SILKE HORSTKOTTE

(Leipzig)

Seeing or Speaking:
Visual Narratology and Focalization, Literature to Film

1. Film, Narrative, Focalization

Ever since Seymour Chatman proposed to analyze film with the help of nar-
ratological concepts (Chatman 1978), 1 narratology has become a widespread
F F

method of film analysis (see, e. g., Andringa et al. 2001; Bordwell 1985;
Branigan 1984; Chatman 1990; Lothe 2000; Nadel 2005). Chatman’s main
contribution to the field of film narratology remains his concept of the
“cinematic narrator,” which he defined as a non-human agent, “the compos-
ite of a large and complex variety of communicating devices” (Chatman
1990: 134). These include auditory (sound, voice, music) as well as visual
channels, for instance lighting, mise-en-scène, camera distance, angle and
movement, and editing (rhythm, cut etc). Chatman thereby contradicted
David Bordwell’s earlier contention that film has narration but no narrator,
and that notions of film narration are the construction of a spectator, not a
narrator (Bordwell 1985).
Referring to the opposition between fabula (story) and syuzhet (dis-
course) in Russian Formalism, Bordwell had defined film narration as “the
process whereby the film’s syuzhet and style interact in the course of cueing and channeling
the spectator’s construction of the fabula” (Bordwell 1985: 53). Bordwell allowed
for the possibility of an intradiegetic, voice-over (VO) narrator, whether
homodiegetic or heterodiegetic, but excluded the possibility of an extra-
diegetic film narrator. 2 However, it has been repeatedly pointed out that
F F

Bordwell’s conception of film narration as a message with a perceiver but

without any sender (Bordwell 1985: 62) is a logical impossibility: as Chatman

1 Following earlier suggestions from film theory to describe film as a ‘cinematic narrative’; see
e. g. Metz (1974).
2 A comparable argument is raised by Celestino Deleyto, who also seeks to restrict cinematic
narration to explicit on-screen narration through voice-over or intertitles (Deleyto 1991: 164).
 Visual Narratology and Focalization 171

argues, surely “something gets ‘sent’”, and this sending presupposes a sender
of some kind (Chatman 1990: 127). 3 F F

It seems sensible to assume that film possesses narrative qualities, and

that these narrative qualities must have an originating agency on the side of
film, hence, a film narrator. Leaving aside Chatman’s claim (contentious, in
my view) that cinematic as well as literary narrators are put in place by im-
plied authors (Chatman 1990: 132-133), I would tend to agree that film nar-
rative presupposes the existence of a narrator and that this cinematic narra-
tor is the transmitting agent of narrative, not its creator (Chatman 1990:
132). I would, however, furthermore posit that the presence of this cinematic
narrator has to be inferred by the spectator to a much greater degree than is
the case in literary narrative, and that film narration thus emerges out of an
interaction between a film and its viewers.
While a significant amount of research has been done on cinematic nar-
rators, less attention has been paid to the possibility of a cinematic focalizer. 4 F F

This is surprising because focalization, through its basis in the notion of

perspective, is closely associated with matters of vision. It would therefore
seem a much more promising starting point for film narratology than narra-
tion, a concept originating with linguistic codes. In fact, focalization has been
proposed as a concept bridging textuality and visuality (Bal 1997; 1999), and
has been tentatively used as a tool for analyzing visual artifacts (Bal 1999;
Yacobi 2002) as well as ones that combine the visual and the verbal
(Horstkotte 2005). However, since Gérard Genette first proposed the con-
cept (Genette 1980), focalization has remained one of the most problematic,
and hotly discussed, areas of narrative theory. Although Genette initially
favored the term for its abstractness and for avoiding the optical connota-
tions inherent in the French “vision” and “champ” (see Genette 1972: 206),
roughly corresponding to English “point of view,” he later highlighted the
intrinsically visual dimension of focalization by distinguishing between “who
speaks” (narration) and “who sees” (focalization) (Genette 1980: 186). In his
still later Narrative Discourse Revisited, however, Genette again downplayed the
term’s optical associations by suggesting that the question “who sees?”
should be reformulated as “who perceives?” to include other sense percep-
tions (Genette 1988: 64). While some narratologists, particularly Mieke Bal,
continue to stress the visual aspects of focalization, which make the concept
“the obvious place to begin easing in some elements of a ‘visual narratol-
ogy’” (Bal 1997: 161), others have argued that focalization’s connection to
seeing is merely metonymical or metaphorical (Jahn 1996: 243).

3 A similar point had already been made by Albert Laffey (1964): the succession of images in a
film must, considered logically, have an originating agent beyond the screen (see esp. pp. 81f).
4 See, however, Deleyto (1991).
172 Silke Horstkotte

The term ‘focalization,’ then, may have shifted problems of narrative

analysis rather than solved them, and similar problems beset Franz K. Stan-
zel’s concept of figural narrative (Stanzel 1984), which theorizes the consis-
tent use of a reflector character as a distinctive narrative situation separate
from first-person and “authorial” narrative. Stanzel’s holistic conception of
narrative situations mixes notions of seeing, experiencing and passing judg-
ment with the narrative act itself, from which Genette’s term of focalization
was meant to be clearly distinguished. Apart from the duly noted inconsis-
tencies of Stanzel’s system (Cohn 1981), this may point to unresolved prob-
lems concerning the distinction between narrator and focalizer, problems
which also determine the ongoing discussion as to whether focalization is
always linked to an anthropomorphized focalizing character (Bal 1997) or
not (Genette 1980, 1988). 5 F F

To sum up, the different terms focalization, perspective, figural narrative

and so forth, which continue to circulate in narrative theory, clearly indicate
that there are widely divergent ideas of what constitutes what I broadly term
focalization in this article. Despite their provenance from the optical domain,
the concepts of focalization and point of view cover aspects of cognition
and emotion as well as of perception; and they are insufficiently differenti-
ated from narration. Not surprisingly, a survey of recent contributions to the
field (Bal 1997; Herman 2002; Jahn 1996; Miller 2005; Nünning 2001; Phelan
2001; Rimmon-Kenan 2002; van Peer/Chatman 2001) reveals disagree-
ments, blurred boundaries, and even fundamental uncertainties about what
the term does—and does not—encompass. Similar inconsistencies were also
noted by Monika Fludernik, who concluded that “[the] extensive debate on
focalization has really demonstrated that the category is an interpretative one
and not exclusively a textual category.” (Fludernik 1996: 345)
This article will consider the potential, as well as the shortcomings, in-
herent in a ‘traveling concept’ of focalization through a study of two cases of
intermedial translation, namely by comparing the literary and film versions of
Robert Walser’s Institute Benjamenta (Jakob von Gunten, 1909; film: Brothers
Quay, 1995) and Franz Kafka’s The Castle (Das Schloß, 1926; film: Michael
Haneke, 1997), two novels which make intense and systematic use of fixed
internal focalization. I believe that a parallel reading (or viewing) of the films
can be productive for two reasons. Firstly, the original literary narratives
differ in one important point: Institute Benjamenta is a first-person narrative in
diary style; The Castle is told by a heterodiegetic narrator and consistently uses
the protagonist, K., as a focal character or fixed internal focalizer. This en-
ables me to contrast a heterodiegetic narration, which is comparatively easy
to distinguish from internal focalization, with a homodiegetic narration, in

5 The debate is summed up by Jahn (1996: 245).

 Visual Narratology and Focalization 173

which the distinction between narrator and focalizer is much less clear-cut. It
will then, secondly, be interesting to see how the two film adaptations trans-
late this distinction (or lack of distinction) into a filmic narrative and film
focalization.

