other characters with a tone that appears alternately perplexed, weary, and fascinated. As a function of the film’s narration,

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