Ambiguity and Film Criticism - Reasonable Doubt

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Ambiguity and
Film Criticism
Reasonable Doubt
Hoi Lun Law
Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television
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Hoi Lun Law
Ambiguity and Film

Criticism
Reasonable Doubt
Hoi Lun Law
Bristol, UK
ISSN 2634-6133 ISSN 2634-6141 (electronic)

Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television
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Acknowledgements
Looking back at the path I’ve travelled, I appreciate all the help and kind-
ness I encountered along the way. My special thanks go to Alex Clayton,
who has patiently guided me to rediscover and reflect on what I mean by
what I say during my doctoral research. I was told “Alex can teach you
things” before commencing the degree. What I learned over the years
working with him has made this book possible. My ongoing conversations
with Dominic Lash have not only informed the arguments of this volume
but also enriched my understanding of film and film aesthetics. Most
importantly, we share the acquired taste in sour beers! Catherine Grant has
been a great mentor and (later also) a dear friend ever since I came to her
office to discuss film theory in late 2010. Her generosity is legendary. And
surely, I am not the only one who thinks Katie is a magnificent human
being as well as a wonderful educator. Adrian Martin has been extremely
supportive of this project since the early stage. Pointing out a notable
omission in my arguments, his erudite comments helped refine my claims.
Andrew Klevan (who, by the way, made the aforementioned remark about
Alex) gave an unpolished draft of Chap. 2 the kind of sustained critical
engagement (and critique) that I’ve always wanted for my work. Part of
Chap. 6 was presented as a paper at Screen conference 2016 and benefited
from Chris Keathley’s keen eye (in this specific case, ear) for detail. Jacob
Leigh and Kristian Moen were attentive and discerning as the examiners
of my doctoral thesis. Pete Falconer (half-jokingly?) said his role as my
second PhD supervisor was to not get in my way. But I knew very well—
and he made sure of it—that he was available if I ever needed his aid.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Whenever I talk to James MacDowell, not least about ambiguity, I profit

from his lucidity of thought. Elliott Logan and Murray Pomerance prof-
fered heartfelt words of encouragement when they were most needed,
during that exhilarating yet trying final stretch of writing. I am glad to
have John Gibbs and Doug Pye, who are sympathetic to my critical
approach and temperament, as the series editors of this title. At Palgrave
Macmillan, Emily Wood had provided excellent editorial assistance. It is
my pleasure to be friends with Hanna Kubicka (with whom I enjoyed
many intellectual and not-so-intellectual conservations), Ali Rasooli-Nejad
(whose enthusiasm about “movie masterpieces” is galvanising), and
Jordan Schonig (whose perceptiveness never fails to bring clarity and
rigour to a discussion). Thank you to Lara Perski for being my travel com-
panion throughout this difficult but rewarding path. I will always remem-
ber the time when we had walked such a path and found ourselves “stuck”
on a hilltop. The trail down was steep and narrow, frighteningly treacher-
ous. What to do? We braved the adverse uncertainty together. My greatest
gratitude goes to my parents and my sister, who are always there for me.
This book is for those who are attuned to the teachings of doubt.
Contents
1 Introduction: Why Is It as It Is? 1
Part I Pursuits of Reasons 23
2 Difficulty of Reading 25
3 Perplexity of Style 49
4 Depth of Suggestion 87
Part II Drama of Doubt 113
5 Uncertainty of Viewpoint115
6 Threat of Insignificance149
7 Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt175
Index183
vii
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) 26

Fig. 3.1 Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002) 61
Fig. 4.1 In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) 89
Fig. 5.1 Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) 120
Fig. 6.1 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956) 150
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Why Is It as It Is?
In spite of its wide currency in film scholarship, criticism, and everyday

conversation, ambiguity has not been systematically developed as an aes-
thetic concept for the medium of film. It has received considerable atten-
tion in discussions of “art cinema” and “modern cinema”, which often
assert the significance of ambiguity in these modes of filmmaking without
unpacking its implications (see Armes 1976; Bordwell 2008; Self 1979).
And when the concept is studied in detail, it is typically in reference to
André Bazin’s phenomenological understanding of cinematic realism (see
Andrew 1973; Carruthers 2017). As a result, there is room in critical lit-
erature for an exploration of ambiguity across diverse film styles. What
would such an account involve? A main task of this book is to offer a useful
framework to appreciate the variegated manifestations of ambiguity
in movies.
What Makes Ambiguity Ambiguous?

Perhaps one reason why ambiguity is understudied, habitually taken for
granted, has to do with its ironically unambiguous standard definition.
Dictionaries define ambiguity as the characteristic of what bears multiple
meanings. This is arguably how the term is ordinarily understood too. The
straightforward definition seems sufficient in itself, not only detailed
enough as a description of what ambiguity entails but also capable of
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
H. L. Law, Ambiguity and Film Criticism, Palgrave Close Readings
in Film and Television,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_1
2 H. L. LAW
covering a variety of instances and situations. It particularly speaks to a

kind of ambiguity that prevails in everyday life—the ambiguity of lan-
guage, meaning that words can possess more than one semantic connota-
tion. The linguistic view has a great purchase on how ambiguity is perceived
in the realm of the arts. A Glossary of Literary Terms, for example, refers to
ambiguity as “the use of a single word or expression to signify two or more
distinct references, or to express two or more diverse attitudes or feelings”
(Abrams and Harpham 2009, 12). And a similar assumption of ambiguity
as a matter of sign and signification prompts David Bordwell to proclaim
“[w]hat was ‘ambiguity’ in New Criticism could become ‘polysemy’”
(1989, 99). It is evident that something is missing, if not amiss, in these
views; it feels flattening and schematic to equate ambiguity to the plurality
of suggestions. Such an understanding, we want to say, fails to appreciate
what makes ambiguity ambiguous.
This issue is touched upon in William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity
(1961 [1930]), a seminal work of New Criticism that is also the most
influential account of ambiguity as an aesthetic concept (specifically in
poetry). In his preface to the second edition of the book, Empson sug-
gests that puns would not be typically considered ambiguous, even though
they manage to say two things simultaneously, “because there is no room
for puzzling”. Instead, they result in “conciseness” (x). Throughout Seven
Types, the feeling of puzzlement is frequently cited as something like ambi-
guity’s defining effect. This crucial point, insisted by Empson, allows us to
see why the semiotic notion of polysemy, as “literally, many ‘semes’ or
meanings” (Stam et al. 1992, 30), should not be taken as synonymous to
ambiguity. In fact, polysemy cannot be more different from how New
Critics, especially Empson, understand ambiguity. Not necessarily puz-
zling, the polysemic harbours aesthetic possibilities that are dissimilar from
that of ambiguity. Most importantly, to call something polysemic does not
entail an act of evaluation like calling something ambiguous often feels to
involve. Indeed, the legacy of Seven Types lies less in the categories it pro-
poses—which are almost impossible to memorise and liable to be mecha-
nistically applied—but in its establishment of ambiguity as a value (as
opposed to an “objective” condition). It has become difficult nowadays to
talk about ambiguity without also evoking a sense of aesthetic judgement.
For Empson, what makes ambiguity ambiguous—what activates our
puzzlement—is the relationship between the different interpretations. His
typology of ambiguity is a typology of such relationships, which include,
for example, conflation (the second type), confusion (the fifth type), and
1 INTRODUCTION: WHY IS IT AS IT IS? 3
contradiction (the seventh type). He likens these diverse relationships

between meanings to different “forces” that “hold together a variety of
ideas” (1961, 235).1 If the standard definition of ambiguity stresses its
condition of multiple readings (as in Abrams and Harpham), Empson
reminds us that these readings, however incompatible or clear-cut they
may seem, are by definition connected, in the sense that they stem from
the same origin; that is, however we define it, ambiguity concerns the pos-
sibilities of the many in what is one. To show the nature of an ambiguity,
Empson suggests, it is not enough to simply unpack its “ideas”, we further
have to work out the relations between these ideas, showing “the nature
of the forces which are adequate to hold it together” (ibid.).
This study explores ambiguity as an aesthetic concept for film by
rethinking its standard definition, seeing it as more than the availability of
multiple meanings. Like Empson, I do so by paying attention to the
“forces” that hold an ambiguity together, observing what is ambiguous as
an interlacing weave of suggestions. But this book will not “translate” his
understandings into the context of cinema. Nor am I interested in cate-
gorising ambiguity. On the contrary, it is my aim to engage with ambigu-
ity in its specific instances, exploring their singularities. And that should in
turn allow me to identify some key or recurring characteristics of the con-
cept. One such important feature, as Empson helpfully points out, is the
aesthetic reaction of puzzlement. Throughout this book, I will typically
refer to this reaction as uncertainty or doubt, for they better capture the
sense of interpretative suspense that my account pivots upon. We shall see
how uncertainty and doubt are integral to the aesthetics of ambiguity.
Two Senses of Ambiguity

This study is entitled Ambiguity and Film Criticism not because it charts
the development of the concept in film criticism. Rather, it probes the
relationship between the concept and criticism, exploring the possibilities
of ambiguity by examining the challenges it poses to film analysis. As a
result, readers will not find an interdisciplinary approach to the concept in
the following pages, yet discussions of ambiguity (and its attendant ideas)
in other arts will be cited when appropriate (ambiguity in art and photog-
raphy is discussed in, for example, Elkins 1999; Franklin 2020; and
Gamboni 2002). However, my distinct focus is not an assertion of medium
specificity. It is instead an effort to flesh out several productive ways of
addressing and appreciating ambiguity that are already available in film
4 H. L. LAW
criticism, worthy of highlighting or rediscovering, even though they may

not explicitly concern the concept. One purpose of this book is to re-
evaluate what film criticism has taught us about how to think and write
about ambiguity. (It is worth pointing out that the general framework I
develop here—based on the dynamic of “question-and-answer”, as we will
see later—can be in fact revised to explore ambiguity in other artistic
mediums.) Now, it is useful to survey two prominent senses in which
ambiguity is typically understood in relation to film.
Interpretative “Freedom”
Given ambiguity’s connotations of multiplicity and uncertainty, it seems
intuitive to speak of it as a feature of reality. It is therefore not surprising
that the concept has been taken as a hallmark of cinematic realism. And
this particular view of realist aesthetics is the critical legacy of André Bazin.
Situating the critic in his contemporary intellectual milieu, Dudley Andrew
takes note of the influence of phenomenology on Bazin’s thoughts:
Bazin would be obliged to say that the real exists only as perceived, that situ-
ations can be said to exist only when a consciousness is engaged with some-
thing other than itself. In this view reality is not a completed sphere the
mind encounters, but an “emerging-something” which the mind essentially
participates in. Here the notion of ambiguity is a central attribute of the real.
(1973, 64)
For Bazin, as Andrew points out, our perception interacts with and com-
pletes the world. Ambiguity, therefore, also needs to be understood in
light of this situation. Specifically, it means that ambiguity is not an “objec-
tive” feature but an attribute of our negotiation with what we perceive as
reality. Reality is ambiguous not because it is inherently plural in meaning
but because its meaning is equally like an “emerging-something”, only
made available through our ongoing exchange with the world. This is also
why each of us sees reality differently. We can say that ambiguity is the
condition that enables our distinctive understandings.
Rather than the recording of unadorned reality, Bazin’s realism involves
the reproduction of the condition of ambiguity in movies. And this condi-
tion, in the medium of film, becomes an insistence on the viewer’s “auton-
omy” of reading. This is put into sharp relief by Bazin’s provocative claim:
“[e]diting, by its very nature, is fundamentally opposed to ambiguity”
(2009, 101). Note that by “editing”, Bazin means specifically analytical

editing such as the conventions of the shot/reverse-shot and the point-of-
view shot.2 Dissecting a scene into dramatic units and reassembling them
into a chain of actions, this type of edits imposes a specific course of under-
standing. As a result, there is little leeway for the audience’s perceptual and
interpretive exploration.
In this way, analytical editing is the opposite of deep focus cinematog-
raphy, a technique that Bazin famously champions because it “re-introduces
ambiguity into the structure of the image, if not as a necessity […] at least
as a possibility” (21). Unlike analytical editing, the use of depth-of-field,
by withholding visual emphasis and dramatic priority in a scene, requires
us to work out what is significant, to perform our own reading, exercising
our prerogative of interpretation. The device is capable of reproducing an
involved experience not unlike our perceptual entanglement with reality.
And this achieves what the critic considers “a sound definition of realism
in art: to force the mind to draw its own conclusions about people and
events, instead of manipulating it into accepting someone else’s interpre-
tation” (1997, 123).3 For Bazin, the reproduction of ambiguity is what
allows film to fulfil its promises as a realist medium.4
This study does not intend to pursue a realist account of ambiguity or
explore further Bazin’s phenomenological understanding. But the interac-
tion between screen and spectator that undergirds the critic’s understand-
ing remains a productive way to think of the concept. And this conception
is echoed by other film critics. For example, André S. Labarthe suggests:
Traditional cinema had managed to do away with any possibility of ambigu-

ity by building into every scene and shot what the spectator was meant to
think of it: i.e. its meaning. Taken to its extreme, this kind of cinema did not
need the spectator since he [sic] was already included in the film. (1986, 55)
The remark complements Bazin’s claim about analytical editing, though

also pushing it too far: It is doubtful that a total control of meaning, of the
viewer’s reading, is achievable in film. Interestingly, while Labarthe’s state-
ment shares Bazin’s assumptions about ambiguity, these assumptions are
used against the kind of cinema that the critic argues to be capable of (re)
creating ambiguity—it is in the “tradition cinema” of Orson Welles and
William Wyler that Bazin discovers illuminating uses of depth-of-field.
Labarthe’s remark speaks to ambiguity’s common association with what is
“modern” or “unorthodox” (made clear by book titles such as The
6 H. L. LAW
Ambiguous Image: Narrative Style in Modern European Cinema and

Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art). This
brings us to the second typical understanding of ambiguity.
Analytical Challenge
In critical literature, ambiguity often stands for what is unconventional
and challenging. And this is reflected by its long-established link to “art
cinema”, ever since the emergence of the genre. In an early conceptualisa-
tion of ambiguity in film scholarship, which is also one of the first system-
atic discussions of “art cinema”, David Bordwell (2008 [1979]) defines
the genre by its aesthetic deviations from Classical Hollywood Cinema.
The unfamiliar stylistic devices and the loose narrative causality in “art
films”, Bordwell observes, may be challenging to the viewer, but these
anomalies can be understood in reference to the twin poles of “realism”
and “authorial expressivity”:
Whenever confronted with a problem in causation, temporality, or spatiality,

we first seek realistic motivation. (Is a character’s mental state causing the
uncertainty? Is life just leaving loose ends?) If we’re thwarted, we next seek
authorial motivation. (What is being “said” here? What significance justifies
the violation of the norm?) Ideally, the film hesitates, suggesting character
subjectivity, life’s untidiness, and author’s vision. Whatever is excessive in
one category must belong to another. Uncertainties persist but are under-
stood as such, as obvious uncertainties, so to speak. Put crudely, the slogan
of the art cinema might be, “When in doubt, read for maximum ambigu-
ity”. (156)
In Bordwell’s account, ambiguity seems to mean the uncertainty between

the two types of motivations. And the “ideal” scenario is where this uncer-
tainty is irresolvable, that the detail or device in question is both driven by
artistic and realistic concerns (Chap. 2 will look closely at why explaining
ambiguity in terms of motivation is unproductive). On this view, ambigu-
ity is not what calls for analysis and appreciation in “art films”. Instead, as
the advised strategy of “read[ing] for maximum ambiguity” implies, it is
the “explanation” of “art cinema”. And positing “ambiguity” as the
“goal” of analysis, Bordwell’s “reading procedure” amounts to little more
than flagging up and re-stating a film’s difficulties. This seems to me not
only an unsatisfying account of ambiguity and “art cinema”5 but also an
unhelpful way to construe an analytical approach to ambiguity. In particu-

lar, I maintain that ambiguity is in fact an invitation to our critical account,
which further calls for certain appropriate ways of accounting. We read to
neither “maximise” nor nullify ambiguity but to come to terms with it,
exploring why something is ambiguous in detail and in depth.
Other early literature on “art cinema” liken the films to “puzzles”. For
Robert Self, “[t]he texts of the art cinema exist quite explicitly as puzzles to
be solved by the viewer, but puzzles also constructed to prevent easy solu-
tion” (1979, 77). Writing on what would later become the canon of “art
cinema”, Norman N. Holland sees it as innovative that these “puzzling
movies” “bus[y] us with solving the riddle” (1963, 19). Recently, this film-
as-puzzle analogy is revived by the emerging scholarly interest in “contem-
porary puzzle film”. Mostly consisting of popular and independent movies
from the 1990s, the genre is characterised by its “complex storytelling”,
which usually serves as an expressive means to articulate its themes of con-
fusion or serious philosophical concerns such as schizophrenia and episte-
mological doubt. These films advance an entangled plot that is difficult to
understand and sort out (see Buckland 2009, 2014; Kiss and Willemsen
2017). To call films puzzles is to foreground their analytical difficulties.
If ambiguity marks what is difficult, then it is not only possible but also
productive to explore the concept beyond the genres of “art cinema” and
“puzzle film”, and in relation to narrative fiction movies in general, includ-
ing what Labarthe calls “traditional cinema”, especially due to its exclu-
sion from prevalent considerations of the concept. Attractive as a way of
picturing ambiguity, the “puzzle analogy”, however, seems to me prob-
lematic as a conceptualisation of its difficult nature. In particular, the anal-
ogy envisions the task of criticism, suggested by Self’s and Holland’s
remarks, as one that of “solving” a film’s meaning, as though to reassem-
ble and recover a definitive understanding. According to this view, what is
difficult, as it were, is not a part of the movie’s expression but a hindrance
in need of elimination. A film is ambiguous only because, and as long as,
we haven’t found the solution to it.
It is questionable that there exists an “ultimate solution” to any film.
Moreover, if we are interested in ambiguity as an aesthetic concept, we
would want to investigate its possibility as an achievement, and not con-
ceive it merely as an interpretative complication to be overcome. I take the
dubious premise of the “puzzle analogy” as symptomatic of an unproduc-
tive critical stance that is not uncommon—unfortunately, as we have
seen—in both scholarship and criticism. (Just to be clear: my reservation
8 H. L. LAW
concerns this specific premise and not the phenomenon of the puzzle film,
nor is it directed towards any particular study on the subject.) A chief con-
cern of this book is therefore meta-critical (made explicit by the chosen
title Ambiguity and Film Criticism, instead of what is expected of a project
of this kind: Ambiguity in Film). Throughout the chapters, not only will I
explore prominent features of the concept but I will also examine some
unhelpful assumptions or approaches with regard to the analysis of ambi-
guity. These include the Neoformalist category of “motivation”, the criti-
cal anxiety about “over-interpretation”, and the much-debated divide
between “surface” and “deeper” meanings. Literature on ambiguous
movies is abundant (e.g., there is a plethora of anthologies and journal
articles on “puzzle films” and those who made them). This is time we
attend to our critical practices and methodological procedures. Rising to
this challenge, this book reflects on how we could appropriately under-
stand and assess what is ambiguous. And by doing so, I argue, we further
gain general insights into the nature and operation of film criticism.
Question and Answer

The “puzzle analogy” may be misleading but it has arguably captured an
intuitive way to think about ambiguity. This explains its pervasiveness.
Specifically, ambiguity seems challenging sometimes indeed because we are
not sure how to “answer” it, that its “answer” is unobvious or complex.6
Accordingly, and equally intuitively, we can think of ambiguity as a difficult
or demanding question. There is a sense that ambiguity is what invites our
questions and answers; it sustains both the acts of questioning and answering.
It is not uncommon in everyday life to speak of a film posing questions
or providing answers. And a number of critics have further recognised the
possibility of the question-and-answer structure as a narrative model, such
as Roland Barthes’s theorisation of the “hermeneutic code” (1974) and
Noël Carroll’s account of narrative closure (2007).7 My concern here is
not to explain how the medium of film is capable of articulating questions
and answers (this is, however, a worthy theoretical pursuit).8 Instead, I am
interested in the erotetic structure as an exchange between screen and
viewer. It is worth noting that however questions and answers are expressed
in a movie, they are expressed in ways that are different from how they are
conveyed in language. Of course, there are instances where a character
appears to expressly say what a film means. But the work’s effective mean-
ing, in the final analysis, pivots upon its organisation of sights and sounds,
so accordingly, its questions and answers are suggested by these means.9
They need to be interpreted. In other words, the erotetic dynamic is a

matter of reading. The questions and answers of a movie are also our criti-
cal questions and answers. And this makes the structure useful in develop-
ing the established idea of ambiguity as a negotiation between an artwork
and its audience (besides Bazin, see also Elkins 1999; Gamboni 2002).
Why Is It as It Is?
Ambiguity in film, this book proposes, is an invitation to inquire into “why
is it as it is”. And this involves elaborating the questions in response to a
specific movie, as well as exploring satisfying ways of answering them.
“Nothing could be commoner among critics of art”, Stanley Cavell
observes, “than to ask why the thing is as it is” (2002, 182). In fact, the
“why” question is so prevalent that it arguably captures, in one fundamen-
tal sense, the reason we are interested in artworks. But ambiguity, this study
suggests, because of its “room for puzzling” and analytical challenges,
heightens the urgency of this inquiry, insistently soliciting our answers. In
other words, our experience of ambiguity intensifies our critical practice.
As Cavell points out, the investigation of “why” “directs [us] into the
work” (227). Each individual chapter of this book will delve into one
movie or dwell upon some remarkable moments in a film. These close
readings will detail, as carefully as possible, the “why” questions that these
works invite us to consider.10 By doing so, I also wish to demonstrate that
what is ambiguous requires to be understood in its own terms, under its
specific contexts, as a special manifestation of the concept. That is, each
instance of ambiguity is ambiguous in a distinctive way. This is not to say
the concept cannot or should not be systematically categorised like
Empson does. Only that this study aims for a more practical understand-
ing; it seeks to inform the practice of criticism. The “why” inquiry not
only means to offer a coherent way to conceptualise ambiguity but also to
serve as a cogent framework under which to explore its variegated
instances. Ambiguity, this study maintains, is something to be clarified and
illuminated by reading; it calls for our critical effort, requiring to be
accounted for.
This point is worth stressing because there is a sense that the word
“ambiguity” is prone to be used in advance of reading or as a substitute
for critical engagement. As we have seen earlier in the text, ambiguity is a
multifarious concept which has been taken to mean, at least, analytical dif-
ficulty and interpretative “freedom”. The multiplicity of the term can be
10 H. L. LAW
useful in criticism; it may be employed to eloquently communicate the