2. Kafka’s The Castle:

Ironic Distance between Narration and Focalization

Franz Kafka’s third and last novel The Castle, written in 1922 and published
posthumously by Kafka’s close friend Max Brod in 1926, exemplifies that
combination of heterodiegetic narration with fixed internal focalization
which Franz Stanzel termed the “figural narrative situation” (Stanzel 1984).
As early as 1952, the Kafka scholar Friedrich Beißner referred to this form
of focalization as an “einsinniges Erzählen,” or narration from a single fixed
perspective (reprinted in Beißner 1983). Apart from the fact that Beißner’s
term unnecessarily confuses the positions of the impersonal narrator and the
character-focalizer K., it bears noting that K.’s focalization is not as consis-
tent as Beißner assumed but contains a number of breaks and oddities, espe-
cially at the beginning of the novel (see Müller 2008: 523; Sheppard 1977:
406).
It is significant for the later development of the narrative that Kafka
wrote two unfinished drafts of the novel’s beginning, employing different
narratorial positions, before finally coming up with a narrative situation
which enabled him to continue beyond the novel’s initial scenes (see Jahraus
2006: 397-402). The first of these fragmentary beginnings, the so-called
“Fürstenzimmer” fragment, uses a heterodiegetic narrator who tells of the
arrival of an unnamed “guest” at a country inn. This fragment already con-
tains the thematic kernel of the later novel plot, because the guest talks about
a “fight” in which he needs to engage (Jahraus 2006: 398). In the novel, K.
frequently imagines his relation to the castle in terms of a fight. The “Für-
stenzimmer” fragment, however, breaks off before this theme can be further
explored. Kafka’s second false start already contains the first two sentences
of The Castle, but employs a homodiegetic narrator, inasmuch as the pro-
tagonist K. here serves as a first-person narrator. This narrative situation
continues until the narrator-protagonist engages in amorous relations with
Frieda in the third chapter. At that point, the narrative abruptly reverts from
a first-person to a third-person perspective, as in the earlier fragment. Kafka
then writes a third beginning for his novel, this time employing a covert,
heterodiegetic narrator. That third start finally develops into the fragmentary
novel published in 1926 by Max Brod.
174 Silke Horstkotte

I would suggest that a crucial factor in Kafka’s decision to use an imper-

sonal, covert or heterodiegetic narrator was the possibility of linking this type
of narration with a specific form of fixed internal focalization that is endemic
in modernist writing and is characterized by the frequent use of free indirect
discourse (FID), reported speech, and reported thought. 6 Franz Stanzel’s F F

concept of “figural narrative” suggests, in fact, that these two aspects—

narration through a covert, impersonal, heterodiegetic narrator and fixed
internal focalization tied to the consciousness of the central character—are
mutually interdependent and together constitute a standard narrative situa-
tion. However, I will show that although the narration in The Castle presup-
poses a fixed internal focalization, this does not mean that the positions of
narrator and focalizer are always congruent with each other. On the contrary,
the protagonist-focalizer’s perception and interpretation of events is fre-
quently at odds with the same events’ presentation in the narrative; indeed,
the ironic distance between narrator and focalizer is a driving motor of the
narrative.
K.’s focalization is closely linked to visual activity, especially in the early
chapters of The Castle, where the protagonist’s gaze remains directed at the
silhouette of the castle, whereas the later chapters focus on his attempts to
gain insight into the inner workings of the castle bureaucracy. The very first
sentences of the novel draw attention to the protagonist-focalizer’s gaze:
“There was no sign of the Castle hill, fog and darkness surrounded it […]. K.
stood a long time on the wooden bridge that leads from the main road to the
village, gazing upward into the seeming emptiness.” (Kafka 1998: 1) 7 Curi- F F

ously, the sentence suggests that although K. looks, time of day and weather
conditions prevent him from actually perceiving anything. The assertion that
there is, in fact, a castle on the mountain therefore has to be the narrator’s,
not K.’s, meaning that the initial statement is not internally focalized. 8 In F F

fact, K. is later surprised to hear that a castle perches above the village at all.
We are, then, from the beginning of the novel confronted with conflicting
statements about what is and what is not, what can and cannot be seen, set-
ting up an ironic distance between narrator and focalizer.

6 Dorrit Cohn similarly speculates that the implausible near-effacement of the narrating self in
Kafka’s second attempt motivated the shift towards third-person narration (Cohn 1978: 169-
171). Gérard Genette, on the other hand, remains unconvinced that “a rewriting of […] The
Castle into the first person would be such a catastrophe” (Genette 1988: 112).
7 “Vom Schloßberg war nichts zu sehn, Nebel und Finsternis umgaben ihn […]. Lange stand K.
auf der Holzbrücke die von der Landstraße zum Dorf führt und blickte in die scheinbare Leere
empor.” (Kafka 1994: 9)
8 Klaus-Detlef Müller (2007) offers a different interpretation: he argues that although the first
sentence could be “authorial”, the consistent narration “from K.’s perspective” suggests that K.
misses something (the castle) which he had expected (Müller 2007: 105). This is a circular, and
therefore unconvincing, argument: if the very first sentence suggests zero focalization, then in-
ternal focalization cannot be consistent.
 Visual Narratology and Focalization 175

