Introduction
Narrative in films is one of the most significant features of this kind of art. It is a “skeleton” of what is said or done in the film that helps a viewer perceive the sense of the film or of one definite scene in it. In this respect, an observer should work out the whole sense and significance of narrative in films. It is necessary to seek the points that make the narrative so vital for the genre diversity of movies. The general outlook on the opinions of different researchers is stated in this study to incorporate the essence of narrative in the social discourse. Moreover, observers should pay special attention to the fact that narrative is a construct that makes the performance of the film easy to convey.
Thus, there is a viable ground to analyze the features of narrative in films that are frequently discussed among critics and researchers in this terrain of art. Thereupon, one needs to take a look at the literature on the topic. Second, it is vital to state personal contributions for the analysis of the narrative. Personal participation in the scholarly conversation is extra significant for the whole research. It responds to the extent of personal understanding of the hallmarks of the role of narrative in films. Thus, authoritative opinions interwoven with personal reflections about the movie are enough to state the maturation of a researcher. Moreover, it shows off his/her ability to omit biases in analyzing the subject matter of the research.
Literature review
The narrative serves as a means to show a person the way of development of actions in the movie. Previously, history knows lots of narratives that enlarge peoples’ intellectual legacy. In this respect, Cin et al. admit the positive function of narrative as an attribute of the logical wholeness of the film (Cin et al. 176). The researchers provide a scope of data that support the significant role of narrative in texts. Hence, they note that narratives touch upon three major areas of peoples’ cognition, namely: emotions, beliefs, and behaviors (Cin et al 178). It means that the variety of themes represented in a work of art (in a film, particularly) props up against the logic correlated in a narrative. One should point out also the role of narrative, as a medium between an author and a viewer. Surely, it makes difference when looking at the narrative from this side. It is a communication arranged through the artistic thought implemented in a text and synchronized by means of actors.
Narrative is a means for persuasion. This idea is illustrated through the remark by Cin et al. that follows: “We believe that narrative messages have an impact on weak attitudes, but by definition, weak attitudes are not particularly difficult to change using rhetorical persuasion strategies” (Cin et al. 177). This idea should be extended by saying that the impacts of narrative can turn around the vision of one hearing it via the film. In this respect it is vital to note that one of the strategies of a film is to impress a viewer. To emphasize such impression on the audience, a director uses narrative with attractive and appropriate wording related to the whole idea of the movie. However, the authors claim that not impression itself but points on entertainment are pursued by a viewer before watching a film (Cin et al. 178).
On the other hand, Geoff King outlines that contemporary films are more focused on having as more special effects as possible. The role of narrative becomes lessened in this case. In turn people do not have enough grounds to state on the value of this or that film, unless there are a lot of impressive special effects. In response, King admits that “narrative is far from being eclipsed, even in the most spectacular and effects-oriented of today’s blockbuster attractions” (King 2). Hence, an alternate feature of the film that goes along with narrative is spectacle. It gives a reason of their mutual dependence.
The author also delineates the role of narrative in providing pleasure to a viewer. In this respect narrative serves, as a supporting attribute of spectacle. On the other hand, “spectacle may disrupt narrative” (King 4). This makes discussion of the significance of narrative more applied to its coherence. In fact, Hollywood directors and producers give a special prominence to the screenplay. It is needful to illuminate pints on the reasoning and behaving, for instance, in terms of the main characters. It also runs the gamut of the logical line in what was first and afterwards.
Thereupon, directors may manipulate with time frames turned to the past or the future despite the action being in motion at present. Such a set of flashbacks and flashforwards along with remarks on their significance is realized with narrative. King also defines differences between mythological and ideological dimensions of Hollywood films. In this case the first one is the provision of “pleasure and reassurance through the apparent reconciliation of contradictions” and the latter is the terrain “in which certain interests benefit as a result” (King 10).
Jacob Lothe develops personal outlook on the significance of narrative in fiction and film. The author claims that the main aspect for narrative is time. Narrative provides a myriad of events or actions that are composed to be dependent on one another. Such point on observing narrative in films moves a viewer toward personal predictions concerning further outcomes in a story of a film. Thus, there emerges participation between film characters and a viewer. Both seek for the main ideas of a film before, during, and afterward watching it. Lothe makes out such viewpoint on examples of other experts: “In Narrated Films Avron Fleishman points out that discussions about films often have a tendency to ‘personify’ the camera, as I also do when I say that the camera ‘decides’ what we see” (Lothe 44).
To say more, narrative in films is rather impressive when being provided in combination with different stylistic devices and approaches to strengthen the voice of a narrator or a character. The question is that a viewer should go through adaptation to the film by means of information on director, cast and other features that respond to the character of the movie. Films inspired by true events need especially the distinct narrative. In this respect Lothe points out that “narrative is crucially important in many films which base themselves on actual events” (Lothe 9). This fact is one which stimulates directors to make up well-done narrative.
Contribution
Looking at the aforementioned studies, it is obvious that the role [of narrative comprises the wholeness of filmmaking industry. It is a constituent that makes this kind of visual art so expressive. In this case a director, characters and crowd scene are judged to play their unique role in performing logic and, perhaps, philosophy of a film. The examples of Titanic, Apocalypse Now, The Green Mile, etc. cannot be thought of without narrative. In this gut one may perceive the essence and the artistic prominence relevant to a character or a general idea of a film. Viewers should be attentive to the peculiarities of a movie disclosed by virtue of narrative.
