Intro to Film - Lesson 3: Fiction vs Reality (part 1)

Okay, welcome back to week three of  intro to film. This is Noah Namong,   your professor here with your week three lecture.  Uh, last week we talked about image and sound.

How   sound changes the image that sound and image have  a relationship to each other and one necessarily   cannot exist without the support of the other  that these are two sticks in the house of cinema.   Now let's talk about maybe another two sticks, two  pillars of cinema, fiction and reality. Is a movie   ultimately real or is it ultimately fake?

Now,  this is kind of a trick question because to be   honest, the it's not one or the other. And this  is what we're trying to lay out the case for.   Uh that a movie isn't necessarily fake and a  movie isn't also necessarily real that there   is a relationship of illusion and reality that  go hand in hand.

So when we ask this question,   is a movie ultimately real or fake? What do we  mean? Of course, movies are a certain kind of   illusion, a certain kind of lie.

Uh for instance,  the person you see on screen isn't really there   in front of you. It is a projected image of  someone from a different time. And also the   places that are depicted aren't the places you  are in, you are also witnessing the projected   image of a place.

So even though it may seem  with our eyes and our ears that we are seeing   and are hearing stuff that is happening now it is  not can say really there in the physical place.   So in this sense a cinema works on a certain  illusion a certain suspension of disbelief and   doesn't a movie sometimes make you feel as if you  are there as if you are living this life living   as this person sometimes cinema can feel real  even though it is not. So when we say fiction,   what do we mean fiction or something not real? 

Something quote unquote fake, an illusion.   And what do we mean usually? Usually we call a  fiction film a story, a film with a certain story,   with a person that doesn't necessarily exist going  through events that necessarily didn't happen.

And   I mean think about the millions of stories there  are. And now sometimes there are stories with   real people going through real events. Um but the  telling of this person these events are structured   in a way to have a beginning, middle and end.

A  conflict that gets resolved. These are sometimes   we call the structure of a story a story structure  to make sense or connect one event with another. Now we call this a story a certain kind of  structuring of events to give a certain idea   of something.

Sometimes the storyteller has a  philosophy on the world that it wants to impart   a certain perspective that it wants to transmute  give you the impression of something that they   believe in. This we can call maybe fiction. Now  what about reality?

Is there a type of movie   that is closer to reality? We can say this for  documentary. A documentary is usually understood   as some kind of plainspoken account of something  real.

It doesn't have this kind of a suspension   of disbelief that is needed in a film to believe  what's happening on the screen. A documentary for   a documentary we can believe that it's real  that it's happened before. And this is why   the documentary exists because this event is real  and it wants to give you a certain account of it,   feed you certain types of information about it so  that we can for instance learn.

But in this class,   we like to push back against this notion that  a documentary is closer to reality than a quote   unquote fiction film is to reality because both  have both. that both fiction and reality exist   in a fiction film or a documentary film or  an experimental film and we will kind of go   through this case together. Okay.

So let's  talk about fiction and fiction as a story.   Now there's many theories about what a story  is and actually uh not everyone agrees with   each other what is necessarily a story but  for the interest of this class we'll make   it very simple. Uh a story is something  with a beginning, a middle and an end,   a protagonist and a kind of moral or theme that  is related to the journey of this character   going from beginning to end, learning something,  realizing something, going through something to gain perspective on their life.

Okay. So now take  this with a grain of salt. Not everyone agrees   with this.

I don't necessarily agree with that.  This is the only kind of story and this is like   kind of a overarching uh definition of story.  But let's just say for the sake of this class   that this is how we'll uh characterize and define  a story as just a jumping off point to understand   what we mean by fiction.

So, what better way to  explain what a story is than to tell one? So,   I'll tell you a story that most of you all  probably know about the tortoise and the   hair. Now, the tortoise and the hair are getting  ready to run a race and they are starting at the   starting line facing off one another.

And  the hair tells the tortoise, "Mr Tortoise,   I am going to wipe you clean. You have no chance  against me. " And the hair goes, "We'll see about   that.

" So they say, "On your marks, get set,  go. " And off goes the hair running at the speed   of light. And the hair looks back and goes, "What  is the tortoise doing?