complex effects of a movie. But that also abets the possibilities of impre-
cise and uncritical uses. Or worse still, the term could be abused as a con-
venient way out for analysis, that is, as an empty expression of puzzlement,
ignoring the potent call for reading. All this points to an unreflective reli-
ance on the concept, which expects it to do the work for us, whereas
ambiguity, as my account suggests, should be what launches and sustains
the work of criticism. This book insists on our critical responsibility to
work out what is ambiguous. And by working out the “why” questions in
relation to a range of movies, it also delineates a set of characteristics of
ambiguity, which in turn complements the framework of “why is it as it
is”. Our understanding of the concept is then gradually accrued. Instead
of a definitive conception, this study offers the readers a framework to
engage with movies that are beyond the scope of the chapters, inviting
them to continue the investigation of this book.
But what does a specific “why” question typically look like? For instance,
it could be most straightforwardly “why is the character upset at this
moment?” to the more advanced “why does the camera zoom into her
when she is upset?” A few things are already made clear by the sample
enquiries. In a narrative movie, it is common that the “why” question
takes interest in characters and the dramatic scenario, but it may further
comprehend matters of form and style. And it is especially when it does, as
in the second example, that the intertwinement of the two aspects is fore-
grounded. In other words, we cannot productively examine issues of nar-
rative without some consideration of the film’s presentation, and vice
versa. The “why” inquiry can be deceptively simple. An account of it usu-
ally requires a holistic understanding of a whole host of narrative and sty-
listic elements.
This brings us to an even more important issue: what are we inquiring
into when we ask the “why” question? That is, what kind of answer we are
looking for? Throughout the book, I will focus on one type of desirable
answer which I call aesthetic reason. This term is inspired by Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s series of lectures on aesthetic appreciation, a subject whose
central aim, he claims, is to come to terms with the “aesthetic puzzle-
ments” that works of art have upon us (1972, 28–9). Our aesthetic
response then involves, he notes, “giv[ing] reasons, e.g. For having this
word rather than that in a particular place in a poem, or for having this
musical phrase rather than that in a particular place in a piece of music”
(Moore 1955, 19). What Wittgenstein advocates here is indeed what the
“why” question seeks to probe: the reason for a specific artistic choice.
When we ask “why” about an artwork, we want to know what is achieved
by this choice instead of otherwise. Aesthetic reason concerns
particularities.11
Chapters 2 and 3 will explore in greater detail what aesthetic reason
means in the criticism of film. But as the earlier remark on the sample
“why” enquiries suggest, the kind of reason we take interest in is the kind
that can be discerned or deduced from the work itself. And it broadly con-
cerns the meaning and significance of artistic choices. This concern is par-
ticularly instructive towards the appreciation of ambiguity because, as
V.F. Perkin observes, it is often by “project[ing] ourselves into the position
of the artist and think through the problems which he [sic] confronts in his
search for order and meaning” that we become cognisant of how a film
“absorbs its tensions” (1993, 131). Note that this critical projection is not
the same as the uncovering of the filmmaker’s premeditated aesthetic con-
ception. Instead, it is something like a re-imagination of the process of
filmmaking, of the conditions under which one can better contemplate the
reasons for, as Wittgenstein would put it, making this choice rather than
that in a particular place in a movie. The exploration of ambiguity as an
artistic expression—and not an obstacle to meaning as the “puzzle anal-
ogy” has it—can similarly benefit from this practice of critical re-imagina-
tion. (This practice is a good use of what James Grant [2013] calls
“imaginativeness” in criticism, a topic to which I will return in Chap. 3.)
What my discussion has been highlighting so far is ambiguity’s intimate
link to criticism. It is the principal argument of this study that an account
of ambiguity as an aesthetic concept is also an account of its criticism.
Indeed, seeing ambiguity as a dynamic process of reading points to a
potent way of conceiving its analysis. Particularly, it enables the recogni-
tion that our critical task is not only to probe aesthetic reasons but also to
acknowledge our uncertainty. A satisfying account of ambiguity success-
fully engages with both reason and doubt. The search for such an account
is the main concern of my close readings of film.
Reason and Doubt

These close readings are organised into two sections, which correspond to
the study’s dual concerns of reason and doubt.
Part I is named “Pursuits of Reasons”. Not only does it develop the
idea of aesthetic reason but it also addresses the procedure of our critical
12 H. L. LAW
pursuit. And by doing so, the section reflects upon a number of prevailing
assumptions in film criticism and proposes some practices that would assist
our quest for aesthetic reasons.
Inspecting several key accounts of the enigmatic shots with the vase in
Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949), Chap. 2 delineates the kinds of
“answers” that we look for if we are interested in ambiguity as an artistic
expression. I suggest that one reason why the moment is so challenging—
that it compels a range of differing, sometimes incompatible accounts—is
because of our difficulty in recognising the most illuminating questions
concerning the moment. The search for a satisfying account equally
involves the search for appropriate or penetrating critical questions.
Chapter 3 explores how the ambiguous yet apparently simple editing strat-
egy of Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002) not only dramatises its central themes
of control and deviation but also deepens its political significance. My
discussion draws a link between ambiguity and complexity by showing
how entangled the film’s critical questions are. Moreover, the chapter
investigates the place of speculation in film criticism, and further takes that
as an opportunity to elaborate on the idea of aesthetic reason, by juxtapos-
ing it with what can be called non-aesthetic reason. In Chap. 4, I consider
a set of character gestures in In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950).
Suggesting both tenderness and violence, these gestures indicate the char-
acter’s self-opacity, encouraging us to inquire deeper into his thoughts and
feelings. This investigation of “deeper reasons” offers a way to rethink the
conventional opposition between “surface” and “deep” meanings in criti-
cism. While ambiguity is typically associated with the multiplicity of mean-
ing, I argue for the benefit of also seeing it as the depth of suggestion.
In Part II “Drama of Doubt”, we will look at two films whose drama
hinges upon matters of doubt or (mis)belief. But most importantly, both
films, in their own ways, activate a strong sense of interpretative uncer-
tainty. As a result, our practice of reading is also something like an enact-
ment of an internal drama of doubt.
Chapter 5 analyses the final three scenes of Force Majeure (Ruben
Östlund, 2014). On the one hand, I explore what ambiguity means in
relation to each scene. On the other hand, I draw attention to how these
scenes—taken together and seen in succession—feel puzzling as a conclu-
sion of what comes before. Specifically, there is a sense that the movie has,
against our expectations, drastically changed its moral stance towards the
main character during its final moments. This switch of perspective leaves
us uncertain about what an appropriate analytical standpoint should be.
Here, some of the film’s ambiguous choices will be illuminated by a com-

parison with its recent Hollywood remake Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim
Rash, 2020). Chapter 6 explores ambiguity as more than a query about
meaning but also as a form of scepticism towards whether something is
really meaningful. I reflect on my own experience of this kind of scepti-
cism—as something like a struggle between reason and doubt in my
mind—with regard to a performer’s seemingly inadvertent direct look at
the camera in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956). The fact that
I am able to offer a reading of the detail, to unpack its suggestion, doesn’t
stop me from worrying about its insignificance. This allows me to address
the relationship between ambiguity and “overreading”. And finally, by
fleshing out how a satisfying account of ambiguity animates the dynamics
between reason and doubt, “Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt”
ponders what the concept can teach us about criticism, particularly regard-
ing its appreciative aspect and communal nature. Reason and doubt can—
and should—work hand in hand in our practice of reading; the study of
ambiguity enriches our understanding of film analysis.
Purview and Practice

My discussion of ambiguity, as the aforementioned chapter outline makes
clear, consists of a mix of familiar and unobvious choices of film. A study
of an aesthetic concept such as this one is never expected to examine all
possible variants and every individual instance. But I could imagine, for
some, my account can only be compromised because of its notable, seem-
ingly regrettable neglect of certain films. More specifically, my choices do
not include movies that we would intuitively think of as “highly ambigu-
ous”, works which most people would ordinarily find very puzzling. Such
ambiguous films can come in different forms and styles. But there are two
prominent manifestations of them which are worth singling out for
inspection.12
To “read for maximum ambiguity”, as suggested earlier, is an unhelpful
critical practice. However, there exists films that indeed appear to seek
“maximum ambiguity”. In such a film, ambiguity ostensibly drives and
permeates its every aspect, including the plot (i.e., what is going on?),
matters of tone (e.g., ironic or not?), and the status of the audio and the
visual tracks (e.g., is it reality or is it fantasy?). A Page of Madness (Teinosuke
Kinugasa, 1926), Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961), and Bad
Timing (Nicolas Roeg, 1980) are salient examples. And some “puzzles
14 H. L. LAW
films” (e.g., Inception [Christopher Nolan, 2010] and Mulholland Drive

[David Lynch, 2001]) also belong to this mode of filmmaking. This study
doesn’t examine such movies. But the critical framework that I propose—
the inquiry into “why is it as it is?” as well as the various strategies of for-
mulating questions and answering these questions—should equally afford
an effective way of approaching them. It is because—and this is vital to
point out—these works do not actually constitute a distinct kind of ambig-
uous film. Instead, they can be more usefully understood as movies that
contain an unusual amount of ambiguous features. That is, they raise more
“why” questions than most films, perhaps also more acutely so.
That doesn’t mean these films are by default “more” ambiguous
though. They are usually more critically challenging, certainly. But how
ambiguous a film is is not directly proportional to the number of “why”
questions it raises. For example, at the centre of In a Lonely Place lies the
question of Dix’s loving-but-violent gestures. And our recognition of this
aspect can already prompt us to see many moments in the narrative anew,
seeing the film as “highly ambiguous”. Moreover, there is a sense that
instances of ambiguity cannot be adequately compared in terms of degree.
Saying “this film is more ambiguous than that film” is not only hardly
revealing but in fact obscures what is really at stake: even though cases of
ambiguity can be similar or analogous, they are ambiguous in necessarily
different and specific ways. It is the singularity of an individual ambiguity
that deserves assessment and appreciation. And this is why this book fore-
grounds the fleshing out a film’s unique “why” questions as a productive
way of exploring its ambiguities. (Accordingly, the comparison between
individual instances of ambiguity is perhaps most beneficial when it juxta-
poses the different effects and meanings of similar or analogous scenarios.
Readers are invited to perform such a comparison between two respective
moments that this book will discuss at length: the shots with the vase in
Late Spring and the driver’s point-of-view shot in Ten. Both achieve ambi-
guity by exploiting an editing convention and the expectations that
creates.)
The second variant of “highly ambiguous” film is the ones that simul-
taneously welcome or accommodate incompatible readings. And these
readings often specifically exemplify opposite, irresolvable moral values or
ideological systems. Most recent examples are Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019)
and The Hunt (Craig Zobel, 2020). The latter, as Adrian Martin (2020)
observes, is “a film that cheekily preys on contemporary anxieties and
anti-social fantasies on every side of the political border; while, at the same
time, giving itself the get-out-of-jail-free card of silliness and (icky) poetic
license”. Such works, in a way, attempt to exercise polysemy in the medium
of film. And this “polysemy”, by virtue of its political or ethical nature,
may lead to audience frustration or even infuriation. Refusing to take a
side when the act of side-taking seems urgent, this kind of films appears to
happily tolerate what may be disagreeable or indefensible beliefs to viewers
across the ideological divide. As a result, the conundrum of interpretation
takes on an ethical dimension; now, not only the suggestion of the film—
what it is “about”—is of moral significance, one also becomes inclined to
question the “tactic” of the film and view its stance in moral terms: is it
being “opportunistic” (wanting to “have the cake and eat it”)? Is it being
“insincere” (not articulating what it really means)? Is it a “cop-out” (a
failure of commitment)?13
This kind of questions not only highlights how these “polysemic” films
forcefully conjoins aesthetic and moral assessments, but it also reveals the
site of their ambiguity. Simply put, the ambiguity of these films does not
exactly stem from their possibility of conflicting readings; rather, what
makes them ambiguous is their uncertainty of viewpoint, that we can’t be
sure where their approval or allegiance lies. Our key question towards
these films is then along the line of “why don’t they pick a side?” or “what
position are they inviting me to take?”. We wish to understand the mean-
ing and effect of such a strategy. Controversial “polysemic films” do not
make an appearance in this study. But the strategy of rhetorical instability,
in a less controversial yet no less morally fraught form, will be explored in
relation to Force Majeure, as outlined in the chapter summary. While the
answer to why a film avoids side-taking, why it beholds incompatible
views, is liable to be conveniently explained in terms of an intellectual chal-
lenge (“the film wants us to provoke us [sometimes for the sake of it]”) or
a “democratic” appeal to individual judgement (“it wants us to make up
our own mind”), then perhaps what warrants accounting for—what is
really interesting to examine—is how such a film achieves this avoidance or
this act of dual-beholding. In other words, a productive way of analysing
said film would be to reflect upon its construction, not in order to settle
its interpretative quandary but to appreciate the way the moral or ideo-
logical double-bind is established and secured. Chapter 5 considers how
Force Majeure’s rhetorical uncertainty succeeds to implicate us in its over-
arching moral drama, forcing us to participate in its ethical investigation.
16 H. L. LAW
In any case, my omission of the two families of “highly ambiguous”

films is strategic. These films tend to attract or have already received sus-
tained critical attention. My account therefore turns to works that do not
straightforwardly lend themselves to the analysis of ambiguity. My selec-
tion of movies, as suggested earlier, nevertheless allows me to develop a
framework to address the two variants of ambiguous films and probe some
of their pertinent issues. Most importantly, the examples that I examine in
this book open up fresh ways of exploring both the concept of ambiguity
and the practice of film criticism.
Value and Evaluation

