Postmodernist film
Encyclopedia
Postmodernist film describes the articulation of ideas of postmodernism
through the cinematic medium
. Postmodernist film upsets the mainstream
conventions
of narrative structure
and characterization and destroys (or, at least, toys with) the audience's suspension of disbelief
to create a work in which a less-recognizable internal logic forms the film's means of expression.
Among the earliest and most significant events in postmodern film was the advent of the French New Wave
in the 1950s and 1960s. Proponents of postmodernism as a movement cite such films as Jean-Luc Godard
's À bout de souffle (1960; deeply indebted to Bertolt Brecht
's modernist epic theatre with its Verfremdungseffekt or 'defamiliarization effect'
); and in Italy with Antonioni's L'avventura
(1960) and Fellini's 8½
(1963). Luis Buñuel
and Salvador Dalí
's 1928 surrealist short Un Chien Andalou
provides an important modernist precursor, although its extreme deconstruction of structure and character make its meaning almost entirely arbitrary. To convey their desired meaning, postmodernist films maintain conventional elements to help orient the audience. Two such examples are Jane Campion
's Two Friends
, in which the story of two school girls is shown in episodic segments arranged in reverse order; and Karel Reisz
's The French Lieutenant's Woman
, in which the story being played out on the screen is mirrored in the private lives of the actors playing it, which we also see. French theorist Jean Baudrillard
dubbed Sergio Leone
's epic 1968
spaghetti western
Once Upon a Time in the West
as the first postmodern film.
By making small but significant changes to the conventions of cinema, the artificiality of the experience and the world presented are emphasised in the audience's mind in order to remove them from the conventional emotional bonds they have to the subject matter, and to give them a new view of it. An example is Michael Winterbottom
's 24 Hour Party People
in which the character based on Tony Wilson
frequently breaks out of the constructed world of the film and talks directly to the audience straight through the camera lens. Jarring in effect, it conveys the characters' pre-occupation with breaking free of the cultural and economic constructions of the world they live in. Ingmar Bergman also made use of characters breaking the "fourth wall" and existing outside the diegetic reality of the film -- "The Passion of Anna" features all four of the lead actors speaking to the camera about the characters they are playing, interspersed brilliantly with the story being played out on screen.
Winterbottom's postmodernist effect, however, is hardly new: Federico Fellini
, among other master filmmakers, used it memorably in Satyricon
(1969) and Amarcord
(1973). David Lynch's Mulholland Drive
(2001) exploits postmodernist aesthetics to an unusual degree while Quentin Tarantino
's Pulp Fiction
is considered an example of Postmodernist film.
In the fields of anime, Hideaki Anno
's The End of Evangelion
(1997) have elements of postmodernism, because of the visceral deconstruction of the character's emotions and feelings by using avant-garde
techniques, which also can be seen as a deconstruction of conventional forms of storytelling.
The antithesis of postmodern cinema is remodernist film
in which emphasis is placed on a subjective emotional connection to the film. Remodernism rejects postmodernism because of its perceived "failure to answer or address any important issues of being a human being". This so-called "failure" is debatable. One such remodernist film is Jesse Richards
short Shooting at the Moon.
These two styles of filmmaking, however, need not be mutually exclusive. Since postmodernism has been absorbed into the contemporary lexicon of filmmakers, it has become just another way to explore themes and characters.
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
through the cinematic medium
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
. Postmodernist film upsets the mainstream
Mainstream
Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....
conventions
Convention (norm)
A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms or criteria, often taking the form of a custom....
of narrative structure
Narrative structure
Narrative structure is generally described as the structural framework that underlies the order and manner in which a narrative is presented to a reader, listener, or viewer....
and characterization and destroys (or, at least, toys with) the audience's suspension of disbelief
Suspension of disbelief
Suspension of disbelief or "willing suspension of disbelief" is a formula for justifying the use of fantastic or non-realistic elements in literary works of fiction...
to create a work in which a less-recognizable internal logic forms the film's means of expression.
Among the earliest and most significant events in postmodern film was the advent of the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
in the 1950s and 1960s. Proponents of postmodernism as a movement cite such films as Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's À bout de souffle (1960; deeply indebted to Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's modernist epic theatre with its Verfremdungseffekt or 'defamiliarization effect'
Alienation effect
The distancing effect, commonly mistranslated as the alienation effect , is a performing arts concept coined by playwright Bertolt Brecht "which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a...
); and in Italy with Antonioni's L'avventura
L'avventura
L'Avventura is a 1960 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and developed from a story he created. Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti star. It is noted for its careful pacing, which puts a focus on visual composition and character development, as well as for its unusual narrative structure...
(1960) and Fellini's 8½
8½
8½ is a 1963 Italian fantasy film directed by Federico Fellini. Co-scripted by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director...
(1963). Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
and Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
's 1928 surrealist short Un Chien Andalou
Un chien andalou
Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film and was initially released in 1929 to a limited showing in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months....
provides an important modernist precursor, although its extreme deconstruction of structure and character make its meaning almost entirely arbitrary. To convey their desired meaning, postmodernist films maintain conventional elements to help orient the audience. Two such examples are Jane Campion
Jane Campion
Jane Campion is a filmmaker and screenwriter. She is one of the most internationally successful New Zealand directors, although most of her work has been made in or financed by other countries, principally Australia – where she now lives – and the United States...