" And the tortoise is going, very slow, very slow. Now, the hair has gone very far into the race. not  seeing even the tortoise close to him and decides,   "Hey, well, you know, I'm thirsty.

Maybe  I should take a break. " So, he goes to the   bear's house and has a cup of lemonade and is  hanging out, relaxing on the chair and says,   "Oh, yeah. " You know, the bear asks him, "Hey, how  is the race going?

" And the the hair goes, "Yeah,   it's a piece of cake. " They look out the window  and see the tortoise going. slow and steady.

So, the hair says, "Thank you very much for my  lemonade. I'll see you later. " And the bear says,   "Good luck.

" So, the hair gets out the house  and starts to run some more, more, and more.   And now he starts to get a little hungry. So, he  goes to the mouse's house for a snack.

And so,   he enters the mouse's house. And the mouse  goes, "Hey, how are you doing? How's the race   going?

here's some food. And the hair goes,  "Oh, yes, no problem. " And the mouse goes,   "Are you sure?

You know, it's not going to  be an issue. You taking a break all this, no,   look out the window. Look how far the tortois  is.

" And they look out the window and see the   tortoise far behind, going slow. Mouse goes,  "Oh, okay. I guess you're right.

" And here says,   "Thank you very much for my snack. " And goes  running again. And the hair gets very tired.

After all those drinks and food,  the hair needs a rest. So the hair   lays down on the grass, looks over and  sees that the tortoise is back there   anyway. I might as well just  take a nap and falls asleep.

And hair is nicely asleep. Suddenly he wakes  up and looks at the finish line and sees the   tortoise is there close to the finish line and the  people are cheering for him. Go Tardis.

Go Tardis. And the hair tries to catch up. Tries  to beat the tortoise before he makes it   across.

And it's too late. The tortoise has won. And the moral of this story is that slow and  steady wins the race.

So here's a story that   most of you know. Panda is very famous of course.  But what makes it this what makes this a story?  

I mean for one it's a feeling. I think you can  sense when you're being told a story. It's not   just telling you what's going on but there is a  certain weight of events meaning made and that is   uh really uh not only moving but makes you  connect with the characters themselves.

But   let's break this down. one there are two  characters tortoise and the hair and they   have very one distinct characteristics but two  characteristics that are at the opposition of   one another's. So the tortoise is slow and  humble while the hair is fast and arrogant.

And we have this event, the race. The race itself  is to see who is going to win. The slow one or the   fast one, the humble one or the arrogant one. 

And so they do this race and actually a quick   quick fast hair is going you know way ahead  and his arrogance makes him stop by at two   places and at a third time takes a rest. So we  have this structure of the events um influenced   uh motivated by the hair's arrogance thinking  that it's a given that he will win and might   as well just take a break and so he eats and  drinks then falls asleep. So we can see this   structure to the story.

One, two, three. People  sometimes say that stories happen in threes. And   you can see it work here.

These three instances  where the hair takes a break. Finally at the end   he he takes a nap and wakes up and realizes ah the  tortoise has won. that the tortoise's consistency,   humility has kept him earnestly on track to  getting to the end and hair in his arrogance   and frankly his laziness has caused him to  lose the race.

So we say the moral is slow   and steady wins the race. actually can even say  that humility is much stronger than arrogance   can be. So okay so we have this story.

Okay. So  we can say that fiction films operate a little   bit like this. They make you uh one believe  in a different world.

A world of tortoise and   hairs running a race with each other and a  bear with a home and a mouse with a home and   um a race to be won. We have a certain suspension  of disbelief. I mean this is not something that   necessarily happens in real life.

Tortoises and  hairs running against each other yet we believe   in it. Why? Because it tells you a certain  moral about the human condition actually about   characteristics of a human of arrogance  of uh of humility and racis competition.  

this need to know uh what's better. Something  like this is at the center of this story working   for us to connect with. We inevitably connect  with this story, connect with its meaning.

Uh   but what about documentary? Does documentary  have a element of fiction? And if it does,   where does it come in?

I mean, it's about real  people and real events. How can that be fake?   How can that have any element of fiction in  it if it's about real people and real places?