Perhaps the greatest mystery about ambiguity is that while it is typically
considered an impediment in everyday life, especially over communica-
tion, it tends to be esteemed and celebrated in the realm of art. Why
is it so?
This vast question is way beyond the purview of this book. But my
intuition is that the answer would have as much to do with the nature of
art as to do with the possibility of ambiguity. And we would also need to
have an understanding of the purposes of communication and how com-
munication is different from art to recognise why certain things are
shunned in one arena but valued in the other. But it should be noted that
this question of why ambiguity is valuable is related to but, importantly,
distinct from the question of why some instances of ambiguity are artistic
achievements. Why ambiguity might be good in general is not the same as
why a particular ambiguity is good.
Earlier, I have identified interpretative “freedom” and analytical diffi-
culty as the two common understandings of ambiguity. It seems to me
they further stand for two conceptions of why ambiguity is valuable. While
the former speaks to the prevailing belief in the “openness” of artworks,
the latter corresponds to the concomitant view of the experience of art as
an experience of active engagement. Indeed, critics do sometimes explain
instances of ambiguity with these assumptions in mind. For examples,
remarking on the unresolved endings of “art films”, David Bordwell sug-
gests: “ambiguity […] must not halt at the film’s close” because “life lacks
the neatness of art and art knows it” (2008, 156). And it is also easy to
imagine a critic justifying his or her interpretative struggle by asserting it
as a result of artistic originality and innovativeness.
Reasonable, perhaps, such justifications of ambiguity are nevertheless

unsatisfying. Lacking specificities, they are applicable to a wide range of
instances. While each ambiguity, as I suggest, is ambiguous in a different
way, its success and achievement should be therefore gauged in light of the
work in which it appears. What is ambiguous needs to be judged on a case-
by-case basis. There is no substitute for careful close analysis.
In this sense, the “why” question facilitates the assessment of ambigu-
ity. It is by inquiring into the point of an ambiguity that we also recognise
its form and degree of achievement. (The appreciation of art is not a two-
step process in which we can establish the point of a work before we move
on to its assessment; instead, we cannot see its point without also seeing
its achievement in some sense. The difference between the “some sense”
that we see in different artworks is their difference in successfulness.) But
our recognition of achievement is complicated in the case of ambiguity.
Since it is often the point of an ambiguity that we feel strongly uncertain
about, its success is consequently also in question. And to say that uncer-
tainty is precisely the point of ambiguity—which might be what we intui-
tively want to say about it—would not be helpful either but send us back
to square one: figuring out the point of uncertainty is comparable to figur-
ing out the point of ambiguity. In other words, by clarifying the construc-
tion of an ambiguity, close reading may at the same time magnify its
puzzling features. It is possible that the harder we look at what is ambigu-
ous, the more it leaves us perplexed, confused about its meaning, signifi-
cance, and merit (as we will see in Chaps. 5 and 6).
So, how might our evaluation proceed? The assessment of ambiguity,
this book suggests, may benefit from referring to other aesthetic catego-
ries. But these other categories should not be employed as the “explana-
tions”, like how “openness” is often used as the justification of what is
ambiguous. Rather, they arise from our close reading and in turn inform
our close reading. Throughout this study, ambiguity will be considered in
conjunction with or in light of a series of other concepts, such as coher-
ence, complexity, uncertainty, and opacity. And these joint considerations
are indeed vital to the understanding of what is at stake in the instances we
inspect. Ambiguity is always recognised and prized as the plurality of
meanings. On my account, however, what is exciting about it is instead the
way it meaningfully recalls a multitude of aesthetic concepts. As we shall
see, ambiguity and these other concepts indeed illuminate each other. And
this has profound consequences for evaluation. Most notably, it would be
no longer appropriate to prioritise the identification of “good” and “bad”
18 H. L. LAW
ambiguities. Instead, artistic assessment becomes a matter of exploring

how an ambiguity works with other aesthetic categories to eloquent, inter-
esting, or rewarding ends. This more liberating view of evaluation—focus-
ing on gauging merits instead of passing judgements—is the kind of
evaluation that this book will practice. This is a form of evaluation that
emphasises appreciation, specifically the appreciation of the “why” in “why
is it as it is”.
Notes
1. The remainder of the passage highlights the difficulty of analysing ambigu-
ity: people “feel they know about the forces, if they have analysed the ideas;
many forces, indeed, are covertly included within ideas; and so of the two
elements, each of which defines the other, it is much easier to find words
for the ideas than for the forces”. It is easier to identify the multiple mean-
ings of an ambiguity than to explore and articulate their links.
2. Elsewhere, Bazin writes: “analytical découpage tends to suppress the imma-
nent ambiguity of reality” (2009, 54). But the critic also sees the possibility
of the convention to achieve the opposite. For example, speaking about
Alfred Hitchcock’s uses of the close-up, Bazin observes how they could
“suggest the ambiguity of an event” (69). There is a sense that the critic
sometimes writes dogmatically for rhetorical purposes. His analyses are not
reducible to, often more nuanced than, the inflated critical assertions that
he declares.
3. Bazin’s emphasis on the viewer’s participation—a democratic vision of the
medium—suggests that his film aesthetics is undivorceable from matters
of ethics.
4. For a discussion of Bazinian ambiguity that revolves around issues of tem-
porality, see Carruthers (2017).
5. Bordwell’s account of “art cinema” appears circular. He proposes realism
and authorial expressivity as the defining features of this particular “mode
of filmmaking” and then goes on to “explain” the films in these terms.
6. George M. Wilson notes: “Nothing in the idea of the explanatory coher-
ence of a narrative requires that the material that is responsive to the dra-
matically significant questions of the film has to be deployed in a familiar
or easily discernible way” (1986, 44).
7. See Robin Wood’s “Notes for a Reading of I Walked with a Zombie” for an
attempt to apply Barthes’ five narrative codes to film analysis (2006,
303–38).
8. This seems to me linked to the philosophical question of how a film means.
I have in mind V.F. Perkins’s suggestive remark that the meanings made
clear in a film are meanings that are “filmed” (1990, 4). Here, the very
activity of the medium (filming) also serves as an eloquent, intuitive way of
saying how meanings are achieved in its instances. It is as though how the
camera articulates meanings remains something of a mystery to us. But to
understand “how filming means”, what we need is not a general theory of
the nature of the medium but appreciations of the aesthetic possibilities of
individual acts of filming. Or, at least, the theorization cannot be done in
advance of detailed analyses of film.
9. One benefit of conceiving movies in terms of question-and-answer is that
it presents a more dynamic understanding of the fictional world than the
prevalent preoccupation with narrative causality in film studies. Notably, it
allows us to see narrative ambiguity as far more complicated than the dis-
ruption or complication of cause-of-effect. In a similar vein, Alex Clayton
(2011) has discussed how the cause-and-effect model distorts issues of
character choice and agency in film.
10. This book’s emphasis on the “why” inquiry is indicative of its larger inter-
est in the valuable lessons of Cavell’s writings on art and art criticism.
Indeed, this volume is inspired and guided by these lessons, that is, not in
the sense that I’ve applied Cavell’s “methods” of analysing movies and
approaching ambiguity—the application of methods is in fact alien to
Cavell’s critical sensibility. The philosopher’s ideas will no doubt frequently
crop up throughout this book. But what my account really takes up from
Cavell and pays homage to is his unique insights into the operation of criti-
cism. For instance, his commitment to reflecting on our experience of film,
to the teachings of film. My “Cavellian” position will be fleshed out in
“Concluding Remarks”. Recent volumes which draw attention to Cavell’s
critical lessons include Moi (2017) and Ray (2020).
11. What about when someone asks “why is this unambiguous?” Would that
be a case of ambiguity? I think there are two occasions from which this
remark may arise. In the first, it stems from genuine puzzlement. This is a
case of ambiguity, albeit expressed in an unusual form. But it remains pos-
sible to reformulate the question so that it is directed to the source of
uncertainty. In the second scenario—equally unusual—the remark is a
veiled judgement; it points to an expectation of the detail to be ambiguous
in some way. The question is therefore close to a rhetorical question. It is
likely that the speaker speaks out of critical conviction rather than puzzle-
ment. If so, he or she doesn’t really think of the creative choice as
ambiguous.
12. I am indebted to Adrian Martin for pointing out these two pervasive vari-
ants of ambiguous films to me.
13. See Chap. 5 for more about “cop-out” and “tacked-on” film endings.
20 H. L. LAW
References
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9th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Andrew, Dudley. 1973. André Bazin. Film Comment (March/April): 64–68.
Armes, Roy. 1976. The Ambiguous Image: Narrative Style in Modern European
Cinema. London: Secker and Warburg.
Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. Oxford: Blackwell.
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———. 2009. What Is Cinema?. Translated by Timothy Barnard.
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———. 2008. Poetics of Cinema. New York; London: Routledge.
Buckland, Warren. 2009. Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary
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———. 2014. Hollywood Puzzle Films. New York and London: Routledge.
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Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 135 (1, Aug.): 1–15.
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tion. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Criticism, ed. Alex Clayton and Andrew Klevan, 27–37. Oxford: Routledge.
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Pictorial Complexity. New York: Routledge.
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Art. London: Reaktion Books.
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University Press.
PART I
Pursuits of Reasons
CHAPTER 2
Difficulty of Reading
One of the most intriguing moments in the history of cinema can be

found in Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring (1949). It takes place towards the end
of the movie, at the inn on the last night of the Kyoto visit, when Noriko
(Setsuko Hara) and her father Shukichi (Chishû Ryû) rest side by side on
the tatami. Noriko is getting married soon, so the visit is also the final trip
the two will take together. Things have not been going well between
them. Mistaken about her father’s intent to remarry, Noriko has been
upset. But she won’t divulge her reasons or discuss her feelings with
Shukichi.1 At the aforementioned juncture in the film, as Noriko is finally
about to open up to her father, the camera shows the following:
1. Medium close-up of Noriko: since her words (“I was feeling angry
towards you, but”) receive no response from Shukichi, she looks to her
left to check on him.
2. Medium close-up of Shukichi: his eyes are closed.
3. Medium close-up of Noriko (as shot 1): she turns to her right briefly
before looking ahead, staring at middle distance. Shukichi starts snor-
ing and that continues for the remainder of the scene. Noriko smiles
(Fig. 2.1).
4. Medium shot of the room: at the centre of the frame is a vase in the
alcove. Shadows of bamboo are projected on the shō ji screen behind it
(Fig. 2.2). The shot lasts for about six seconds.

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_2
26 H. L. LAW
Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)
5. Medium close-up of Noriko (as shot 1 and 3): her smile is gone. As in
shot 3, the character briefly turns to her right before looking ahead,
into the middle distance (Fig. 2.3).
6. Medium shot of the room (as shot 4, like Fig. 2.2): this shot lasts for
about ten seconds. Elegiac non-diegetic music comes in about half-way
through and acts as a sound bridge to a “new” scene.2
The intrigue of the moment is marked by the amount of critical atten-

tion it has garnered, the diversity of accounts it stimulates. Typically, these
accounts are animated by the vase’s uncertainty of suggestion, which is all
the more prominent for its centrality in the frame and the repetitions of
the shot. This sense of persistent obscurity makes the moment both com-
pelling and challenging.
But instead of directly advancing my own interpretation, this chapter
points out fruitful directions of reading by reflecting on a range of
2 DIFFICULTY OF READING 27
pre-existing accounts. Some of them are canonical and some are chosen
for their critical finesse. Not every one of them sees the moment as ambig-
uous. But all can be considered answers to the “why” question concerning
the images with the vase and may therefore work as accounts of their
ambiguity. I shall study the claims of these accounts and tease out their
interpretive and methodological assumptions. By doing so, not only will
we get a better grasp on the intriguing moment and its critical challenges
but we will also be able to sketch a number of representative or exemplary
analytic positions towards ambiguity. And this further makes possible the
discernment of a number of key characteristics of the concept which the
subsequent chapters will address. If ambiguity poses enquiries, it would be
beneficial to identify the types of answer it can inspire, so that we may
further recognise productive ways of answering it. I am interested in what
these accounts of Late Spring can teach us about the criticism of ambiguity.
28 H. L. LAW
This chapter diverges from Abé Mark Nornes’s essay “The Riddle of
the Vase” (2007), which samples diverse readings of the moment and situ-
ates them within the development of film studies as an academic subject.
Exploring the correspondences between these accounts and critical trends
or traditions within or outside the discipline, Nornes highlights how they
have shaped the study of Japanese cinema. Though my examples are simi-
larly presented in the order of their publication, I do not make any histori-
cal arguments. Instead, my aim is to assess their validity and strengths.
And these can be made clear by juxtaposing the critical texts, inspecting
how they speak to each other. Contra Nornes’s essay, this chapter doesn’t
insist on “a multiplicity of readings for a given text” (79). Not every
account of the moment with the vase is equally satisfying or rewarding.
Explanation and Function
The Transcendental
In his renowned study on the “transcendental style” in cinema, Paul
Schrader argues:
The vase [in Late Spring] is stasis, a form which can accept deep, contradic-
tory emotion and transform it into an expression of something unified, per-
manent, transcendent […]. The transcendental style, like the vase, is a form
which expresses something deeper than itself, the inner unity of all things.
(1972, 49; 51)
The vase is here taken as an illustration of the transcendental aesthetics.