's Two Friends
Two Friends (film)
Two Friends is a 1986 Australian drama film directed by Jane Campion. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Kris Bidenko as Kelly* Emma Coles as Louise* Kris McQuade as Janet, Louise's mother...
, in which the story of two school girls is shown in episodic segments arranged in reverse order; and Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema.-Early life:...
's The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant’s Woman , by John Fowles, is a period novel inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika, by Claire de Duras, which Fowles translated into English in 1977...
, in which the story being played out on the screen is mirrored in the private lives of the actors playing it, which we also see. French theorist Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
dubbed Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots...
's epic 1968
1968 in film
The year 1968 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* October 30 - The film The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn, debuts.* November 1 - The MPAA's film rating system is introduced.-Top grossing films :- Awards :...
spaghetti western
Spaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...
Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone for Paramount Pictures. It stars Henry Fonda cast against type as the villain, Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Jason Robards as a bandit, and Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader with a...
as the first postmodern film.
By making small but significant changes to the conventions of cinema, the artificiality of the experience and the world presented are emphasised in the audience's mind in order to remove them from the conventional emotional bonds they have to the subject matter, and to give them a new view of it. An example is Michael Winterbottom
Michael Winterbottom
Michael Winterbottom is a prolific English filmmaker who has directed seventeen feature films in the past fifteen years. He began his career working in British television before moving into features...
's 24 Hour Party People
24 Hour Party People
24 Hour Party People is a 2002 British film about Manchester's popular music community from 1976 to 1992, and specifically about Factory Records. It was written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and directed by Michael Winterbottom...
in which the character based on Tony Wilson
Tony Wilson
Anthony Howard Wilson, commonly known as Tony Wilson , was an English record label owner, radio presenter, TV show host, nightclub manager, impresario and journalist for Granada Television and the BBC....
frequently breaks out of the constructed world of the film and talks directly to the audience straight through the camera lens. Jarring in effect, it conveys the characters' pre-occupation with breaking free of the cultural and economic constructions of the world they live in. Ingmar Bergman also made use of characters breaking the "fourth wall" and existing outside the diegetic reality of the film -- "The Passion of Anna" features all four of the lead actors speaking to the camera about the characters they are playing, interspersed brilliantly with the story being played out on screen.
Winterbottom's postmodernist effect, however, is hardly new: Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
, among other master filmmakers, used it memorably in Satyricon
Satyricon (film)
Satyricon is a 1969 Italian fantasy drama film written and directed by Federico Fellini. It is loosely based on Petronius's work, Satyricon, a series of bawdy and satirical episodes written during the reign of the emperor Nero and set in imperial Rome.-Plot:The film opens on a graffiti-covered...
(1969) and Amarcord
Amarcord
Amarcord is a 1973 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale about Titta, an adolescent boy growing up among an eccentric cast of characters in the fictional town of Borgo in 1930s Fascist Italy...
(1973). David Lynch's Mulholland Drive
Mulholland Drive (film)
Mulholland Drive is a 2001 American neo-noir psychological thriller written and directed by David Lynch, starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, and Laura Harring. The surrealist film was highly acclaimed by many critics and earned Lynch the Prix de la mise en scène at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival...
(2001) exploits postmodernist aesthetics to an unusual degree while Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
's Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction (film)
Pulp Fiction is a 1994 American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, who co-wrote its screenplay with Roger Avary. The film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, ironic mix of humor and violence, nonlinear storyline, and host of cinematic allusions and pop culture references...
is considered an example of Postmodernist film.
In the fields of anime, Hideaki Anno
Hideaki Anno
is a Japanese animation and film director. Anno is best known for his work on the popular anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. His style has come to be defined by the touches of postmodernism that he injects into his work, as well as the thorough portrayal of characters' thoughts and emotions,...
's The End of Evangelion
The End of Evangelion
is a 1997 Japanese animated science fiction film written and directed by Hideaki Anno along with Kazuya Tsurumaki; it ended the anime releases in the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise until the Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy remakes were announced in 2006....
(1997) have elements of postmodernism, because of the visceral deconstruction of the character's emotions and feelings by using avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
techniques, which also can be seen as a deconstruction of conventional forms of storytelling.
The antithesis of postmodern cinema is remodernist film
Remodernist Film
Remodernist film developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 21st century with ideas related to those of the international art movement Stuckism and its manifesto, Remodernism...
in which emphasis is placed on a subjective emotional connection to the film. Remodernism rejects postmodernism because of its perceived "failure to answer or address any important issues of being a human being". This so-called "failure" is debatable. One such remodernist film is Jesse Richards
Jesse Richards
Jesse Richards is a painter, filmmaker and photographer from New Haven, Connecticut and was affiliated with the international movement Stuckism.-Early life:...
short Shooting at the Moon.
These two styles of filmmaking, however, need not be mutually exclusive. Since postmodernism has been absorbed into the contemporary lexicon of filmmakers, it has become just another way to explore themes and characters.