The disparity between what the narrator asserts could be seen and what
the focalizer actually perceives raises the question what, if anything, the nar-
rator can be said to see. The perceptual capacities of narrators are a hotly
contested narratological problem, with Seymour Chatman denying that the
narrator can see anything and asserting that he “is a reporter, not an ‘ob-
server’ of the story world in the sense of literally witnessing it” and that nar-
rating, therefore, “is not an act of perception but of presentation or repre-
sentation” (Chatman 1990: 142). At least as far as the beginning of The Castle
is concerned, however, the distinction between reporting something that is at
least potentially visible and actually seeing it does not appear highly useful.
Whether we call the narrator’s activity perception or presentation, he (I will
stick with the male pronoun for convention’s sake) suggests to the reader a
visual impression of the castle that can then be compared with the visual
impression (or lack thereof) that we receive through the focal character, K.
Rather than drawing an absolute distinction between the focalizer’s vis-
ual perception and the narrator’s reporting of visual phenomena, I would like
to refer to Manfred Jahn’s proposal to distinguish between different “win-
dows of focalization” in the house of fiction (1996), which allows for distinc-
tive forms of visual perception specific to both the narrator and the focalizer
and therefore enables me to talk about the narrator’s visual perception.
Jahn’s main point is that although narrators can, in principle, “see,” their
perception has a different ontological status from (while being at least partly
reliant on) that of the character-focalizer(s):
What the narrators actually see is determined by a number of factors: the shape of
the window […], the view afforded by it […], the ‘instrument’ used […], but above
all, the viewer’s ‘consciousness’ and its construction of reality. It is for this reason
that narrators see things differently even when they are ostensibly watching the
‘same show’ […]. Before this backdrop enters a special story-internal character […]
who sees the story events not, like the narrator, from a window ‘perched aloft’, but
from within the human scene itself. Wholly unaware of both his/her own intra-
diegetic status and the part s/he plays in the extradiegetic universe comprising nar-
rator and narratee, the reflector’s consciousness nonetheless mirrors the world for
these higher-level agents and thus metaphorically functions as a window him- or
herself. (Jahn 1996: 252)
In the opening passage of The Castle, however, we find the narrator reporting
on a potential visual perception that is not—indeed, that cannot be—
mirrored for him by the reflector. The first sentences of The Castle are there-
fore at odds with the ensuing fixed internal focalization. While the narrator’s
assurance of the castle’s actual existence—which K. cannot see in the dark-
ness—as well as the objective geographical detail of the bridge “that leads
[…] to the village” (Kafka 1998: 1) seem to suggest a zero focalization (the
narrator knows more than the characters), the following paragraphs make
increasing use of internal focalization, culminating in the use of FID two
176 Silke Horstkotte

pages later when we witness K. observing the village inn: “So there was even
a telephone in this village inn? They were certainly well equipped.” (3) 9 As F F

the novel progresses, K.’s thoughts and perceptions—sometimes rendered in

the form of indirect thought re-presentation, sometimes through the use of
FID—circle increasingly around the unknown castle and its employees,
which K. supposes to be engaging in a fight with himself. After an initial
telephone conversation confirms K.’s claim that he has been appointed as a
surveyor to the castle, he considers his position in the following terms:
K. listened intently. So the Castle had appointed him land surveyor. On the one
hand, this was unfavorable, for it showed that the Castle had all necessary informa-
tion about him, had assessed the opposing forces, and was taking up the struggle
with a smile. On the other hand, it was favorable […]. (5) 10 F F

As K.’s position is confirmed by the castle, the initial zero focalization is

replaced with an almost consistently fixed internal focalization, which is only
interrupted by the direct speech of other characters and by Olga’s longer
intradiegetic narration about her sister Amalia. It is as if in order to be able
to function as a focalizer, K. has to receive proof of his status and person-
hood from the castle.
Apart from the first paragraph, no uncontroversial narratorial reference
to the castle exists in the novel; the castle is always seen from K.’s perspec-
tive, or else is subject to interpretation by K. or through the direct speech of
other characters. That the second description of the castle is already based
on K.’s perception—that it is internally focalized—is made obvious by the
verb “seemed” (“schien”), as well as by the use of deictics (“here”/“hier”)
relative to K.’s viewing position, thus establishing K. as the “deictic center”
of focalization (see Jahn 1996: 256).
Now he saw the Castle above, sharply outlined in the clear air and made even
sharper by the snow, which traced each shape and lay everywhere in a thin layer.
Besides, there seemed to be a great deal less snow up on the hill than here in the vil-
lage […]. Here the snow rose to the cottage windows only to weigh down on the
low roofs, whereas on the hill everything soared up, free and light, or at least
seemed to from here. (Kafka 1998: 7) 11 F F

9 “Wie, auch ein Telephon war in diesem Dorfwirtshaus? Man war vorzüglich eingerichtet.”
(Kafka 1994: 11)
10 “K. horchte auf. Das Schloß hatte ihn also zum Landvermesser ernannt. Das war einerseits
ungünstig für ihn, denn es zeigte, daß man im Schloß alles Nötige über ihn wußte, die Kräfte-
verhältnisse abgewogen hatte und den Kampf lächelnd aufnahm. Es war aber andererseits auch
günstig […].” (Kafka 1994: 13)
11 “Nun sah er oben das Schloß deutlich umrissen in der klaren Luft und noch verdeutlicht durch
den alle Formen nachbildenden, in dünner Schicht überall liegenden Schnee. Übrigens schien
oben auf dem Berg viel weniger Schnee zu sein als hier im Dorf […]. Hier reichte der Schnee
bis zu den Fenstern der Hütten und lastete gleich wieder auf dem niedrigen Dach, aber oben
auf dem Berg ragte alles frei und leicht empor, wenigstens schien es so von hier aus.” (Kafka
1994: 16)
 Visual Narratology and Focalization 177

Given the consistency of focalization, however, it is not surprising that it

develops in scope as the novel progresses; for while the initial chapters re-
volve around the visual perception of the castle, K. later becomes increas-
ingly preoccupied not with what is actually seen, but with speculation about
the unknown inner workings of the castle and its presumed perception of
himself. However, K.’s interpretations do not always adequately represent
the fictional world, a fact that can be gleaned from the readings he gives to a
number of letters he receives from the castle. 12 Since the narrator quotes
F F

these missives in their entirety, the reader can easily compare the letters
themselves with K.’s interpretation of them. For example, the first letter
which K. receives from the hands of the messenger Barnabas confirms that
he has been accepted into castle service, although it does not specify what
that service is. It then assigns K. to the “village chairman” (23; “Dorfvorste-
her”, 33) as his immediate superior, and asks him to convey messages to the
castle exclusively through Barnabas. K. interprets this rather vague message
as offering him a choice between two options: being a subordinate “village
worker” (24; “Dorfarbeiter”, 34) who is connected to the castle in appear-
ance only, or else being a village worker in appearance only, but in reality
entirely determined by the messages delivered by Barnabas. K. then decides
in favor of the second possibility, even though the letter had named no such
alternative (see Alt 2005: 598). In view of this and of other highly fanciful
interpretations of the castle’s messages and actions, the reader is led to
strongly doubt K.’s impression that while he is watching the castle, the castle
is actively watching back, thereby confirming his standing on equal terms.
K.’s character focalization in the latter parts of the novel, then, does not
constitute a perception of what is, but a model-building of what might be or
can be inferred from what is, corresponding to Manfred Jahn’s concept of
“imaginary perception” (Jahn 1996: 263). This has two possible conse-
quences. On the one hand, K. emerges as a highly unreliable focalizer and
quite a shady character to boot—we cannot even be sure that he is, indeed, a
surveyor at all. Since the decision to reproduce the castle letters verbatim is
the narrator’s, the contrast between the quoted letters and K.’s interpretation
suggests that the narrator aims to show us how unreliable K.’s focalization is.
On the other hand, as Peter-André Alt has pointed out, K.’s focalization also
has the opposite effect: the castle is constituted less as a real place with
clearly delineated contours than as a distanced focusing point for K.’s gaze,
whose main effect is to unsettle the statements that the narrator makes about
reality (Alt 2005: 592). Although the narrative situation is based on a combi-
nation of the narratorial and focalizing positions, an ironic distance is thus
created between the two. Bearing in mind the different ontological status of