More specifically, it stands for “stasis”, which, according to Schrader, “is
the trademark of religious art in every culture. It establishes an image of a
second reality which can stand beside the ordinary reality” (49). In other
words, he appears to read the scene as a spiritual experience and the vase
as something like a sublimation of Noriko’s sorrow about leaving home.
But without a sustained discussion of the moment, it remains unclear how
the object achieves “stasis” and articulates “something unified, perma-
nent, transcendent”. The remark hardly clarifies what makes the scene
ambiguous. It preserves the mystery of the moment.
This lack of engagement with specificities is a telling sign of the
account’s lack of interest in what is on the “surface”, suggested by
Schrader’s claim of the vase as “something deeper than itself, the inner
unity of all things”. In this way, the passage above enacts a suspicion that
ambiguity sometimes arouses: that meaning and significance is buried or
hidden, beyond what is readily observable. This misleading assumption
will be addressed in Chap. 4.
The Cathartic
Donald Richie writes in his seminal study on Ozu:
The image of the vase in the darkened room to which Ozu returns at the
end of Late Spring serves […] to contain and to an extent create our own
emotions. Empathy is not the key here. To be sure we do imaginatively
project our own consciousness onto another being, but this is perhaps a
secondary effect. Primary to the experience is that in these scenes empty of
30 H. L. LAW
all but mu, we suddenly apprehend what the film has been about, i.e. we
suddenly apprehend life. […] In Late Spring the daughter has seen what will
happen to her: she will leave her father, she will marry. She comes to under-
stand this precisely during the time that both we and she have been shown
the vase. The vase itself means nothing, but its presence is also a space and
into it pours our emotion. (1974, 175)
Richie is interested in what the moment signifies. As a moment of realisa-

tion for both the character and the viewer, it nonetheless suggests different
things to them. For Noriko, it is a recognition of her future (“she will
leave her father, she will marry”); for us, it is the revelation of a fact of life,
perhaps the inevitability of change. Interestingly, Richie speaks of the dou-
ble realisation arising “precisely during the time that both we and she have
been shown the vase”. That is, not unlike us, Noriki sees the object when
it is “shown” to her. It is as though the dawning of her recognition is
prompted by the shots, instigated by the filmmaker. It is a subtle instance
of narrational metalepsis.3 As we shall see, the relationship between the
shots and the character—especially that of between their suggestions and
her subjectivity—is at the heart of the moment’s ambiguity.
Echoing Schrader’s account, Richie claims that the vase “means noth-
ing”. But the wordplay he employs with regard to the affective dimension
of the shots—how they “pour” and “contain” our feelings—seems to
assert its relevance. As manifestations of “mu”—the potent presence of
absence4—the shots represent an emptiness that calls attention to itself, as
though a blank canvas on which to project our emotions. Instead of clari-
fying the interiority of the character, they serve as vehicles for spectatorial
catharsis.
Receptive to the narrative and emotional significance of the scene,
Richie nevertheless dismisses the meaning of the vase without qualifica-
tions. And that deserves questioning. How do these images generate emo-
tions but deny meanings? Doesn’t what seems meaningless compel
interpretation even more? In Chap. 6, we shall encounter a type of puz-
zling detail that threatens meaninglessness. As a result, our persistent
interpretation of it may sound dangerously like “overreading”.
It Looks Like Point-of-View Editing, But…

It is worth pausing for a moment. Focusing on the scene’s style, emotional
effect, or disclosure of mu, both Schrader’s and Richie’s accounts have
nevertheless left the narrative situation unaddressed, as if it is self-evident.

What happens in the scene? What does the editing suggest? Cutting
between a character gazing offscreen and a view of her vicinity is the struc-
ture of the point-of-view editing convention. Mobilising our knowledge
of this convention, the film prompts us to read the moment as an instance
of looking. That is, Noriko is looking at the vase.
But this intuitive reading turns out to be not the case. In their article
“Space and Narrative in the Films of Ozu”, David Bordwell and Kristin
Thompson usefully point out the impossibility of shots (4) and (6) as
Noriko’s views from her position on the tatami, since the vase is “seen in
several earlier shots as being in a corner of the room behind and to the left
of the two beds” (1976, 65) (Fig. 2.4). This impossibility, Bordwell and
Thompson note, suggests that the images with the vase are not “‘realisti-
cally’ and ‘compositionally’ motivated by the narrative”, and that’s why
Schrader’s and Richie’s accounts struggle. They instead speak of the vase

32 H. L. LAW
as a “hypersituated object” that “works against, brakes the narrative flow

because of its indifference to Noriko’s emotional situation”. This indiffer-
ence, Bordwell and Thompson seem to imply, is guaranteed by the fact
that the shots are not the character’s optical point-of-view shots. Their
function can only be formal (in the narrow sense of what is not narrative);
we shouldn’t interpret the meaning of the vase. (ibid.)
The nascent ideas of both Bordwell’s and Thompson’s subsequent
accounts can be found in this brief remark. We will inspect their
Neoformalist understanding of the moment more closely below. While the
impossibility of point-of-view editing, according to them, is a reason not
to interpret the vase, I would suggest that it instead complicates the
object’s uncertainty of meaning, contributing to the moment’s ambiguity.
However, this would add to our critical challenge: alongside the question
of what the vase suggests, there is an additional enquiry about the con-
struction of the scene. And the two need to be considered together.
Between Continuity and Discontinuity

In his book on Japanese cinema, Noël Burch doesn’t explore the images
with the vase, but his discussion of Ozu’s deployment of “the pillow-shot”
can serve as a pertinent framework for understanding their structural func-
tion (1979, 160–2). Pillow-shots are unpeopled images which “suspend
the diegetic flow”. And by doing so, they may be read as “an expression of
a fundamentally Japanese trait”; drawing attention to the inanimate and
the environment, they depart from the anthropocentrism of Western
thoughts and, specifically, that of the Hollywood storytelling tradition.
Reflective of a culture, this kind of shot embodies a worldview, proposing
a particular way of looking. Importantly, in Ozu’s movies, these images
introduce or reintroduce diegetic locales or objects. They are not necessar-
ily without narrative implications despite their disruption of plot progress.
Rather, their implications are subtle or uncertain. This is how Ozu’s
pillow-shots invite contemplation.
For my purposes, it doesn’t matter that the images with the vase are
not, strictly speaking, pillow shots. Their strong ties to the scene make
them dissimilar to the kind of pronounced cutaways that Burch has in
mind. But their attention to non-human presence recalls the environmen-
tal sensibility of Burch’s category. Moreover, once we become aware of
the images’ impossibility as point-of-view shots, we may come to see how
they, similar to the pillow-shots, pivot upon the tension between narrative
continuity and discontinuity. Like Bordwell and Thompson, Burch

emphasises the formal aspect of a device, but unlike them, he sees the pos-
sibility of such a device to have dramatic and thematic significance. For
Burch, there is no neat divide between form and narrative meaning.
Play and Parameters

Before inspecting Bordwell’s and Thompson’s accounts, we need to have
a sense of what undergirds their arguments. For them, Ozu’s cinema
exemplifies “parametric narration”.5 A parametric film is a film which sus-
tains a set of parameters—usually in the form of a range of stylistic
devices—independently of its narrative economy. These devices cannot be
understood in terms of what Bordwell and Thompson call “realistic”,
“compositional” or “transtextual” motivations, that is, by conventions of
realism and genre, or by the requirements of storytelling. Instead, a
parameter is “artistically motivated”, “simply for its own sake—as an
appealing or shocking or neutral element […] directly focus[ing] atten-
tion on the forms and materials of the artwork” (Bordwell 1985, 36). The
suggestion is that style can be divorced from content. Form can simply be.
This is why parameters, for Bordwell, are not susceptible to interpreta-
tion. And these films, he notes, in fact discourage reading by accentuating
its form: “parametric filmmakers have tended to employ strikingly obvious
themes […]. It is as if stylistic organization becomes prominent only if the
themes are so banal as to leave criticism little to interpret” (282).
Interpretation becomes not only untenable but is often futile. Instead,
Ozu employs parameters to “play stylistic games with the spectator[s]”,
training them to “a distinct set of perceptual skills […] appropriate to his
work” (Thompson, 1988, 341). These games are playful. And playing by
the filmmaker’s rules, acquiring those perceptual skills, would allow us to
play the games better, deepening our appreciation of Ozu’s playfulness.
One of these games, Bordwell observes in his monograph on Ozu
(1988, 117–8), is the game of the “‘false’ POV”, wherein the filmmaker
undermines our expectations of the editing convention to subtle or sur-
prising effects. Bordwell reads the sequence in Late Spring as a variant of
this game and concludes: “Ozu’s fraying of POV cues makes the scene
fairly unstable, and any interpretation of it must take such equivocations
into account”. Interestingly, interpretation is no longer chastised here.
Stopping short of a reading, Bordwell explains Ozu’s employment of the
“‘false’ “POV” as a rejection of “canonical representation of character
34 H. L. LAW
subjectivity”. His allusion to interpretive possibilities, however, invites us

to envision how his explanation might be strengthened by close analysis.
In fact, Bordwell gestures towards a careful reading of the moment by
pointing out the saliency of the shadows behind the vase, a detail over-
looked or disregarded by Schrader and Richie. Indeed, the intrigue of the
object may easily, unduly consume our critical attention, at the expense of
other significant features of the scene.
The Arbitrary
In her book chapter on Late Spring, Thompson (1988) elaborates on the
movie’s playful strategy of parametric narration and continues to speak of
the vase as a “hypersituated object”. Now she calls Ozu’s formal choices
“unreasonable” because they are “neither natural nor logical” (341).
She argues:
Given the film’s consistent use of cutaways in a non-narrative way, it seems