Uh so let's uh do a little exercise then with a   nature documentary about penguins  and uh a scene from Happy Feet. At the colony, two weeks have  passed. The chicks are testing   their independence and spending  time away from their mothers.

All that is except one. As the last to hatch, he's way behind in  development. While the older chicks are   boisterous and confident, he still feels  most comfortable in his mother's pouch.

But penguins are sociable birds, and to survive,  he must learn to play his part in the colony. It's a daunting prospect. But the  little chick finds some courage.

Get me out. It's a shaky start, but he mustn't lose  his nerve. Time for a bit of tough love.

With every step, he gains more confidence. Get out of here. Memphis H.

Is everything okay? Uh, I  I don't know. I can't hear anything.

Is it empty? Honey, can I have  it? Gloria, it's okay.

memories. It happens sometimes, Memphis. Yeah.

Wait, you hear that? Yeah.  Hey, I can hear I can hear you,   but hopefully your papa's here.

It's okay. Oh, he's okay. Maurice, you come.

Oh,   there it is. That's his little foot  there. Oh, there's another one.

That's different. Hey, come  back here, Mr M. Gloria.

Oh,   she can call him whatever the  hell she likes. Whoa, little mama. You okay?

Squeezy. Oh, you get used  to it. Come on, son.

Come to your daddy. What do you make of that? A little wobbly in the  knees, huh?

Is he okay? I don't know. What What   you doing there, boy?

I'm happy. P. What you doing  with your feet?

They're happy, too. I wouldn't   do that around folks, son. Why not?

Well, it just  ain't Penguin. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. You come on over   here. Get under here.

Get warm. Watch the beak.  Watch the beak.

Beak. The beak. Okay.

Good boy. So late. Okay.

So, both these clips have  characters. They have the father, the mother,   and the baby, and the community of penguins. They  both have uh a setting.

um the iceberg, the winter   land of this snowy land of this place. Um and  both express the feelings of these characters,   both express the feelings of the parents, of  the young child. They express how it feels   and and there is a certain structure to both  of these scenes all have a certain beginning,   middle and end.

So one cannot say a documentary  is just depicting something as it is without a   certain kind of reading of the situation. For  instance in the nature documentary a nar a   narrator is interpreting what is happening so we  can understand it that we can get a sense of what   is going on. Without the narrator, maybe we don't  understand the dynamics at play between parent and   child and what the child is going through to  walk, what could possibly be going on in the   minds of these penguins.

The narrator in the  documentary gives us an idea of this and not   to tell necessarily a story but using the elements  of story to tell you about the nature of penguins.   So yes, of course, a documentary is trying  to show us in a certain sense a fact of life,   a fact of nature, a facts of these penguins. But  how does it elicit and articulate these ideas and   these events and these facts?

Often they are  using story an element of fiction storytelling because we have to say that the documentary isn't  just showing it as it is. It is interpreting the   information. What if there's a different narrator  with a different idea of what is happening?  

Then we have two conflicting quote unquote truths  and two conflicting facts. So we have to one   believe in this narrator to be the authority on  this topic and two it does not offer a competing   idea. It doesn't offer a different interpretation. 

It is kind of saying to you this is what it is.   Now is that necessarily true or not? But this uh  documentary doesn't leave us the room to wonder.  

It tells us very authoritatively actually. This  is what it is. So how can that not have a certain   element of fiction in it to kind of say that  this is the truth?

This is what it is. This is   what the penguins are thinking or going through.  I mean maybe they're not.

Maybe they are thinking   something else. I don't know. Maybe they, you  know, maybe they have some kind of vindictive   feeling against their child.

We would never know.  We have to suspend our disbelief and trust the   narrator on what they're saying. And how do they  kind of evoke this quote unquote truth is through   narrative itself, through fiction itself.

Now,  Happy Feet, of course, is a animated film. These   are not real penguins. These are animations of  penguins.

Uh but yet there is still an element   of reality in it. I mean just kind of compare and  contrast the similarities in the clips. Um there   are many similarities actually and for instance uh  we if you just watched happy feet as an example of   what uh life of a penguin is like you would  understand in this instance that the egg is   between the parents uh legs and under their belly  and they water like this and also the hatching of   the egg and the walking of the baby is a very  important part of a penguin's birth and arrival   went to life.