12 Michael Müller (2008: 524) raises a similar argument.

178 Silke Horstkotte

the heterodiegetic narrator, however, it would appear that the ultimate irony
is the narrator’s, at the expense of the focalizer’s credibility.

3. Cinematic and VO Narration in Michael Haneke’s Das Schloss

How can the combination of narration and focalization in Kafka’s novel be

translated into the medium of film? Before addressing that question, we first
need to identify what forms, if any, focalization can generally take in a fea-
ture film. Summarizing Edward Branigan’s theory of subjectivity in film
(1984), Andringa et al. (2001) suggest four techniques through which focal-
ization may operate in film: (1) through so-called point of view (POV) shots,
which show the focal character perceiving or thinking something; (2)
through lighting and music; (3) through image sequences interrupting the
film action to represent a character’s thoughts; (4) or by means of a voice
over (VO). Voice over, however, has also been identified as an aspect of film
narration—indeed, Andringa et al. identify the VO in the film they analyze as
an overt level 2 narrator, as opposed to the covert cinematic level 1 narrator
(see Andringa et al. 2001: 136, table 8.1). 13 Seymour Chatman similarly dis-
F F

tinguishes between a “showing” narrator—the cinematic narrator—and a

second-order “telling” (VO) narrator who “may be one component of the total
showing, one of the cinematic narrator’s devices” (Chatman 1990: 134). At
the same time, however, Chatman also names VO as a possible element of
focalization (“filter,” in Chatman’s terminology), which may be effected on
screen “through eyeline match, shot-countershot, the 180-degree rule, voice-
off or voice-over [or] plot logic” (157). If the same techniques can be con-
structed as either narration or focalization, it seems that the two are even
more difficult to tell apart in film than in literature and that any differentia-
tion between them is almost entirely a result of the viewer’s interpretation. 14 F F

Nevertheless, I will try to offer some insight into the differences between
film narration and focalization through a reading of well-known Austrian
film director Michael Haneke’s adaptation of The Castle.
The film script faithfully reproduces Kafka’s chapter division, although
the scenes themselves are often shortened so as to concentrate on the (per-
ceived) essence of a chapter. Scenes are frequently separated by cut to black,
giving the film a fragmentary and jerky appearance and subverting the sort of
identificatory and illusionistic viewing attitude promoted by mainstream Hol-
lywood cinema. A further disillusionment is effected by the film’s setting.
While Kafka’s novel was set in a claustrophobic universe bearing little or no

13 On VO narration, see also Kozloff (1988).

14 Deleyto draws the more radical conclusion that “focalisation and narration … exist at the same
level, and simultaneously in film” (1991: 165).
 Visual Narratology and Focalization 179

relation to any specific time and place, the film set suggests a setting close to
the present, and in an Alpine region. Props, interior furnishings and charac-
ters’ clothes seem to derive from the 1970s, but their used and dated look
suggests a later time, probably the 1990s when the film was made. On the
side of sound, we find repeated allusions to Alpine folk music, both canned
(from a radio at the inn) and live (peasants playing dance music in the inn).
And while most of the actors speak little to no dialect, a number of minor
characters such as Pepi (played by Birgit Linauer), Momus (Paulus Manker)
and the village chairman (Nikolaus Paryla) exhibit traces of Austrian intona-
tion, and Hans Brunswick (Conradin Blum) of Swiss dialect. However, these
hints remain vague and are of a generically Alpine rather than a specifically
regional nature. In the film, as in the novel, no precise location can be as-
signed to the village and castle, and this also serves to reflects K’s uncertain
social status and underdetermined identity (Alt 2005: 594).
Rather than suggesting a precise time and location, the film’s setting cre-
ates allusions to a specific theater aesthetic that is associated with the well-
known Swiss director Christoph Marthaler and with stage designer Anna
Viebrock, with whom Marthaler frequently cooperates (for example in Die
Stunde Null oder die Kunst des Servierens, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg,
1995; Kasimir und Karoline, also Deutsches Schauspielhaus, 1996). Characteris-
tic for this aesthetic is the use of dated interiors, of Alpine folk music, and of
grotesque acting. These elements unite to create an effect of spectatorial
distance and disillusionment in the tradition of Brechtian epic drama.
Haneke, too, introduces many grotesque and slapstick effects especially
through the comical and childish nature of the two “assistants” (“Gehilfen”).
The actors’ clothing, with the men’s long johns and Frieda’s wrinkled stock-
ings, is used to great comical effect in the film’s frequent dressing and un-
dressing scenes, which also serve to show off the actors’ pale and distinctly
unfit-looking physiques. Another source of humor can be found in the fre-
quent close-ups focusing on the actors’ highly expressive mimicry. This con-
cerns especially the assistants (played by Frank Giering and Felix Eitner),
Frieda (Susanne Lothar) or Barnabas (André Eisermann), whereas lead actor
Ulrich Mühe, who had already worked with Haneke in two earlier films
(Benny’s Video and Funny Games), plays K. with a markedly deadpan facial
expression that adds to the character’s enigmatic nature. Finally, the frequent
repetition of scenes showing K. walking, stumbling or running through the
snow-covered village emphasizes the cyclical nature of Kafka’s tale while
also adding to the slapstick effect of the film.
Together, all of these aspects—mise en scène, setting, lighting, sound—
constitute the cinematic narration. However, the film also employs a second-
level, overt VO narrator. The VO, spoken by Udo Samel, begins with the
novel’s first sentence and recurs throughout the film, faithfully quoting the
180 Silke Horstkotte