more reasonable to see it [the vase] as a non-narrative element wedged into
the action. Such wedges must have an effect on the story, assuredly, if only
in the negative sense of diffusing our attention. Here we might conclude
that Ozu is in fact blocking our complete concentration on Noriko in order
to prevent our taking this as the emotional climax of the film […]. But in
any case, the choice for a vase for such a purpose is arbitrary; the shots could
have shown a lantern in the garden, a tree branch, or whatever. As an
emotion-charged symbol, a cut to Soma’s toothbrush and glass would have
been more effective, since earlier we had seen Noriko handing these objects
to her father, and this would have associated them with the pair’s relation-
ship. They have never even glanced at the vase. The very arbitrariness of the
choice should warn us against simplistic readings. (339–40)
If Ozu’s “‘false’ POVs” should not be read for meaning because they are
“artistically motivated”, Thompson proposes to explain them in terms of
function. As she declares: the “analysis of function and motivation will
always remain the analyst’s central goal, and it will subsume interpretation”
(21). In her view, it doesn’t matter what Ozu cuts to in place of the vase
insofar as it “block[s] our complete concentration on Noriko”.6 Here, func-
tion is conceived as something like a solution to a problem. And as long as
the problem is solved, the choice of solution is irrelevant. A function is ful-
filled the same way by every choice.
But does the choice make no difference? A cut to “a lantern in the gar-
den” would feel obtrusive considering its impossibility as Noriko’s sight.
And a cut to a “toothbrush and glass” could be mildly confusing, espe-
cially in light of the character’s changed countenance in the sequence. We
could say that these choices “block our complete concentration on
Noriko” but that grossly neglects their specific effects and implications.
Even though they might equally serve as a solution to a problem, it doesn’t
mean they are equally as good and therefore arbitrarily replaceable. The
issue with Thompson’s account, on the one hand, lies in its pragmatic
conception of function and, on the other, in the unquestioned assumption
that a device can be reduced to such a role. As a result, it oversimplifies the
moment with the vase. Contrary to her conclusion, it is the very specificity
of the vase that makes simplistic explanations unsatisfying, unsuitable.
Similar to Bordwell, Thompson asserts that the meanings of most para-
metric films are “simple and obvious” (20). This view is fleshed out by
Bordwell when he writes: “Not much acumen is needed to identify
PlayTime [Jacques Tati, 1967] as treating the impersonality of modern
life, Tokyo Story [Yasujirō Ozu, 1953] as examining the decline of the
“inherently” Japanese family, or Vivre sa vie [Jean-Luc Godard, 1962] as
dealing with contemporary urban alienation and female desire”. (1985,
282) In other words, what Bordwell and Thompson mean by meaning is
the theme of a movie; interpretation, accordingly, is the elucidation of
themes. This impoverished understanding of both concepts is the source
of their misleading claim: the blatant “messages” of parametric films,
Bordwell and Thompson observe, give us licence to study their style for
their own sake, as though we could see what these films articulate prior to
seeing their means of articulation. But I would suggest it is Bordwell and
Thompson’s failure to interpret content in light of form, theme in con-
junction with technique, that results in their underappreciation of the
nuances and complexity of these movies. We shall see how the construc-
tion of the moment in Late Spring complicates its suggestion.
It seems fair to say that Bordwell and Thompson are neither interested
in nor concerned with what is ambiguous. For them, the scene may be
initially puzzling. But this is only because we mistake the nature of its edit-
ing and instinctively read it in accordance with the point-of-view conven-
tion. Once our confusion is cleared up, the ambiguity would be solved.
We should then be able to see that what is really at stake is not the uncer-
tainty of meaning but a systematic play with form. For them, what the
moment calls for is not interpretation or clarification but explanation and
36 H. L. LAW
disambiguation. From this perspective, it is understandable to find the

scene ambiguous at first, but to dwell upon its suggestion after our misbe-
lief is rectified would be unjustifiable.
But ambiguity may leave us in irresolvable doubt. One of its chief chal-
lenges—as this book will demonstrate throughout its course and address
at its close—is its resistance to be refuted by knowledge, silenced with
facts. But this doesn’t mean ambiguity is unreasonable or that our critical
effort would necessarily end up being irrational. Instead, we are encour-
aged to present our reasons both for and against our doubt, and weigh
them in relation to each other. This may not put the ambiguous to rest.
More often than not, the best we could aim for is a provisional relief. But
the practice would renew our understanding of the ambiguity, illuminat-
ing the reasonableness of our doubt.
Reading in Detail
Ozu’s choice to cut to the vase in the alcove is far from arbitrary. Unlike
“a lantern in the garden” or “a tree branch”, it is precisely a view we
believe Noriko would be able to see from her position at that particular
moment, and this reinforces our intuitive understanding of the moment as
a sequence of point-of-view editing. Our subsequent realisation of the
inaccessibility of that view would then invite us to reflect on this under-
standing, to ask why the film exploits our knowledge of the editing con-
vention to imply that Noriko is looking at the vase without literally
beholding it. The move from the intuitive to the reflective readings marks
a shift from dramatic absorption to a special mode of aesthetic attention,
from accepting the moment’s credibility to actively discerning its signifi-
cance. (The probing of “why is it as it is” involves this kind of aesthetic
attention.) In Film as Film, V.F. Perkins speaks of a movie’s balancing act
between credibility and significance: “[i]t may shatter illusion in straining
after expression. It may subside into meaningless reproduction presenting
a world which is credible but without significance” (1993, 120). While the
accounts we have considered so far all hone in on the significance of the
moment in Late Spring—either dismissing (Bordwell and Thompson) or
taking for granted (Schrader and Richie) its credibility—a more satisfying
reading would require us to explore its expression in light of its illusion of
seamlessness. It matters that the scene strives for verisimilitude and under-
states its design and suggestion. The moment’s deceptive credibility, its
undemonstrative significance, is central to its intrigue and achievement.
The Figurative
Andrew Klevan reads the significance of the scene in relation to Noriko’s
anxiety about her forthcoming marriage:
After settling down into bed in Kyoto, the film has two cut-aways to a vase
which alternate with shots of Noriko’s pensive face (her face shows a slight
change in register: at first it looks content; then, after the vase shot, it
appears more concerned). Placed here, these shots of an inanimate object
suggest Noriko’s worried fluctuations with regard to marriage which lie
behind her front of passivity. Although the vase seems to be somewhere in
the room behind Noriko, the effect here, because of the lack of establishing
information with regard to its position, is to abstract the vase as a visualisa-
tion of the mood of her state of mind. (2000, 137)
The passage is sensitive to the pulls between the scene’s imitation of cred-
ibility and its subtle disclosure of significance. Klevan acknowledges the
impossibility of the vase as Noriko’s view but also recognises the camera’s
reluctance to announce that impossibility. This awareness of the moment’s
reticence allows him to observe its artful articulation of the character’s
state of mind. In particular, this articulation is characterised by abstrac-
tion. Functioning like an abstract, the image with the vase, as Klevan dem-
onstrates, condenses Noriko’s complex interiority, signifying her entangled
strands of feelings. The shot is symbolic. And in this way, the sequence can
be considered abstract, in the sense that it is not a representation of look-
ing but an instance of figurative seeing, as the character confronts the
opacity of her thoughts. The moment is metaphorical.
The figurative aspect of the sequence invites a comparison to a long-
established concept in film theory known as the Kuleshov effect.7
Conceived by early Soviet film theorists and celebrated by filmmakers like
Alfred Hitchcock, the effect refers to the possibility of suggesting an
unequivocal state of mind by editing between a subject and a view. For
example, according to V.I. Pudovkin, cutting from a shot of an expres-
sionless face to a shot “showing a coffin in which lay a dead woman”
indicates “deep sorrow” ( 1960, 168).8 The precision of this indication is
supposed to be a testament of the power of editing. It is clear that the
moment in Late Spring, despite its structural affinity to the Kuleshov
effect, avoids the concept’s conclusiveness of meaning. Having said that,
my aim is not to discredit the theoretical construct. (In any case, pointing
out the uncertainty of one variant of this editing structure by no means
38 H. L. LAW
denies the possibility of this type of editing to summon definite sugges-

tions.) The comparison here instead sheds light on a key feature of the
ambiguity of the scene. The Kuleshov effect, as the Soviet theorists con-
ceived it, insisted on the expressionlessness of the facial close-up. And this
was taken as a guarantee that the suggested state of mind came from the
edit and not from the performance.9 But we can further say that the shot’s
presumed lack of emotional display, to some extent, helps curtail the cre-
ation of confusing or bewildering effects in the context of the sequence.
In Late Spring, Noriko’s changed expression—from looking content to
looking concerned—is disorienting because it appears to be motivated by
the view with the vase. There is an interpretive gap between the perfor-
mance and the situation, between the animation of feeling and the inar-
ticulacy of the object. This is an instance of ambiguity as undecidability:
we feel unable to say with conviction what the moment means, for the
moment makes no commitment to any of the possible significance.
Movement and Stasis

The scene’s suggestion of change is confounded by its sense of inarticu-
lacy. Klevan continues:
Her [Noriko’s] undramatic demeanour may be because she lies, tucked up,
in the quiet of the night, unwilling and unable to disturb her father, or may
be because her feelings are too indefinite to show themselves clearly. The
inanimate vase suitably conveys the sense of her uncrystallised thoughts cir-
cling around varying manifestations of stillness: those thoughts shuffle indis-
tinctly between, perhaps, the possible still tranquillity of marriage and vague
feelings of non-human, ornamental lifelessness, of being stilled. (ibid.)
The passage pivots upon the tension between movement and stasis, evok-
ing and exploring their many forms and expressions in the scene. The
calmness of the unpeopled views, paradoxically, reveals Noriko’s inner tur-
moil, masked by her frail maintenance of poise. Klevan unpacks her interi-
ority as strings of comparable possibilities. Yet the compactness of his
reading also enacts the moment’s density of significance. Noriko’s
thoughts are thoughts about settlement and arrest, but her mind remains
unsettled and restless, “circling” around and “shuffl[ing]” between a set
of ideas. She is overwhelmed, incapable of making up her mind or
catching up with her thoughts, seized by the whirlwind of thinking. The

moment is marked by its indeterminacy, its movement of meaning.10
The character’s difficulty in coming to terms with her feelings is analo-
gous to our interpretive struggle. The scene compels and eludes our read-
ing. In fact, it feels all the more compelling for its elusiveness. It is elusive
not because its suggestions are unripe or shapeless but because they are
intricate, entangled, alive. Our interpretive challenge is to explore the
development of these suggestions in a way that attends to both their con-
tinuity and their distinctiveness. What this requires is a tactful exposition
of meanings which oppose to be stilled and easily coarsened by stilling. It
is not a concern unique to the criticism of ambiguity. But the ambiguous,
often concerning the movement of or the conflict between meanings,
draws special attention to that resistance, and therefore strongly solicits
the practice of critical tact.
Seeing As
William Rothman’s detailed reading of the scene (2006), by skillfully
charting the moment-by-moment suggestions of the editing, is a sophisti-
cated study of its movement of meaning. When Noriko and Shukichi lie
on their futons, their conversation is presented as a series of shot/reverse-
shot. But as she turns her head to look at him in shot 1, Rothman notes,
we are encouraged to read the following image (shot 2) as her optical
point-of-view. Consequently, when the camera returns to her in shot 3, we
register it as a reaction shot. In other words, even though both shots 2 and
3 reprise previous camera set-ups, replicating the shot/reverse-shot struc-
ture, we see them differently. Their meanings are revised by our knowl-
edge of context and convention. Rothman goes on to suggest:
When Ozu cuts from this mysterious shot [shot 4] back to Noriko [shot 5],
then back again [shot 6], this alternation feels like a point-of-view-shot/
reaction-shot pattern, one which underscores her aloneness (her father has
fallen asleep, prefiguring his departure from her life). But it also feels like a
shot/reverse-shot pattern, one that supersedes—or does it carry on?—her
conversation with her father. Is this mysterious composite of object and
shadow, of presence and absence, of being and nothingness [shot 6], the
passive object of her thoughts? Or is it responding to, or leading her to, her
dawning realization? (2006, 40)
40 H. L. LAW
As in the preceding edits, a renewal of perception has taken place across