Taking into consideration major points discussed above, it is about time to examine the movie by Robert Zemeckis Forest Gump (1994). This film is based on a fiction concerning the life story of one guy who have come through different obstacles and events of his life. It is noteworthy that narrative is the main tool for understanding the main idea of the film. It is inseparable part of the plot. It is also an instrument to impact viewers’ senses. The film is based on a flashback of the main character while sitting on a bench and telling his story to a stranger. It is a lifelong story in which the main character provides parallels of his life with the history of the United States.
The narrative in Forest Gump is epic. It is described as a sequence of events that change each other leading Forest to success. His fortune is in his sincerity and reasoning about life itself. One of the statements of Forest is as follows: “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get” (Zemeckis). The peculiarity of narrative in this movie is that it introduces a viewer with the structural as well as emotional changes in it. The thing is that Forest represents himself solely through narrative. It is he who speaks behind the scenes putting a viewer into the picture of a definite situation that appears on his pathway. In fact, such fictional narrative is a kind of discourse drawing up the framework of the main idea in the film (Chatman 1). The scope of events and characters that appear in terms of narrative provides a projection on social as well as economical hallmarks of the American reality.
Forest makes up a narration of his life starting from his childhood in backwaters of Alabama leading to his mastership in playing football, then, battlefields of Vietnam, and owning a shrimp boat (Zemeckis). All these features are composed in logical line of events. There are no Modernistic motives concerned with the stream-of-consciousness technique or so. The film is structured in a circular manner. Its narrative is composed so as a viewer could follow the events in the past turning back to present Forest. It is something like Cin et al. described outlining points on communication between a viewer and an author (Cin et al. 177). Forest unfolds his life laying more emphasis on its curving way. It strengthens the expression on a viewer coming from each phrase and each word of the main character.
On the other hand, this well-known movie is remarkable, for the director expressly highlighted and showed off the main role of narrative in it. Thereupon, the narrative of Forest Gump has something in common with its relation to spectacle (King 15). The film is known to be screened on the like-named novel by Winston Groom. That is why the narrative of the film can go without the spectacle. It is particularly the reason to admit a high value of narrative in this case. The essence of spectacle in the movie provides more points in order to get a viewer fully involved in the vortex of events coming on the Forest’s pathway.
It is hard to imagine this film apart from its narrative. The whole idea of it goes around the narrative, as the main means to represent reality of the main character’s life. It is a message that unfolds predictable turns in Forest’s life and might show what situation he befalls next time step by step (Cin et al. 177). On the other hand, the film is the apparent representation of narrative in definition of Gerard Genette, namely: discourse, story, and narration (Lothe 6). All three constituent parts are felt in the movie from the very beginning of it up to the end.
Time and space parameters are well-shaped in Forest Gump. Hence, it is that easy for an amateur to reach out the symbiosis of features particular to the main character. It makes everyone experience the same that Forest came through. At this point narration acquires its highest influence on the audience, because it touches upon real events of American history and of human life. The uniqueness of the film is in the fact that its narrative and its title, in particular, have lots of stylistic devices and methods that make the whole narration and spectacle of the film inventively picturesque. Critics and observers expand this opinion by saying the following: “Forest Gump is a picaresque narrative, complete with likable gump of a hero and some wonderfully inventive comic scenes” (Gilman, Jr. 121). In such words one may recognize the main interest to the film being so attractive due to its narrative.
Conclusion
To conclude, the role of narrative in films goes without saying, as one of two constituent parts. In this respect the alternate features of such visual art, as movie making, is spectacle. However, the researches of different up-and-coming scholars showed that narrative bears merely positive function (Cin et al. 176). It also represents a scope of events that are logically bound in terms of time and space (Lothe 3). Further still, narrative completes its functional and expressive values in combination with appropriate spectacle (King 10). What is more, narrative is a so-called textual (synchronized) service for those trying to convey the idea of the film (Chatman 2). All these features of the narrative are implied and verified on the example of well-known film Forest Gump by Robert Zemeckis.
It is vital to admit that personal reflections on the film in terms of narrative are stated closer to the construct of opinions pointed out by experts in cinematograph. In this respect the flow of the analysis touches upon both thematic and ideological parts. A viewer should understand narrative in Forest Gump, as the main means that makes the film that attractive and emotionally substantial. All in all, the research showed demonstration of one’s personal awareness of narrative in films in terms of characteristic features and genre diversity thereof.
Works cited
Chatman, Seymour Benjamin. Coming to terms: the rhetoric of narrative in fiction and film. NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.
Cin, Sonya Dal, Zanna, Mark P. and Fong, Geoffrey T. ‘Narrative Persuasion and Overcoming Resistance.’ In Resistance and Persuasion. Edited by Knowles Eric S. Linn, Jay A. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 2004: 176-191.
Gilman, Jr., Owen W. Vietnam and the Southern Imagination. Jackson, MS: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2008.
King, Geoff. Spectacular narratives: Hollywood in the age of the blockbuster. NY: I.B.Tauris, 2000.
Lothe, Jakob. Narrative in fiction and film: an introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Maltby, Richard. Hollywood cinema. Ed. 2. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003.
Zemekis, Robert. Forest Gump. Starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright Penn, Gary Sinise and others, 1994.