narrative usually one or two sentences at a time. Indirect speech and repre-
sentation of thought in the novel are sometimes translated into dialogue in
the film, but on the whole, the film is very faithful to the novel’s original
text, with Kafka’s language creating an estranging effect when combined
with the semi-contemporary visual setting. VO narration usually bridges
passages with little or no dialogue. Sometimes, however, VO also overlays
spoken dialogue and in one central scene entirely disrupts the cinematic nar-
ration. This concerns K.’s first love scene with Frieda on the floor of the
“Bridge Inn” (“Brückenhof”), which is rendered exclusively in VO narration
with almost no visual support—what is shown is not the couple making
love, but only a still image of Klamm’s illuminated window (one of the castle
bureaucrats residing at the inn).
Like the fragmentary novel, the film ends abruptly. In fact, Michael
Haneke was probably drawn to this fragmentary novel because of his own
“fragmentary aesthetics” (Metelmann 2003: 35). However, the visual compo-
sition closes with a repetition of K. walking through the snow that is at odds
with the VO narration describing a scene in one of the villagers’ houses.
Indeed, film scholar Jörg Metelmann points out that the “obvious and clearly
audible separation of sound and image” is frequently used in Haneke’s “aes-
thetics of deviation” as a “means of criticizing the characters and their ac-
tions” (2003: 154-156, my translation). In this and other aspects Haneke is
closely influenced by Brecht (Metelmann 2003: 156), a heritage which also
accounts for his visual similarities to Marthaler and Viebrock. Haneke’s ex-
plicit refusal to psychologically motivate his characters’ actions, which de-
rives from Brecht’s concept of epic theater (Metelmann 2003: 159), could
also account for his lack of attention to the focalizing FID passages in
Kafka’s novel.
The film’s VO narration mostly concerns those passages of the novel
that are not focalized (zero focalization, the narrator knows more than the
characters). Sometimes, the VO refers to K.’s auditory impressions, but
rarely to his visual perception. The novel’s many instances of FID, especially
the passages interpreting letters that are so central to the relation between
narration and focalization, are left out entirely. The film’s use of VO, then, is
not concerned with focalization, but with narration, and the other possible
techniques for rendering focalization described by Branigan and Andringa et
al.—POV shot, sound and lighting, and the insertion of image sequences
rendering thought—are also left unexploited. Ulrich Mühe’s deadpan acting
does not allow for the mimicking of point of view; the film’s sound and
lighting function as part of a Brechtian aesthetic which creates the furthest
possible distance between the audience and characters; no image sequences
occur. An alternative possible source of focalization is the focus on K. cre-
ated by the systematic use of shot/countershot between K. and his visual
 Visual Narratology and Focalization 181

field. This may suggest some limited degree of internal focalization; surpris-
ingly, however, the castle is never shown in the film and its description is not
quoted in the VO narration. Focalization as a means of psychological insight
is thus switched off, and the psychologically or psychoanalytically motivated
conflict between K. and the castle is diminished. The limited use of internal
focalization is restricted to rendering literal point of view, and a small por-
tion of K.’s view at that, with the looming castle cut out completely.

4. Robert Walser’s Institute Benjamenta:

Feigned Narration and the Reality of Dreams

Where Kafka’s Castle combined an impersonal, covert, heterodiegetic narra-

tor with a fixed internal focalization, Robert Walser’s Institute Benjamenta,
written thirteen years earlier, is relayed by an overt homodiegetic narrator,
the novel’s eponymous protagonist who is supposed to have written this
novel in diary style. No independent focalization can be detected in the
novel. This raises the thorny problem of whether narrators can (theoretically,
narratologically) be focalizers. Answers to this question that have so far been
suggested range from Patrick O’Neill’s claim that “the narrator is always a focal-
izer, having no choice whether to focalize or not […] only how to do so”
(O’Neill 1994: 90), through James Phelan’s more moderate assertion that
“narrators can be focalizers” (Phelan 2001), to Seymour Chatman’s and Ge-
rald Prince’s vehement denial: “the narrator—even an intradiegetic and homo-
diegetic one […]—is never a focalizer” because “s/he is never part of the diege-
sis she presents […] s/he is an element of discourse and not story […] whereas
focalization is an element of the latter” (Prince 2001: 46; see Chatman 1990:
144-145).
However, while the distinction between narration and focalization is
sound in theory, my analysis will show that it is not always easy to uphold in
an analysis. Narrator and focalizer are messily intertwined especially in intra-
diegetic-homodiegetic narrative (as indeed Prince’s own assertion above sug-
gests). For instance, Prince’s absolute distinction between story and dis-
course fails to take into account the specifics of retrospective narrative, in
which the same character can function as a character in the story (in the
past), and as the narrator, i. e. producer of discourse, in the present. This
means that a narrator (in the present) may rely on his own focalization (in
the past) (see Phelan 2001: 53). In fact, Seymour Chatman points out that
“[the] homodiegetic or first-person narrator did see the events and objects at
an earlier moment in the story, but his recountal is after the fact and thus a
matter of memory, not of perception” (1990: 144-145). In retrospective
homodiegetic narrative, therefore, narrator and focalizer, while functionally
182 Silke Horstkotte

distinct, coincide in the same person. The same may, however, also be true
of non-retrospective homodiegetic narrative, for example in introspective
diary writing, where the writer may rely on his or her own focalization at a
time close to, or sometimes coinciding with, the time of writing. Phelan con-
cludes that a human narrator “cannot report a coherent sequence of events
without also revealing his or her perception of those events” (2001: 57); I
shall take this assertion as a starting point for my discussion of focalization
and narration in Institute Benjamenta. A second point to bear in mind when we
turn to Walser’s novel in diary format is James Phelan’s reminder that treat-
ing narrators as potential focalizers enables us to think about an important
aspect of narration, namely “the self-consciousness of the narrator” (ibid.:
52). Clearly, the presentation of self-consciousness is central to diary writing,
and I will therefore attempt to clarify the different aspects of narration and
of focalization involved in it.
The extremely rudimentary plot of Institute Benjamenta can be summarized
in few words. The novel is set in Benjamenta’s Boys’ School, a school for
aspiring domestics in which nothing is taught, where the teachers sleep as if
petrified all day and the students waste whole days smoking in bed. Almost
the only activity at the school is the pupils’ constant spying on each other
and on their teachers; occasionally the protagonist takes strolls through the
unnamed modern metropolis where the novel is set (presumably Berlin), a
city that overwhelms the spectator with its manifold impressions. A position
as a servant, for which the school is supposed to prepare Jakob and which
Mr Benjamenta repeatedly promises him, never materializes. When Miss
Benjamenta, the school principal’s sister, dies, all the pupils are suddenly
given positions; only Jakob remains behind as a traveling companion for Mr
Benjamenta.
Like K. in The Castle, Jakob is a non-entity, possessed by a need to com-
pletely efface himself. As Rochelle Tobias explains, Walser’s protagonists are
generally “incapable of forming attachments or returning the affection di-
rected at them since they have no defining traits save that they mirror the
characters they meet” (Tobias 2006: 293). The enigmatic setting in Benja-
menta’s school thus mirrors the impenetrable character of the protagonist-
narrator. As a result, Jakob’s diary focuses less on Jakob’s own personal de-
velopment than on his relationships with other characters: on his interactions
with the Institute’s reclusive director, which has distinctly homoerotic under-
tones (e. g. Walser 1995: 87f./Walser 1985: 105), his budding love affair with
the director’s sister, Lisa (ibid.: 99f./120), and his relations with Kraus, the
institute’s model student who serves not only as Jakob’s antithesis or an-
tagonist in his love affair with Lisa Benjamenta, but also as a kind of doppel-
ganger (see Grenz 1974: 141-142; Greven 1978: 173; Tobias 2006: 299).
 Visual Narratology and Focalization 183