shots 4 to 6. But now it comes with a crucial difference. The impossibility
of the vase as Noriko’s vision means that these images do not and cannot
constitute a point-of-view-shot/reaction-shot pattern in any straightfor-
ward sense. The moment denies a literal reading in these terms.
Bordwell is rejecting the literal perspective when he questions the
assumption that “Noriko sees the vase and this causes the change in her
reaction” (1988, 117).11 But his subsequent claim about the shots’ absence
of meaning, based on this rejection, seems to reflect literal thinking of
another kind. Specifically, it fails to comprehend the film’s implication of
Noriko seeing and reacting to the vase in a special sense. Such a special
understanding entails the recognition that actions and events, and what
counts as causes and effects, are artfully shaped and calibrated in a movie,
so that their narrative significance takes into account this shaping and this
calibration and may therefore enhance, undermine, or differ from their
ready suggestion in the fictional world. That is, this type of understanding
sees narrative meaning in an expanded sense.12
Rothman’s attention to what the sequence “feels like” offers an elegant
way to address its precarious suggestion. It observes the appearance of the
editing to indicate the moment’s expanded narrative meaning.
Reappropriating the point-of-view-shot/reaction-shot convention, the
sequence encourages the understanding that, as Rothman puts it, “the
shot with the vase stands in for what Noriko sees in her mind’s eye” (2006,
40). What the character “sees” and “reacts” to in shots 3 and 5, in other
words, are not actual sights but something like mental images. Agreeing
with Richie, Rothman considers the instance as Noriko’s moment of reali-
sation; citing Klevan, he further recognises her experience of stasis and
thoughts about stillness; finally, like Bordwell, he acknowledges the dou-
ble preoccupation with materiality and shadow that the shots with the vase
signifies. All of which contributes to Rothman’s own reading of the scene
as an invocation of permanence and transience, as the occasion where
Noriko’s comes to terms with the knowledge (or self-knowledge) about
the intertwinement between love and loss, about the price of happiness
and the gift of sacrifice.13
To see the image with the vase as something Noriko envisions, never-
theless, leads to a further enquiry about the nature of this vision. In
Rothman’s words: “is it responding to, or leading her to, her dawning
realization?” The sequence, as the critic perceptively points out, not only
evokes the point-of-view-shot/reaction-shot convention but also “feels
like a shot/reverse-shot pattern”. While reading the scene in terms of the

convention highlights the vase as what animates Noriko’s response,
prompting her reaction shot, reading it in light of the pattern emphasises
the moment as a continuation of her talk with Shukichi and therefore
conceives the view as something like an answer to her thinking.
Appropriately, Rothman keeps his own question open. As his passage
implies, the shots may appear as an acknowledgement of Noriko’s realisa-
tion and may also seem like what activates it. The two editing structures
are the two equally salient references of the scene. And their respective
implications are less alternatives than the alternating possibilities of the
moment. Our understanding constantly switches between them. This
movement between meanings is akin to the experience of aspect seeing. If
such an experience is an experience of contradiction—as in the classic
duck-rabbit illustration: what we perceive as either/or, our mind knows as
both—this may be why the moment in Late Spring can leave us slightly
conflicted, disconcerted. We feel torn between suggestions.
Repetitions
The scene modulates its meaning through its strategic use of repetitions.
This modulation is possible because no repetition means the same. It is
curious that even though the sequence is clearly structured around a series
of reprises—most notably, the reiterated images with the vase and the
recurring close-ups of Noriko—this feature of the movie is often only
acknowledged but not analysed in critical literature.14 Rothman’s reading
is one exception. Taking into account the significance of repetition, he
suggests:
When Ozu now repeats that mysterious shot [with the vase], and holds it
even longer than the first time, this does not register the dawning of a new
realization on Noriko’s part. She returns to the same thought. Not so much
embracing as surrendering to it, she recognizes its inevitability, acknowl-
edges the sense of necessity that Ozu’s camera declares or acknowledges by
reprising the shot. (ibid.)
The implication of the point-of-view-shot/reaction-shot pattern changes

with its repetition. While its first iteration (shots 3 and 4) signifies Noriko’s
dawning understanding about life and loss, the reprise (shots 5 and 6)
marks her further recognition of the “inevitability” or “necessity” of what
42 H. L. LAW
she has realised.15 This reading sheds light on the character’s repeated
enigmatic gestures in shots 3 and 5: her brief turn to the right before
returning to look ahead. The first time feels like an attempt to look away,
which points to Noriko’s reluctance to face her realisation. And this
encourages us to see the subsequent instance as an act of turning back, by
which the character comes to brave her realisation, perhaps resigning to it,
despite its infelicities.
Note that Rothman’s reading, his claim about the scenario’s changing
implication, requires the two images with the vase to stand for “the same
thought”. But this is only to suggest they mean the same to Noriko. No
repetition is exactly the same. The two shots affect the viewer in comple-
mentary yet distinctive ways. While the first cutaway creates intrigue, stim-
ulating our interpretation, its reoccurrence deepens the intrigue into a
tantalising promise of meaning, compelling our critical inquiry. Concluding
the scene, the second shot nonetheless eschews closure. Its lingering pres-
ence works like a persistent challenge, confronting us with a quiet, dan-
gling question. We feel dogged by a potent sense of why.
Question as Answer
This chapter has considered numerous critical responses to an oft-discussed
but ever-mysterious moment in Late Spring. Some of which are more
fruitful than others as an answer to its ambiguity. As we have seen, the less
successful ones tend to devote scarce attention to the details of the
sequence: while Schrader bypasses reading to assert the vase as emblematic
of the transcendental style, Richie helpfully suggests the scene as a moment
of realisation but insists on the object’s absence of meaning without quali-
fication. In doing so, both accounts neglect some crucial aspects of the
scene’s significance.
In place of interpretation, Bordwell and Thompson advocate a type of
film analysis that explores the motivation and function of devices. This
kind of formal analysis, however, is hardly helpful in the study of ambigu-
ity. The identification of the cutaway as “artistically motivated”—that is, as
a choice for its own sake and free from further justifications—achieves lit-
tle more than flagging its nature as artifice. One might then turn to the
device’s function for an explanation of its puzzlement. But as we have
seen, Bordwell and Thompson’s understanding of the shot as a narrative
diversion doesn’t address what makes it puzzling. For Thompson, this role
of diversion can be fulfilled by many other shots, and the replaceability of
the detail reflects Ozu’s arbitrariness of choice. Interpretation is therefore

unwarranted, futile. Such an explanation leaves us unsatisfied as an account
of what is ambiguous by leaving its call for acknowledgement and analysis
unanswered.
Satisfying readings of the scene, like Klevan’s and Rothman’s, on the
other hand, are attuned to its specificities. And this attunement entails an
attention to the evolving significance of the editing and to the moment-
by- moment movement of meaning within and across the shots. This
enables these accounts to appreciate the implications of the sequence,
addressing its narrative meaning in the expanded sense, producing insights
into its ambiguity.
Notably, there is a sense that satisfying answers to the moment are
guided by more nuanced lines of questioning. Take Rothman’s reading as
an example. Given the impossibility of the view as Noriko’s vision, his
account, however, unlike Bordwell’s, doesn’t take for granted this impos-
sibility but makes it an underlying issue around which its inquiry revolves.
This inquiry reflects on the multifarious rapports and the dynamic rela-
tionships between the character and the vase, and between the close-ups
of her and the views with that object. Rothman charts the moment’s nar-
rative meaning by taking into account the unusual ways the film deploys
and recalls relevant editing conventions. By doing so, the account success-
fully engages with the perplexing question: why does it imply Noriko to be
looking at something that she cannot behold?
We commonly think of question and answer as distinct categories. But
if it makes sense to speak of a critical account being guided by a distinctive
question, as I have noted earlier, then it also makes sense to think of this
question as a part of that account’s “answer” to the movie. It is because,
not unlike a critical “answer”, such a question is a result of reading. And
by setting the direction of research, pointing out what to look at, look for,
and look forward to, this question in turn shapes the interests and the
arguments of that account. From this perspective, the pursuit of a fruitful
inquiry is as important as—for it is conducive to—the discovery of an illu-
minating response. A satisfying critical account entails knowing what
questions to probe as much as what answers to propose; the probing and
the proposing are mutually informing. This dual challenge is at the heart
of the criticism of ambiguity. Ambiguity is difficult not only because it
unsettles our reading but, more importantly—because of this unsettle-
ment, as we have seen in Late Spring—it is often far from straightforward
to figure out the pertinent or productive questions to ask. This difficulty
44 H. L. LAW
is the point of departure of the next chapter, where we will encounter an

instance of ambiguity that mobilises several threads of entangled questions.
Notes
1. This straightforward outline doesn’t aim to convey the intricacy of the
plot. For the purposes of this chapter, I won’t be able to explore the narra-
tive in detail. But it is crucial to acknowledge how much is left unsaid or
unsettled in the film, especially regarding character motives, actions, and
feelings. To begin with, it seems that Shukichi pretends to remarry in order
to relieve Noriko of caring responsibility, as he has come to believe that it
would be best for her to start her own family. Also, Noriko says she finds
remarriages “distasteful”. But, arguably, her father’s “remarriage” upsets
her because she feels deserted. She enjoys her father’s company and would
like to go on taking care of him. Her subsequent, sudden decision to wed
then sounds like an impulsive act—if not something like a retaliation—in
response to his “desertion”. There is a sense that Noriko hasn’t been think-
ing about marriage at all. She is independent and wouldn’t want to marry
just because it is socially expected for a woman at a certain suitable age.
This social pressure, expressly voiced by her aunt, adds to Noriko’s frustra-
tion. All of which is suggested but not affirmed by the movie. What is
otherwise a melodramatic plot is treated undramatically by Ozu.
2. What is it that demarcates a scene? How do we distinguish one scene from
another? The notion of the scene has received little critical reflection, often
taken for granted, despite being an indispensable vocabulary to film analysis
(a similar case with related terms such as “vignette” and “set-piece”). It is
not my intention here to advocate—film semiotics-style—a theoretical pur-
suit of what defines this “basic cinematic unit”. But a close attention to what
makes a scene a scene in an individual film can sometimes enrich our under-
standing and appreciation. Intuitively, a scene appears to be what contains a
single action, scenario, or setting. In this sense, the shots of the rocks in
Ryō an-ji mark a new scene in Late Spring by introducing a new milieu. But
these tranquil images also feel like something of a response to or a continu-
ation of the enigmatic shot “exchanges” between the vase and Noriko. The
demarcation between scenes is not always distinct and definite. The shots
with the vase and the images of the rock garden invite us to consider them
together, rather than as separate, self-contained situations. This is an aspect
that most accounts neglect. I have previously raised this issue in Law (2014).
3. For a systematic account of cinematic metalepsis, see Lash (2020).
4. The Japanese aesthetic concept of mu underpins Richie’s understanding of
Ozu. Mu draws our attention to the fact that “emptiness and silence are a
part of the work, a positive ingredient. It is silence which gives meaning to
the dialogue that went before; it is emptiness which gives meaning to the
action that went before” (1974, 174).
5. See Bordwell (1985, 275–310) and Thompson (1988, 247–50).
6. Kijū Yoshida similarly sees the vase shot as a diffusion of audience atten-
tion. However, his reading is based on his understanding of the moment’s
psychosexual subtext: “When the viewers look at the shot of the vase
abruptly inserted into the scene, they cannot help staring at it. They are
forced to think about the meaning of the vase and interpret it. Such a
moment forcing them to think distracts them from imagining the daugh-
ter’s desire to be embraced by her father, or any woman’s desire to make
love with a man. For Ozu-san, the vase in the moonlight is an image of
purification and redemption” (2003, 80). In his article on what he calls
“puzzling movies”, Norman N. Holland (1963) similarly suggests how
ambiguous form may serve as a cover for uncomfortable content. The
divide between form and content that these accounts pivot upon is ques-
tionable. But the idea that ambiguity is something that steals and absorbs
our attention is a key characteristic of the concept that I wish to capture in
this book, especially in Chap. 6.
7. See Prince and Hensley (1992) for a sustained consideration of the
Kuleshov effect. Hitchcock discusses the effect in, for example, his inter-
view with François Truffaut and Scott (1984, 214–6).
8. As Pudovkin writes: “we chose close-ups which were static and which did
not express any feeling at all”. Another important claim of the concept is
that distinctive meanings can be produced by intercutting the same expres-
sionless close-up with different views.
9. The problem with this view, as V.F. Perkins notes, is that it “assume[s]
from the start the irrelevance of all matters of lighting, make-up, camera
angle and framing to the theoretical issues; assume, in fact, that the content
of any specific presentation of a particular face is adequately described by
the word ‘face’ or, worse still, ‘close-up’” (1993, 106).
10. Klevan (2012) discusses the importance of attending to the movement of
meaning, as well as the challenges of addressing it, in relation to good film
performances.
11. Bordwell takes this assumption to be shared by Schrader and Richie. But it
seems to me Schrader is interested in neither what Noriko sees nor what
leads to her changed expression. He uses the moment to illustrate the
transcendental style. Even though Richie’s remark on the vase as some-
thing “shown” to her hardly negates Bordwell’s charge, it gestures towards
a more complex view of the moment than the simplistic reading that
Bordwell rejects.
12. An analogous instance of unusual implication can be found in The Lady
from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1946), where a shot of a character pressing
46 H. L. LAW
a button is sandwiched between two shots that depict the happening of a

