Revealing
The Secrets Of The Universe Through Cinema, Part 4
By Michael Karp, SOC
Delivering the epiphany to the audience...again.
There
are certain great films that
audiences will watch over and over. Paradoxically, these narratives
become more interesting with each viewing, not less.
When we create our films, it is useful to analyze the magic and
obsession that drives film goers to see a movie repeatedly. We can then
inject that energy into our own cinematic work.
Normally, repetition is boring. But most women don't get bored with Brad Pitt or Sean Connery. Few men tire of Elizabeth Hurley or Catherine Zeta-Jones. And most cats are perpetually fascinated with waving string.
In the wild, the feline needs to hunt. Hard wired into the pussycat brain is an obsession with shaking string (which resemble their prey) and doubtless this obsession translates into predatory prowess and the survival of kitty kind. Human attraction is more complex, but part of the process is that human romance is also related to survival. People are driven to romantically pair bond with a mate with good genes to pass on to progeny and also to an attractive partner possessing the strong social skills needed to succeed materially and spiritually.
As far as making a movie that humans will obsess over, the main attraction for audiences is the presence of powerful epiphanies and wisdom. An epiphany is a sudden rush of insight, the "light bulb turning on". A philosopher might see the human love of epiphany as an example of the higher beauty of being a homo sapiens. In contrast, a reductionist view would say that our attraction to wisdom and insight (the epiphany) is a basic means of human survival. The cat survives by hunting, the human survives by reason and intuition.
We will examine the epiphanies of some great movies. We will see why audiences will watch certain scenes of a film over and over. Hopefully, we can inject epiphanies into our own movies, propel the audience to happiness and make the world a better place.
One film that audiences will watch over and over is Home Alone. This movie is about an eight year old boy named Kevin, who is inadvertently left alone at home while his distracted and dysfunctional extended family travel to France. Kevin must defend his home against inept burglars and there is great spectacle value in that. But the real beauty of the film is when young Kevin accidentally attends Christmas service with his elderly neighbor Old Man Marley, who is allegedly a murderer called the "South Bend Shovel Slayer"
On the surface, Old Man Marley looks very scary and Kevin foolishly judges that book by it's cover. But Marley is actually a very wonderful human being and Kevin and the old man quickly bond. Kevin has big communication problems with his family and is surprised to discover that Marley is similarly estranged from his children.
This scene is very emotionally powerful. Audiences can watch it again and again. The epiphany is that the old man is not a murderer at all and that Kevin was stupid to believe the stupid rumors spread by his young friends. Kevin and the audience are initially quite gullible in believing the story. Later, we marvel at what chumps we were to fall prey to the lies. But we have no time for self recrimination, because Old Man Marley and Kevin now have given one another the wisdom to repair their broken families. The sudden rush of insight has a narcotic effect on the audience. In just a few lines of dialog, our very notion of reality is turned inside out and the path for the redemption of our heroes is laid out.
Again, the survival of the human species has always been dependent on the search for epiphany and wisdom. The cat hunts, the human solves problems. The kitten playing with the dangling string gets a buzz, as does the human who consumes wisdom. The successful filmmaker delivers the enlightenment of the epiphany to the audience.
The classic film noir drama Chinatown, like Home Alone, dramatically redefines our narrow idea of what reality is.
Chinatown is a highly fictionalized version of the water wars of Los Angeles in the early 1900s. Private detective Jake Gittes is investigating the murder of the head engineer for the Los Angeles city water system. Just when Jake thinks that he has the labyrinth crime conspiracy figured out, a new layer of corruption is revealed underneath. As smart and tenacious as Jake is in his deductions, it is an an epiphany to discover just how off the mark each one of his successive theories are.
One of the most shocking epiphanies concerns discovering the actual nature of the relationship between Evelyn Mulwray and the mysterious youth Katherine Cross. Evelyn alternates between telling Jake that Katherine is her daughter or her sister. This supposed double talk enrages Jake, who doesn't like being lied to. But the soon to be revealed epiphany is amazing. It never occurs to Jake that in the case of incest, Katherine can be both daughter and sister to Evelyn. Jake suffered from "in the box" thinking. In retrospect, the actual scenario of Chinatown is so simple. Part of the sudden rush of insight of the film is in understanding just how easily Jake and ourselves were fooled by the sordid deceptions of the Cross and Mulwray families.
The cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show is also filled with epiphanies. The film initially appears to be silly, light weight fun, but the script is very brilliantly written. One couplet of scenes is particularly excellent.
The hedonistic mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter is intent on corrupting the morals of our naïve heroes Brad and Janet. We are shocked when lothario Frank cleverly and quickly seduces Janet. But shortly thereafter, Frank also seduces Brad. But even though Brad and Janet are of different genders, Frank seduces both of them using the same efficacious and penetrating pickup lines.