The almost complete lack of plot is compensated by Jakob’s rich inner

life, which produces dreams and fantasies that are increasingly disconnected
from reality. Jakob often likens his surroundings to fairytales or biblical sto-
ries. Some of these comparisons are simple fantasies of wish fulfillment,
such as his extended and repeated reflections on what he would do if he
were rich: “I would like to be rich, to ride in coaches and squander money.”
(Walser 1995: 5) 15 Besides their obvious motivation as wish fulfillment, how-
F F

ever, Jakob’s fantasies about being rich (see also Walser 1995: 61-63 /
Walser 1985: 75-77), or about being a war lord in the year 1400 (Walser
1995: 108-110), also serve the function of creating an alternative reality to
the boredom and frustration that characterize student life at the Institute. In
contrast to the wealth fantasies, which are usually narrated in the subjunctive,
the warlord story—although initially designated “imaginings” (90)—is ren-
dered in the indicative, and it is interesting to dwell a little on the function of
focalization in this extended fantasy. Jakob’s impressions of the dealings he
has with his generals are rich in detail and frequently refer to sense percep-
tions, which makes the reader temporarily forget the different ontological
status of these descriptions from those relating to his fellow students. While
the beginning and end of the passage foreground Jakob in his narratorial
role—with comments on the unreal status of his imaginations—the central
part of the sequence, therefore, highlights his role as a focalizer, and one
with a highly imaginative and speculative perception of his surroundings. To
be sure, Jakob is still the agent relating these fantasies and impressions. But if
we treat focalization as an interpretative rather than a textual category, there
are good reasons why we should experience Jakob more as a focalizer and
less as a narrator, and these have to do with his complete lack of agency in
his own fate. Not only does he consistently confuse dream and reality, he
also lacks insight and understanding of his own inner life, thereby becoming
“a mystery to myself” (5).
The most extended of Jakob’s dream sequences, and the one where
dream and reality most intermix, is the night scene in the darkened class-
room (81-85/97-103), in which he experiences being led by Miss Benjamenta
through “the vaults of poverty and deprivation” (83; “Gänge des Not-
Leidens und der furchtbaren Entbehrung”, 100) into the inner chambers of
the Institute, where the Benjamenta siblings reside and which only Kraus has
previously been allowed to penetrate. In contrast to Jakob’s impressions of
the metropolis and to his fantasies about being rich, this sequence is also
rendered in the indicative. However, Jakob stresses at the beginning that the
experience was “incomprehensible” and a “myster[y]” (81) and later sees it
dissolving into a “gluey and most unpleasant river of doubt” (85). After the

15 “Ich möchte gern reich sein, in Droschken fahren und Gelder verschwenden.” (Walser 1985: 7)
184 Silke Horstkotte

girl has disappeared, Jakob concludes that she was “the enchantress who had
conjured up all these visions and states” (ibid.). Afterwards, he expresses
regret over having given in to “wanton pleasures of easefulness” (ibid.;
“lüsterne Bequemlichkeit”, 103), belatedly suggesting that the dreamlike se-
quence may have been motivated by sexual desire for Miss Benjamenta. As
Rochelle Tobias correctly remarks, “[each] room is the translation of an alle-
gorical figure; each represents a particular phrase or mood as a physical envi-
ronment” (Tobias 2006: 302), and this suggests that the rooms materialize
Jakob’s feelings and emotions. Alternatively, however, the inner chambers
could equally be manifesting the Fräulein’s words, as Tobias also suggests
when she says: “Throughout the episode, the phrases that Fräulein Benja-
menta utters appear as diverse settings.” (Tobias 2006: 303) Because of its
dream logic, the passage lends itself to psychoanalytic interpretations focus-
ing either on Jakob’s attachment to the Benjamentas or on the use of birth
metaphors (see Tobias 2006: 304).
In this and other passages, Jakob functions as a narrator insofar as he is
the transmitting agent of the narrative, but since what he transmits is almost
exclusively concerned with dreams and fantasies, it would appear difficult if
not impossible to separate the two acts of narrating and focalizing. Indeed,
different aspects of narration and focalization constantly blend into one an-
other, with Jakob expressing doubts about what sort of perception he is de-
scribing: Is he reporting on the state of affairs in the Institute Benjamenta,
for instance, or are these rather memories from the prep school he attended
in his home town? It is, moreover, not at all clear whether Jakob is here re-
porting an earlier perception, or whether the styling of sense impressions as
dreams and fairytales does not occur in the act of composing his diary, in
which case it would belong to the order of narration. We might, then, turn
once again to Manfred Jahn’s suggestion that there are different “windows of
focalization” in the house of fiction and describe Jakob’s role as that of a
narratorial (rather than reflector-mode) focalizer (Jahn 1996: 256-7). Or we
could employ James Phelan’s (2001) terminology and describe Institute Benja-
menta as a combination of two types of narration: narrator’s focalization and
voice, and character’s focalization and narrator’s voice (with ‘character’ refer-
ring to Jakob-as-experiencer, and ‘narrator’ to Jakob the diary-writer).
Phelan’s proposal has the advantage of enabling us to differentiate be-
tween Jakob as a character and Jakob as a diary writer. As Manfred Jahn has
pointed out, Genette’s question “who speaks?” inadequately captures the
narratorial function because it buries the narratologically relevant distinction
between speaker and writer (and thinker, in interior monologue) (Jahn 1996:
246). Jakob, of course, poses as a diary writer; the novel’s subtitle designates
it as a diary, and Jakob’s narration relies heavily on irony and word play,
thereby calling attention to the diary’s composition (Tobias 2006: 299).
 Visual Narratology and Focalization 185

