Читать книгу Short Films in Language Teaching - Группа авторов - Страница 19

Here is the story: It is a dark, rainy and thundery night. A man is sitting in the shelter of a tram stop. Out of nowhere appears an attractive woman, in an elegant dress. The man is about to help her out with some small change for the ticket machine and, seeing her freezing and with goose bumps, takes off his jacket – but leaves it at that. The man’s next moves to make contact also fail. The woman manages to light her cigarette without his assistance, and before he needs hers, he finds his own matches. His attempt to offer and hand her his jacket is cut short by a blackout in the shelter. When the lights turn on again, the opportunity is gone somehow and the man is clinging to his jacket again. The camera pulls back from the characters, indicating distance; a sequence of somewhat melancholy guitar chords underscores the failed attempt at communication and contact. As if to signify the end of all hopes, the man grinds out his cigarette butt. He then notices some laughter whose source is not visible on-screen but is obviously nearby on-scene. The camera moves to a long close-up of the man’s face, which finally breaks into a smile. He turns and extends his jacket towards the woman. But she has just left the scene and steps into the departing tram. The doors shut; the tram starts moving.

The film thus far very much works like a short story. There is no exposition; we get a slice of the everyday life of (seemingly) ordinary people; there is an open ending. We start out with the greatest of all possible plot triggers: boy meets girl. But then, nothing really happens (Fig. 1):

Fig. 1: Boy meets girl – with nothing happening (0:03:26)

There is no third person, no erotic competition in a so-called love triangle. These two do not unleash animal instincts for sex on the spot. There is no high-pitched scream out of the blackout as she is being slashed and slaughtered by the infamous tram-stop-killer. The woman, for her part, does not turn out to be some psychosexual maniac like Glenn Close in Adrian Lyne’s FATAL ATTRACTION (1987). These two do not even talk, for heaven’s sake! A man and a woman, roughly the same age, both decent- to good-looking, both smokers, both stranded at some forsaken tram stop. Why can’t he just hand her his jacket, saying something like: »You must be freezing – want my jacket for a while?« The man acts inhibited, perhaps intimidated by her flashiness and self-assurance. His gingerly efforts to establish contact – the small change, the matches, the jacket – they all fail. Even smoking provides no ground for some harmless talk.

A useful task here would be to describe and to characterize the protagonists, perhaps like this: While the man is a »regular guy«, average, shy, timid, the woman comes across flashy, extravagant (note her dress, and she also sports a tattoo on her arm), self-assured, perhaps even a bit perky. Explaining the characters and their quiet drama also has to take into account some means of filmic representation: First of all, the fictional world is in black and white, not colorful and vivid. Secondly, music and camera movement structure the sequence of events. Each time an effort at making contact has failed, the camera pulls back (from the take we see in Fig. 1) into a medium long shot, while a sequence of elegiac guitar chords can be heard. Thirdly, close-ups and detail shots are used for emphasis: the woman’s goose bumps and their close perception by the man through subjective camera; or the grinding out of a cigarette butt.

Camera movement, field size and shot length combine suggestively when the man notices the nearby laughter. The film takes ten long seconds to zoom into a close-up of the man’s face and it holds that close-up for another eight seconds before the man starts smiling. It is often held against film that everything is shown and therefore nothing left to imagine, no gaps to be filled in. Here is a striking example to the contrary: What is going on in the man’s mind at this moment? Let us fill an imaginary thought bubble: »Man, those guys seem to be having some fun. And I can’t even speak to this nice woman, who is obviously freezing? What is my problem? Why can’t I give her my goddamn jacket? Jesus, what is wrong with me? Now come on!«

We see how the language of film enters into language teaching with films. Our average high school student will not aspire to be a film critic or a film scholar. So it makes but little sense to systematically analyze the visual, the auditive, and the narrative qualities of a given film take by take, scene by scene.1 On the other hand, understanding content cannot discount form, that is, the way a story is constructed in the audiovisual medium, that is, the language of film.

The ending described so far is an open one. How will the story go on? Will our man succumb to quiet desperation, wait for the next tram, ride home and continue a lonely life? Not unlikely. Will he commit some act of violence, against himself or against the nearby laughers? Hardly. Will he haste after the woman, join her in the tram? Perhaps. Will they keep speechless and distant, or will they talk? Hard to tell. What will they talk about? Even harder to tell. Will they part as casual acquaintances? To be expected. Or will they have found the love of their lives, get married and live happily ever after? Probably not. The ending is open, but the subdued, laconic »language« of this film makes some endings more likely than others.

Here is the ending: After turning around from the laughter and realizing that the woman has gone, the man also takes off – whether to make the tram or run after the woman remains unclear. In any case, he ends up not in the same coach with the woman, but in another one. Leaning forward and resting his head on his elbows, he disappears from view as the train sets in motion from right to left (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Final view of the protagonist (0:07:05)

More than a hearty determination this motion indicates a quiet resignation. Ironically, the jacket the man would or could not part with has been left behind in the shelter. The ending still remains open, but it seems unlikely that anything will develop between him and her. Once again the leitmotif of the guitar chords can be heard. Also, the tram moves from right to left, which in our culture is a backward, not a forward move. On the other hand, the man has overcome his passivity and parted with his jacket. Maybe he has learned something and will change somewhat. Also, there is something new in the music, that is, a simple tune whistled above the chords. This well-crafted, detail-rich, and ambiguous ending demands close attention to filmic means, and it invites further interpretation: What, if anything, will come of it?

So far, I have left out the beginning of this film because the opening sequence requires ›higher‹ analysis and interpretation beyond the merely inner-textual content.