The epiphany is deep and below the surface. Dr. Frank-N-Furter is a bizarre, androgynous, extraterrestrial transsexual. But something primal in us accepts the reality that the bisexual. gender bending Frank could actually seduce both Brad and Janet. Another epiphany is experiencing the guilty pleasure of vicariously sharing Frank's carnal conquest. We know that deep down, we like to be bad once in a while and we revel in Frank's underdog, but juggernaut success.
We see the same process at work in Wedding Crashers. John and Jeremy are wanton womanizers, who regularly pick up girls at weddings that they pretend to have been invited to. We imagine that love and romance is special and unique, but the wedding crashers use the exact same premeditated pickup lines every weekend. Just as the cat is reliably attracted to the dangling string, the women are reliably seduced by our heroes.
The wedding crashers understand the mind of women. They provide things that females love, like dancing, fun, strength and mystery, especially when their guard is lowered by the nuptials.
The
wedding crashers are similar to
Dr. Frank-N-Furter in their seduction technique. There is not that much
distance from reality in their mutual mating methodologies. The
audience experiences a sudden of rush of insight faced with the
palpability that these strange romantic maneuvers actually might work.
The audience also embraces the duality that as manipulative as these
techniques are, everyone probably has something to learn about life
from these insights. All the world's a stage for the wedding crashers,
especially the proscenium of romance. Like actors in a play, John and
Jeremy say the same lines over and over. The audience understands the
paradox that although the wedding crashers are liars and users, none of
the resulting beautiful and deep romantic relationships in the film
could exist without the crashers' "showmanship". Every
scene is a black
comedy revelation about life and the audience will watch this film
again and again.
I had a friend who used to throw Lonely Lady viewing parties.
This over the top melodrama was reputed to be one of the worst movies
ever made. It was an epiphany to discover over and over again how over
wrought and horrendous certain aspects of the film were. You couldn't
pay people to write such an over the top disaster. There was a certain
"rubbernecking" quality to watching the film, which is
what people also
do when they slow down to watch horrific traffic accidents on the road.
In the 1970s, there was Columbo, a very popular detective show starring Peter Falk.
Lieutenant Columbo appeared dimwitted to the murderers that he investigated, but in reality, he just played dumb in order to disarm the criminals. The funny thing about Columbo is that the storyline was basically the same every week. The very repetition of the plot was what attracted audiences. There was a great epiphany in realizing that Columbo could out smart the bad guys with the exact same strategy every week, just as the wedding crashers could seduce women with the same game plan. Humans possess free will, but we are also preprogrammed to a degree, programmed to love watching Columbo play out the same epiphany week after week.
In the film Reds, Dianne Keaton's character is at a Moscow train station, searching for her husband Warren Beatty. The Bolshevik Revolution is raging and Keaton and the audience have been fooled into thinking that Beatty has died in a battle. A corpse is carried from the train and our heroine Keaton fears the worst for her husband. But in a very anticlimactic (but devastating and shocking) piece of editing and framing, Keaton sees Beatty alive and the lovers are reunited. There is an epiphany when we realize how much we need the characters to be together. And there is an epiphany when we realize how easily we were fooled into thinking that Beatty's character was dead.
The
train station sequence in Reds
is also an interesting counterpoint to Dr. Zhivago. Tragically,
the lovers Julie Christie and Omar Sharif just miss being reunited,
after years of pain and separation.
Titanic also delivers much wisdom to the audience. One of the
major ideas of the film is that the heroine Rose does not have to marry
a man that she does not love in order to be happy and prosperous. When
Rose is rescued, she is asked what her name is and she responds
"Dawson" (her drowned lover's last name) instead of her actual name.
Even though Rose's wealthy fiancée Cal is nearby, she
hides her
identity from him, because Cal is an unworthy mate. Hero Jack Dawson
filled Rose with massive wisdom about life, so in an epiphanous moment,
she takes his name, so that his spirit and insight will be with her
always. The audience responds with a gasp, since the transcendent rush
from her new surname is so strong. In retrospect, it's obvious that
Rose would adopt Jack's last name. In hindsight, would any other action
on her part even be imaginable? The brilliance and wisdom of this piece
of screen writing rolls over and envelopes us.
Michael Karp, SOC is a twenty-five year veteran of the motion picture industry. Working as a visual effects CGI artist and vfx cameraman on such blockbusters as Titanic, T2, Apollo 13, X-Men2, True Lies, etc., Michael has pushed the state of the art in that field. He is also an experienced Director of Photography and story development analyst. Michael is a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, as well as a longtime film instructor there. He worked on the stereoscopic Journey To The Center Of The Earth film, starring Brendan Fraser, which premieres Summer, 2008.