However, a number of discrepancies raise suspicions that the book cannot

really be a diary, and have led to the novel’s interpretation as a feigned diary
(Gößling 1992: 170-179; Tobias 2006: 301-302). Among these are the intri-
cate structure with its repetition of leitmotifs and intertextual allusions to
Grimm’s fairytales and to biblical stories, and the fact that the diarist explic-
itly addresses such compositional aspects, for example when he writes
“Once again I must go back to the very beginning, to the first day.” (24; “Ich
muß noch einmal ganz zum Anfang zurückkehren”, 29). Furthermore, the
diarist seems to possess an overview over the unfolding of the story, includ-
ing events occurring later in the book, as when he writes “I shall have much
to say about Kraus.” (20; “Von Kraus werde ich sehr viel reden müssen”,
25).
Finally, these two statements suggest that Jakob is directing his diary
writing at an addressee other than himself—that he imagines, in other words,
a reader for his journal. Indeed, he frequently addresses a reader and specu-
lates how that reader will respond to his writing: “I must now report a matter
which will perhaps raise a few doubts.” (43; “Ich muß jetzt etwas berichten,
was vielleicht einigen Zweifel erregt”, 53), or he even uses direct forms of
address: “I’m gabbling somewhat again, aren’t I?” (87; “Ich schwatze wieder
ein wenig, nicht wahr?”, 105).
In light of these metaleptic deviations from the fiction of diary writing,
Rochelle Tobias has proposed reading the novel as a double fiction “in
which the diary of a student is enclosed within the diary of another person
bearing the same name as him” (Tobias 2006: 301). Tobias posits that this
makes Jakob simultaneously a homo- and a heterodiegetic narrator—a logi-
cal impossibility, because the two are ontologically incompatible positions. If
the diary is feigned, however, then why should we assume that it contains a
reliable narration? It makes much more sense to assume an unreliable
homodiegetic-extradiegetic narrator who fantasizes about attending a school
for domestics and produces a fake diary about these fantasies. In this inter-
pretation, there would be no character called Jakob, only a narrator who
produces a hypothetical narrative including a narratorial focalization of these
hypothetical events and their hypothetical perception. 16 —But how can such
F F

a mind-bogglingly complex interweaving of narration and focalization ever

be translated into a feature film, and how have the film-makers interpreted
the novel’s juggling of dream and reality?

16 I use “hypothetical narration” in analogy to David Herman’s proposal of a “hypothetical focal-

ization” (Herman 2002: 303).
186 Silke Horstkotte

5. Focalization and Visual Distortion in

Institute Benjamenta or This Dream People Call Human Life

A novel without a plot, narrated by a protagonist with no defining personal-

ity, would in any case seem an odd choice for a film adaptation, but espe-
cially for a first feature film. However, the twin directors of Institute Benja-
menta or This Dream People Call Human Life, the brothers Stephen and Timothy
Quay, are known for their avant-garde films which consistently and system-
atically subvert normal viewing conventions. Indeed, the Quays seem to have
been drawn to the novel’s anti-narrative aspects, for the film focuses on the
dreaminess and ephemerality of Jakob’s sense impressions and on his rela-
tionships with other characters inside Benjamenta’s school, while the many
scenes where Jakob leaves the Institute and describes his impressions of
busy life in the modern metropolis are left out altogether. Without the realis-
tic elements of urban life to balance it off, the school interior merges seam-
lessly into a surreal or fantastic space. This fantastic interpretation of the
novel is supported through an anachronistic film aesthetic referring back to
the expressionist films of the 1920s, with the choice of black and white, the
exaggerated and pathos-laden gestures of the actors and the hints at inter-
and subtitles evoking the silent film of the 1910s and 20s. The film also inte-
grates elements from puppet and shadow theater and from animation film.
Through its recurrent use of self-reflective techniques and its highly un-
usual aesthetic, which is far removed from audience expectations gleaned
from realistic Hollywood movies, Institute Benjamenta self-consciously fore-
grounds the presence of a cinematic narrator. How, then, is Jakob’s dream-
like focalization conveyed in the film, and how does it relate to the cinematic
narrator? The first thing the spectator notices is that the fairytale world,
which Jakob experienced mainly in the metropolitan street life in the novel
and which was often characterized as unreal through the use of “as if” and
subjunctive clauses, now enters the school and is visualized as the intrusion
of a Grimm’s fairytale forest into the house. The reality status of this intru-
sion is much less certain than in the novel, where it is clearly marked as fan-
tasy or metaphor. Is the novel’s use of focalization—Jakob’s subjective per-
ception—translated, then, into narration (of a fictive reality)? I think not: the
fairytale forest retains a recognizable fantastic dimension. So it remains open
to interpretation whether the fairytale actually enters the house or whether
this is a result of Jakob’s distorted perception. For Jakob is either alone in
these scenes, so that his vision cannot be challenged by other characters, or
else he is together with Lisa Benjamenta, the object of his desire. But his
impressions are never intersubjectively confirmed by other students. It is
 Visual Narratology and Focalization 187

therefore impossible to ascertain whether the setting is supposed to be realis-

tic or whether it constitutes a visualization of Jakob’s thoughts and fanta-
sies—what Seymour Chatman has referred to as a “mindscreen” effect
(1990: 159). Thus, the mise-en-scène of those scenes where Jakob is alone in
front of the camera could constitute an effect of focalization.
The disorientation created by the film’s enigmatic visual setting and use
of chiaroscuro effects is heightened through visual distortions created by
filming through a goldfish glass or through uneven window panes. The
film’s foregrounding of setting, décor and props, with great attention to the
marginal, combines with an improvisational style that owes more to a sense
of musical rhythm than to the chronological unfolding of narrative. The
brothers Quay explain:
We demand that the decors act as poetic vessels […] . As for what is called the sce-
nario: at most we have only a limited musical sense of its trajectory, and we tend to
be permanently open to vast uncertainties, mistakes, disorientations as though lying
in wait to trap the slightest fugitive “encounter.” (quoted in Buchan 1998: 7)
This lack of narrative embedding leaves the interpretation of the film’s visual
style open to the viewer. As Suzanne Buchan writes in an article about the
Quay brothers’ work: “Unencumbered by narrative, the viewer can descend
to various levels of bewilderment or enchantment.” (Buchan 1998: 4) Bu-
chan has named several techniques which the brothers use in order to dis-
turb the viewer’s experience of continuous space, especially the use of macro
lenses “which provide virtually no depth of field” or their landmark “fast
pan shift” or rapid camera movement within a continuous diegetic space,
which results in a flicker effect suggestive of spatial fluidity (ibid.: 9). More-
over, their use of “retroactive cutting,” i. e. cutting from a close-up view to a
more distant camera angle, reverses “expository conventions of narrative
continuity editing” and therefore also serves to strengthen the films’ non-
narrative aspects and to disorient viewers’ expectations (ibid.).
Where Walser’s novel played with the tension between the reality of met-
ropolitan life and Jakob’s dreamlike perception of it, and opposed the famil-
iar milieu of the modern metropolis with the strange setting inside Benja-
menta’s school, the film systematically cuts any ties to the viewer’s reality and
rigidly limits information about the strange, fantastic setting. This makes it
very difficult for viewers to formulate expectations about what is going to
happen and to make interpretative decisions about the status of what they
are seeing.
However, the viewer’s understanding is helped by the film’s fixed inter-
nal focalization through Jakob, whose perception of events remains a con-
stant point of reference. Frequently, Jakob’s role as focalizer is indicated
through POV shots which show him seeing something, often through the
use of optical devices, through windows, keyholes and the like. This might
188 Silke Horstkotte

