| |
|
In Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, he says that there are five kinds of panel transitions: moment-to-moment, action-to-action, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur. The example of an aspect-to-aspect transition is a kitchen scene: one panel has a woman chopping vegetables, the next has a kitchen timer ticking, the next has a pot of water boiling. These three events are not sequential; rather, they build the environment of the kitchen by focusing on one aspect, then another, without directly moving the plot of the story.
It seems to me that "Lost in Translation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" both have aspect-to-aspect characteristics. (Here I'll throw in a
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
warning just for safety.) There is some sort of plot; at least, time is linear, and stuff does happen in some kind of sequence. But in LiT, the real goal is exploring the isolation of the characters with various scenes that could have easily been reordered. In ESotSM, the actions of the memory erasure technicians is a plot device to present an aspect-to-aspect view of a romance.
McCloud says that aspect-to-aspect panel transitions come largely from the East, claiming that where Western philosophy prefers progress and linear time, Eastern philosophy is more interested in global views and circularity and nature as presented in haiku. I don't know if he's right, but I wonder if I'm just noticing a couple of films out of a great many which behave in this way, or if this is a sign of some sort of artistic trend.
Are there other films that have this sort of presentation style that I've missed? Is this kind of just-barely-plotted storytelling a refreshing method of presenting ideas, or a bunch of pretentious and boring non-stories that would have Joseph Campbell spinning in his grave? |
|
|