We can understand this this in the  movie Happy Feet, which is something that the   documentary is also trying to depict and portray  and and tell its viewers, educate its viewers   on. So, both movies actually share this quote  unquote reality of penguins. uh you can learn   basically just as much from happy feet as you can  from the documentary about these aspects of the   birth of a penguin.

So how can we say that happy  feet has no relationship to reality? Of course,   it has a clear suspension of disbelief that these  penguins can speak English and they can dance and   they can sing and you know this of course is  not necessarily real but penguins are a real   creature and penguins do mate in a certain kind  of ritual of embarkment. So we can say that there   is a relationship happy has with the reality of  penguins.

uh it is not just purely imagination. It   has some relationship to reality. So we can say in  both these cases that both scenes share a certain   relationship with fiction and reality that both  are working in conversation to elicit something   in happy feet a feeling and in the documentary  information.

But on the flip side is that the   documentary within it there is feeling uh you  can feel the the um kind of emotion of birthing   a child um that is actually human not necessarily  penguin like do penguins have the emotions that we   have we will never know but for us to understand  it the documentary documentarians have to use   the element of story to evoke that within us.  And it's the same with Happy Feet. Of course,   they're working on this emotional level, on this  entertainment level, but at the very same time,   there is some real information that you  can glean from this movie about penguins.  

If you tell someone about the the life of penguins  in a very academic way, someone who sees happy   feet have a has a reference to understand  this information with ah yes I saw something   like that in happy feet. Maybe not exactly but  something like that. So uh film has always had a   preoccupation to reality to representing reality  and we can say that the aspiration of film and   photography is to show real life because unlike a  painting and unlike a book they can show something   about the physical reality of what we live in  a way that a book can a painting cannot.

Um,   a photo of a person is much more quote unquote  real than a painting of a person in terms of   what it looks like. Just on a first glancing  impression, we can say, "Ah, this photo is   closer to a real person. " So, film has always had  this preoccupation with reality.

uh uh we'll talk   about the Lumiere brothers um and George Melier  um two early cinema filmmakers and we can say at   the foundation of uh cinema as a art form um and  also a technological invention uh you know the   camera um so first let's watch a lumiere of this  film called workers leaving the factory Three. Uh now this film is uh ins one breath a very  plain spoken account depiction of something   that supposedly happens every day in many places  across the world workers leaving the factory.   But there is an element of fiction in this film. 

And where does that come in is that the kind of   you could say dirty secret about this film is  that this film what we see is not the first take,   but the third or fourth, I don't know which take,  but wasn't the first one that they did multiple   multiple takes of this film to get it quote  unquote right. So we say that the moment the   Lumiere brothers to take two fiction has entered  the room of cinema. So why is this fiction is that   this film isn't just showing workers leaving the  factory in real time.

You know the work day has   ended and suddenly these people are just going  home and the camera just happened to be there   capturing what was going on. And this is not the  case though it is the impression actually what   is happening is a certain controlled environment  where the workers are leaving and not as workers   but basically as actors moving out in a certain  way in a certain fashion controlled by the Lumiere   brothers asked to walk a certain direction at a  certain pace etc etc and done multiple times to   get it Right? So we cannot say that this is just  a kind of everyday occurrence just happened to be   uh captured.

We have this element of fiction  of control by the Lumiere brothers to show it   a certain way maybe to tell a certain  kind of story. Now I'll show you some Melier's films. And Melier was  really known for his uh camera   trickery.

Wanted to show kind of something  fantastic uh about the camera and the edit   uh to show a kind of suspension of  reality. Actually getting away from   the realm of the real and into the realm of  imagination. So we'll see some Millier film.

Now, of course, this is not something that  could happen in real life, heads on a table   like this. But what can we say about the reality  of imagination? All of us have uh imaginations,   have dreams.

Um and sometimes our dreams are  very uh fantastical maybe like a melier film.   What about this uh kind of uh mode of a person to  show in a film how our minds work outside of our   physical reality? But what about the reality  of our imagination?

