This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Lash, Dominic Title: Lost and Found Studies in Confusing Films General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. 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Lost and Found studies in confusing films Dominic John Alleyne Lash A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements for award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts Department of Film and Television December 2018 76,403 words abstract This thesis uses the concepts of disorientation and confusion as a means of providing detailed critical accounts of four difficult films, as well as of addressing some more general issues in the criticism and theory of narrative film. Although the familiarity of the emotional and affective aspects of disorientation and confusion provides its starting point, this thesis is chiefly concerned with textual and hermeneutic matters, rather than with spectator affect. Lost and Found argues that disorientation, as a concept, combines aspects of objectivity and subjectivity. The thesis also articulates two distinct – albeit related – meanings of confusion: the familiar affective meaning and a more technical, non- pejorative sense that refers to the way different aspects of a film may be entwined ("confused") with one another. Two theoretical chapters (chapter one and chapter four) explain and explore two critical and rhetorical terms that can assist the film critic in addressing the implications of understanding disorientation and confusion along these lines. These terms are metalepsis and figuration. Four more chapters are devoted to exploring the various distinct critical consequences that follow from attending to the disorienting and confusing aspects of four recent films. This thesis concludes that there is a continuum between orientation and disorientation; all films are at least somewhat confusing, but no film is utterly disorientating. The disorientating aspects of the films studied herein, it is argued, highlight or exacerbate qualities that are present to some degree in all narrative films. Lost and Found defends the view that the best critical methodology is one that responds to the demands of the film in question rather than attempting to build a toolkit that is ready to take on all comers, and that studying disorientating and confusing films can be of great help in showing how we might develop such a critical practice. 1 acknowledgements Many thanks to my supervisor Alex Clayton for striking a beautiful balance between encouragement and scepticism that has made the process of developing this thesis a pleasure. Thanks also to Kristian Moen for his wonderfully gentle but penetrating comments. I am very grateful to the University of Bristol for the financial support that made working on this thesis possible. The department of Film and Television has been a splendidly supporting and stimulating environment in which to work; many thanks to all the staff and students with whom I've come into contact for making it so. Special thanks to the members, past and present, of the terrific PhD community, in particular Hoi Lun Law (who read most of this and was always ready with a helpful insight), Eve Benhamou, Miguel Gaggiotti, Sarah Kelley, Steven Roberts, and Polly Rose. I hope our Fantasmic Close Encounters continue long into the future. Thanks to my parents for their persistent support and patience in the face of the curious trajectory of my activities. This – like the last one – is for Kate. I know she knows that none of it would be possible without her, but it can't hurt to offer a reminder. 2 I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the University's Regulations and Code of Practice for Research Degree Programmes and that it has not been submitted for any other academic award. Except where indicated by specific reference in the text, the work is the candidate's own work. Work done in collaboration with, or with the assistance of, others, is indicated as such. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. SIGNED: ............................................... DATE: …...........6th Dec.2018............. 3 contents abstract 1 acknowledgements 2 introduction how lost are we, exactly? disorientation and confusion 5 in film chapter one metalepsis in film and its implications 28 chapter two projecting into INLAND EMPIRE: "Disappeared where 47 it's real hard to disappear." chapter three achieving coherence: diegesis and death in Holy Motors 90 chapter four figuring (out) films: figuration in narrative cinema 134 chapter five Colossal Youth: homes for displaced figures 159 chapter six sink or swim: immersing ourselves in Adieu au langage 202 conclusion method-free orientation 237 appendix one Colossal Youth scene breakdown 254 bibliography 259 filmography 277 4 introduction how lost are we, exactly? disorientation and confusion in film You kind of get lost. And getting lost is beautiful. (David Lynch in Barney 2009: 225) The fact that being lost admits of degrees is rather surprising. We might have assumed that as long as we have some idea of where we are, we can't – strictly speaking – be lost: "I'm not lost, I'm just not completely sure where I am." It is, however, perfectly natural, on finding yourself in a city you don't know very well, to say to yourself, or to someone that you stop to ask for directions, "I do have some idea of where I am, but I'm a little bit lost". That this is the case must have something to do with the fact that having a rough idea of where one is can sometimes be very helpful (if, say, I need to get north of the river and all I know is that I'm currently south of it) but is in other situations of almost no help at all. (If I don't know where the street I'm on lies in relation to the street I need to get to, then knowing that both streets are on the same side of the river does nothing except to reassure me that at least things could be worse – I could be even more lost!) It does not, therefore, follow from the fact that there can be degrees of being lost that the closer one is to being on track, the less lost one is. The questions of where one is and of what one knows about where one is, although intimately related, are distinct. This thesis will propose that something similar is also true of films, and that this has consequences for our understanding of the relationship between the epistemic and affective dimensions of some familiar consequences of being lost: disorientation and confusion. The topographical way of thinking employed in the previous paragraph has much in common with one of the most familiar ways that we talk about being lost while 5 watching a film, in which by saying that we are lost we mean to indicate that we are confused.1 Just as in our putative unfamiliar city, we can be a little bit lost in a film ("I know they're after the murderer, but I've no idea why they're interviewing this woman"), almost completely lost ("I have absolutely no idea who any of those people are or what they're up to"), or somewhere in-between. In his book on film noir, Robert Pippin refers to 'the typical sotto voce patter one hears underneath noir showings: "Who the hell is that?" "Wait! I thought she was dead?" "Are we supposed to know whether he knows?"' (Pippin 2012: 41). Filmmakers have long found it interesting to elicit experiences of disorientation and confusion, and film viewers by no means invariably find them an obstacle to pleasure. These invented examples might, however, give the impression that being lost relates primarily to details of plot or motivation; certainly, confusion about what is going on or why it is going on often leads to our feeling lost, but we can also feel lost in other ways – emotionally lost, for example, or even what we might call stylistically lost, if, say, we can get no grasp on how the stylistic dimensions of a film relate to its other aspects. (Some viewers feel lost in this way in relation to the range of colour schemes and film stocks used in Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975).) George Toles has written interestingly about the relation between the different senses of being lost, and how being lost in the sense of being absorbed causes us to attempt to fill the gaps and remedy the 1 The other sense, which is not my primary subject but which will also make an appearance from time to time, is the sense in which being lost indicates being engrossed: "I was so lost in the film I didn't even notice the fire alarm." 6 unmade connections that might be causing us to feel lost in the sense of confused: When viewers are absorbed by screened events to the extent that they feel inside them, they are necessarily split between the sense of what is present to them – through emotional investment and participation – and what is absent – the fact of literal separation from the image, distance, and perhaps friction with certain elements in the fantasy mix.