lead us to conclude that other distorted views are also an effect of Jakob’s
focalization rather than of (cinematic) narration.
That Jakob functions as the film’s internal focalizer is also suggested by
the film’s use of VO. As in Haneke’s adaptation of The Castle, the VO pas-
sages in Institute Benjamenta are verbatim quotations from the novel. Unlike
the impersonal VO narration in Haneke’s film, however, the VO in Institute
Benjamenta is clearly attributable to the central character, Jakob: although the
words are spoken from the off, the camera circles around Jakob—an unusual
form of POV shot which suggests that he is to be identified as the source of
these words. However, the viewer does not at the same time see Jakob’s
mouth speaking these words. This creates the impression that the VO ex-
presses Jakob’s thoughts and is therefore an effect of focalization, whereas
the VO’s source—the written diary in Walser’s novel—belongs, of course, to
the order of narration.
Institute Benjamenta, then, expresses focalization in a number of ways, in-
cluding POV shot, VO, and the use of mindscreen sequences. However,
what does and does not constitute focalization in this film is in effect an
interpretative decision, as evidenced by the fact that the fairytale forest
scenes which I have read as mindscreen sequences (and therefore as focaliza-
tions) have been interpreted as the depiction of a strange parallel world in
the fantasy genre (and thus as narration) by most of the film’s reviewers.

6. Conclusion

Various assumptions circulate around the possible relations between narra-

tion and focalization. By comparing two internally focalized literary narra-
tives, I have shown that there is a fairly straightforward distinction between
narration and focalization in heterodiegetic narrative, but that such a distinc-
tion is considerably more difficult to draw in homodiegetic narrative. Much
of this difficulty rests on the fact that the distinction between the two agents
is not a property of the text but constitutes an interpretation of the reader’s,
with different texts leaving more or less scope for such interpretation. In
Kafka’s Castle, I have identified strong and prominently placed clues that the
narrator’s window of focalization (which includes a description of the castle)
is distinct from that of the focal character, K. (who cannot see the castle and
is later surprised to hear of its existence). From the beginning of the novel,
then, readers are made aware of K.’s limited perspective; in later parts of the
novel, the narrator’s verbatim quotation of the letters K. receives is not rec-
oncilable with K.’s interpretation of these letters, suggesting that K. is to be
regarded as an unreliable focalizer ironically presented by the narrator.
 Visual Narratology and Focalization 189

Walser’s Institute Benjamenta leaves a considerably wider scope for inter-

preting the relation between narration and focalization, as evidenced by the
divergent readings given by Walser scholars, which themselves depend con-
siderably on the concept of focalization employed. My own interpretation of
Jakob is that of an unreliable homodiegetic-extradiegetic narrator who fanta-
sizes about attending a school for domestics and produces a fake diary about
these fantasies. According to this reading, there is no character called Jakob,
only a narrator who produces a hypothetical narrative including a narratorial
focalization of a series of hypothetical events and their hypothetical percep-
tion. In both novels, character focalization (in Institute Benjamenta, hypotheti-
cal character focalization) is embedded in a higher-order, narratorial (window
of) focalization, suggesting that focalizers cannot be narrative agents on a par
with narrators, since focalization is always to some extent intermingled with,
and dependent on, narration.
In an article entitled “Narrative Theory and/or/as Theory of Interpreta-
tion,” Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller (2003: 215) have argued that
narratology may serve as a heuristic for the interpretation of narrative texts if
it is neutral with regard to the interpretative framework, i. e. if it is usable in
conjunction with various approaches to interpretation. 17 However, if narra-
F F

tological concepts such as focalization and narration do not objectively de-

scribe narrative texts, but are themselves always already interpretations, they
cannot then provide a neutral basis for interpretation. This means that we
have to account for the construction of narrative agents by real readers
(rather than ideal or implied readers) much more closely than most narra-
tological frameworks have done to date. One notable exception is the theory
of psychonarratology proffered by Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon (2003:
2), who argue “that the forms of narrative discourse are only meaningful
when understood in the context of their reception” and that the narrator, as
well as other narrative agents, must be viewed as a reader construction (ibid.:
72).
The interpretative nature of narratological concepts becomes even more
obvious when employed in the context of film narrative, since narration as
well as focalization has to be inferred by film spectators to a greater degree
than by readers of literary narratives. Moreover, both concepts invariably
undergo great changes when applied to film. Whereas the narrator serves as
a source of spoken or written utterance—often, if not always, of an anthro-
pomorphized nature—in literary narrative, no single, unified or self-identical
source of utterance can be identified in film narrative. The concept of a
“cinematic narrator” remains a highly abstract construction that can never
coincide with any one character in the manner of homodiegetic literary nar-

17 See also Tom Kindt’s article in this volume.

190 Silke Horstkotte

rative. The identification of a film focalizer is, if anything, even more specu-
lative. The camera does not usually represent the visual perspective of a focal
character but that of the cinematic narrator; nor does film easily lend itself to
the representation of cognitive processes. So-called POV shots, which show
a focal character thinking or perceiving something, may be understood as
either narration or focalization. The use of VO, which has been suggested as
another source of focalization, remains at best an auxiliary construction and
one that can, again, be constructed either as narration or as focalization. Not
only is the identification of narrative agents in film narratives an interpreta-
tive act, it also has far-ranging consequences for how the fictional world is
interpreted. Thus, depending on whether we understand the POV shots in
Institute Benjamenta as narration or focalization, the fairytale forest can be as-
signed two ontologically distinct interpretations, either as a real forest in a
fantasy setting, or as Jakob’s subjective imagination within a more realistic
setting.
The application of narratological concepts to film thus remains some-
what speculative. Furthermore, it bears repeating that terms like ‘narration’
and ‘focalization’ describe distinctly different phenomena in film and in tex-
tual narrative. The great differences between literary and film narration and
focalization suggest that narratological concepts are not neutral categories,
but media-dependent; as Fotis Jannidis (2003: 50) has written, “narrative
should always be treated as something anchored in a medium,” making ‘nar-
ratology’ “a collective term for a series of specialized narratologies and not a
self-sufficient metascience of its own”.

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