We can say this. Okay.   So the film for this week is Closeup by Abus  Kerstami.

Abus Kristami is a Iranian filmmaker   uh one of the prominent filmmakers of the Iranian  new wave filmmakers from postrevolution Iran. Um   and this movie Close-up is his seinal film kind  of his most well-known and well regarded film   uh particularly because it of its slippery  relationship with documentary and fiction. And   so we call this film uh kind of the genre of this  film or the classification of this film is docu   a kind of blend of both.

Now why it is uh so is  because one I'll tell you a little bit about the   film itself is it's about this man named Sabzian  who is impersonating a famous Iranian film maker   Makmab and he convinces this family that he is  Makmab and kind of elicits a lots of favors and   uh also houses him for a little bit. he sleeps  over and uh they feed him food and he also   convinces the sons of this family that he is  interested in casting them all of this stuff   and eventually the family finds out and puts him  to trial, takes him to trial and he is uh on trial   trying to make the case for his remorse that uh  he doesn't do this out of some kind of vindictive   kind of manipulative intention but actually out of  his genuine love for cinema for genuine interest   in being a director and didn't mean any harm. Now  where the docu element comes in is that this trial   and this occurrence and this u situation is uh  reenacted and performed by the real life people.  

So the real life Samsian is in the film. The real  life family is in the film and there are moments   in the film that play between reality and uh  fiction with documentary and fiction because some   scenes are clearly uh fictionalized reenactments  of what had happened. For instance, the meeting   of Sabzian and the mother of the family.

Um so  actually this is the kind of center of the film.   We are always curious about Samsian and what is  going on in his head. It is what he is saying true   or not just like we are asking the film the same  kinds of questions.

Is this real or not? And so   this is really at the center of this film really  making us wonder question the authenticity the   truth the genuine sincere reality of Samsian's  words his being his spirit his character we are   wondering always about this and the film really  produces this not just by showing Sabzian but the   way it shows Sabzian and the events of the story.  Okay.

So, I'll play a short clip of the commentary   from Jonathan Rosenbomb and Manar Say Fafa about  uh closeup and we you can hear them talk about   this uh relationship of reality and performance  and fiction. It's some of the canoon films were   fiction and some were documentaries and some  were closer to essays and this is all of those   things and at every moment it's not that it sort  of shifts if it shifts back and forth from fiction   to documentary we can't tell when it does and I  think Kristami is has made some very interesting   statements about this he says the difference  between a fiction and a non-fiction film is less   important than the than the distinction between a  good and a bad film. Mhm.

He and I think that this   is something that's very important in the history  of cinema. Throughout the history of cinema,   breakdowns between fiction and non-fiction are  major stages always. I mean we see it happening   all the time.

Even in Genon Wells like an F for  fake but I mean we see it in Lumiere films at the   very beginning. We see it and in mill we see it  in um it's something that is constantly coming up   in in sort of like progressive film practice of  various kinds because our notion of what reality   is is based so much on convention that filmmakers  are constantly forced to play with convention in   order to do either you know to represent either  one and that automatically leads into all kinds   of complex paradoxes I think. See the border lines  are not quite clear here and you know that's why   I think uh to my mind closeup is uh my favorite  film of Kami and also it is a film that is very   uh maybe a turning point in his career as well as  you know a big time you know film in history of   Iran postrevolution Iran he affected influenced  many other filmmakers including Mahm Buff you   know look at the films that he made later on  salam cinema once upon a time cinema the actor   uh moment of innocent they are all you  know in some ways bringing the idea of   cinema.

Yes. And in some ways you could say  that they're even critiquing the idea of   this film. Okay.

Thanks for coming to  this class. Um I hope you enjoyed it.   Uh maybe it's a little bit difficult this kind  of distinction between reality and fiction but   we should say that this is a very important  thing to consider and ruminate on because a   film is always at odds with this relationship. 

always combating its impulse to be realistic   uh with uh reality itself and also the kind of  communicative power of fiction. Okay, so I hope   this uh lesson was helpful and interesting.  Thanks for coming and see you next time.

Bye.