car accident. It appears that this character has “caused” that accident.
“[T]his impression of causality”, George M. Wilson remarks, “is difficult
to reconcile with common sense and difficult also to integrate into our
immediate sense of the film’s narrative development at that juncture”
(1986, 2). This moment is more puzzling than the sequence in Late Spring
(which contradicts our understanding of space but not much of our imme-
diate sense of the narrative), but it equally invites a non-literal reading and
requires us to adopt an enlarged conception of causality.
13. I have in mind Sara Ahmed’s suggestion: “Happiness can involve a gesture
of deferral, as a deferral that is imagined simultaneously as a sacrifice and
gift: for some, the happiness that is given up becomes what they give”
(2010, 33). In Late Spring, Shukichi is the giver of happiness. But we can
also say that Noriko has given up a life she is content with. He sacrifices his
so that she can make a bid for hers; she gives up hers because she wants him
to acquire his. The film invites us to compare and contrast their respective
sacrifices.
14. Repetition is key to the parametric narration. But Bordwell and Thompson
would likely take it to be a mark of playfulness or formal excess. In fact,
Thompson’s argument of arbitrariness could have some difficulties accom-
modating the repeated shots with the vase. Their effect of insistence creates
a sense of irreplaceability. Also, if distraction is the aim, why does Ozu
return to Noriko after the cutaway? Wouldn’t avoiding dwelling on her be
a more effective way to prevent us from “taking this [the moment] as the
emotional climax of the film”? Why lingers on the moment by cutting to
the vase again?
15. Note that Rothman’s reading, his claim about the scenario’s changing
implication, requires the two cutaways to stand for “the same thought”.
Put another way, the shots assume different suggestions for the viewer not
despite but because of their identical meaning to Noriko. This disparity of
significance is analogous to the gap between what something means in the
fictional world and its expanded narrative meaning discussed earlier.
References
Ahmed, Sara. 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bordwell, David. 1985. Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge.
———. 1988. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. London: BFI.
Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. 1976. Space and Narrative in the Films
of Ozu. Screen 17 (2): 41–73.
Burch, Noël. 1979. To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese
Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Holland, Norman N. 1963. The Puzzling Movies: Their Appeal. The Journal of the
Society of Cinematologists 3: 17–28.
Klevan, Andrew. 2000. Disclosure of the Everyday: Undramatic Achievement in
Narrative Film. Trowbridge: Flicks Books.
———. 2012. Living Meaning: The Fluency of Film Performance. In Theorizing
Film Acting, ed. Aaron Taylor, 33–46. London: Routledge.
Lash, Dominic. 2020. The Cinema of Disorientation: Inviting Confusions.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Law, Hoi Lun. 2014. Two or Three Things I Know About the Filmic Objects.
LOLA. Accessed October 26, 2020. http://www.lolajournal.com/5/
object.html.
Nornes, Abé Mark. 2007. The Riddle of the Vase: Ozu Yasujirō ’s Late Spring
(1949). In Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, ed. Alastair Phillips and Julian
Stringer, 78–89. London and New York: Routledge.
Perkins, V.F. 1993. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. New York:
Da Capo Press.
Prince, Stephen, and Wayne E. Hensley. 1992. The Kuleshov Effect: Recreating
the Classic Experiment. Cinema Journal 31 (2, Winter): 59–75.
Pudovkin, Vsevolod I. 1960. Film Technique and Film Acting. Translated by Ivor
Montagu. New York: Grove Press, Inc.
Richie, Donald. 1974. Ozu: His Life and Films. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Rothman, William. 2006. Notes on Ozu’s Cinematic Style. Film International 4
(5, Aug.): 33–42.
Schrader, Paul. 1972. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. New York:
DaCapo Press.
Thompson, Kristin. 1988. Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Truffaut, François, and Helen G. Scott. 1984. Hitchcock, Rev. ed. New York:
Simon and Schuster.
Yoshida, Kijū. 2003. Ozu’s Anti-cinema. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
CHAPTER 3
Perplexity of Style
Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten (2002) is programmatic in form. The title of the

film alludes to its composition as ten vignettes, all depicting the same
unnamed female driver (Mania Akbari1) giving someone a lift. Occupying
the front seat, the passenger is customarily a friend or a family member,
and only on two occasions a total stranger. The scenario of the car ride—a
shared sojourn in a small space—provides an opportunity for meaningful
talk but also heightens the pressure of making conversation. Exploring
such opportunity and such pressure, each vignette observes the interac-
tion between two characters: what they say, how they behave, and when
they retreat into silence. The constancy of the narrative situation is further
matched by the formulaic assembling of the episodes. Kiarostami has
called Ten a “two-word” movie, in reference to its routine, almost mechan-
ical, practice of cutting between two symmetrical camera set-ups; between
three-quarter views of the driver and three-quarter views of the passenger.
It is as if the movie has adopted a plain cinematic lexicon, a monotony of
twin articulations (see Andrew 2005, 73).2
Each episode in Ten is preceded by a title card, marked, perhaps coun-
terintuitively, according to the number of episode(s) left in the movie: the
number descends from “10” on the first card (which also announces the
title of the movie) to “1” on the last. Dividing the narrative into chapters,
these cards further contrive something like a countdown. The countdown,
in concert with the titles’ unique animation (clockwise, a thin white line

Switzerland AG 2021
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50 H. L. LAW
swiftly sweeps the gridded black screen, “turning” it grey) and sound
effect (rapid mechanical chatters), harks back to a universal film leader.
This invocation of a defunct practice of celluloid film projection ironically
counterpoints Ten’s digital production. But we shall see that this is not
borne of a nostalgia for analog filmmaking.3 The irony of the film runs
deeper with its artful deployment of the aesthetic affordances of the
medium of video. More than charting the film’s progress, the numbered
titles give a sense of purpose to this progress by introducing an arc to, and
envisioning a destination for, the otherwise vaguely connected, seemingly
autonomous narrative nodes. This is another way to say that the vignettes
work together, and together they work towards something that will be con-
firmed or revealed at the close of the movie.
Why are the meticulous structure (the countdown; the vignette format;
the fixed narrative scenario) and the patterned, procedural editing strategy
(the iteration of two mirrored framings) implemented in Ten? This chap-
ter considers the ambiguity arising from the film’s programmatic formal
scheme. It goes without saying that such an investigation—or any investi-
gations of this nature, concerning individual narrative movies—should
take into account what is inseparable (but sometimes simplistically, for the
ease of analysis, distinguished) from the achievement of form: the inter-
pretation of “content”, of matters of plot, character, and theme. To
inquire into form, in this sense, is to illuminate the correspondences
between feature, function, and narrative meaning; not how form moulds
our access to the fictional world—from the outside, as it were—but how it
constitutes the fiction, being a condition of that world. The following
discussion will therefore consider Ten’s formal structure and strategy in
light of its narrative and in relation to its fictional world.
But a challenge readily ensues. If close analysis typically concerns itself
with, and takes its point of departure from, particulars—it is adept at
appreciating isolated elements and local devices—then how might it pro-
ceed as a capable way of examining global construction? Put differently,
where should reading commence if the task is to come to terms with a
film’s overarching scheme? How do we approach the general from the
specific? How might criticism reconcile Ten’s detail with its design?
There is a moment near the midpoint of Ten where its editing regime—
the two symmetrical medium close-ups of the characters—gives way to the
driver’s optical point-of-view shot. This moment is puzzling, worth pon-
dering, partly because it is exceptional, as the only moment of derivation
in the entire movie. This edit, I propose, can further serve as an apt
3 PERPLEXITY OF STYLE 51
analytic entry point into the movie’s programmatic construction. If devia-

tion gains significance in light of the possibility of adherence, it is also
where the meaning of the programme is thrown into sharp relief. We can
appreciate Ten’s formal regime better if we get a handle on its disruption.
But this, as suggested above, is predicated on some preliminary ideas of
the programme, of the possibilities both enabled and withheld by the
film’s dual framings. Adherence and deviation need to be understood
jointly and dialectically. Accounts of them are mutually inclusive; they
inform and illuminate each other. A study of Ten’s formal scheme should
simultaneously attend to these two sets of ambiguity, to the effects of con-
striction and the consequences of departure. And that involves a series of
entangled, difficult enquiries.
It is useful at this juncture to unpack some of them, mapping the guid-
ing questions of this chapter. To begin with, there is a range of issues
regarding Ten’s editing: why does it insist on the dual camera set-ups?
What does that achieve, especially in comparison to some other pertinent
creative options (e.g., a continuous two-shot)? How is the constraint
related to the subject of the film? Why does the film depart from the edit-
ing routine after diligently observing it? Why depart from it at this particu-
lar moment in the narrative, and only at this moment? Second, the driver’s
point-of-view shot calls for interpretation. What does it suggest about the
character? How is it related to the action and event in that vignette? What
purpose does it serve in the movie? Finally, the film’s purposeful design
deserves scrutiny. Why the vignette format, and how are the vignettes
related? What is it that the film, with its countdown, is preparing us for?
These three threads of interwoven questions are at the heart of Ten’s per-
plexing style.
The Speculative Spectator
A Cinema of Question
Criticism of Kiarostami’s films frequently stresses their inquisitive nature
and intellectual challenges. Godfrey Cheshire declares: “Kiarostami’s is a
cinema of questions”, questions that “hang in the air like an endless series
of echoes […,] pointedly forestall hard answers, final certainties, ‘funda-
mental’ truths”; “[l]ike the best of pedagogues, Kiarostami leaves us aflail
[sic] in questions” (1996, 34; 43). In other words, the questions posed by
Kiarostami’s films not only suspend our answers but put them to the test,
52 H. L. LAW
swaying our confidence in answering, and removing the ground on which

our knowledge is founded. All of which further contributes to the peda-
gogical aspiration of these movies: by leaving us in interpretive suspense,
they galvanise us into further and more rigorous acts of questioning.
For Jonathan Rosenbaum, “a shot [in Kiarostami’s movies] is often
closer to being a question than an answer” (2003, 11). While this analogy
seemingly indicates the interpretive openness of Kiarostami’s images, one
can equally take it as a remark on Kiarostami’s unusual way of putting
images together, his departure from prevalent editing practices. According
to such practices—exemplified by classical Hollywood cinema—a shot
“answers” what precedes it: clarifying the narrative event, sustaining the
dramatic interest, as well as preserving verisimilitude and stylistic consis-
tency. By doing so, it also “answers” the viewers by managing and success-
fully meeting their expectations. To a certain extent, the editing in Ten is
in line with the classical paradigm; each shot functions like an “answer” to
one another and to the audience. Deceptively straightforward, these
images in fact give rise to a whole host of narrative and aesthetic enquiries.
Specifically, the film invites us to rethink the possibility and the implica-
tions of conventional editing practices.
If Kiarostami’s cinema fosters a mode of inquisitive spectatorship, the
viewer’s inquisitivity, as Laura Mulvey suggests, can be understood in
terms of the dynamics between curiosity and uncertainty: “curiosity grows
necessarily out of uncertainty and is, indeed, its counterpoint: here the
spectator’s desire to know and understand is heightened by a conscious
sense of uncertainty about even the truth or reality of what seems to be
happening” (1998, 25). Curiosity and uncertainty typically go hand in
hand. Moreover, as Mulvey points out, what is in doubt in Kiarostami’s
cinema (she is specifically referring to the Koker Trilogy) concerns not
only the meaning but also the nature of what we witness. His films encour-
age us to question the fictional reality, to ponder whether it is fiction or
reality that we are really witnessing. As we shall see, in Ten, this epistemic
uncertainty is interwoven with our interpretative curiosity; and this forms
the very fabric of the film’s achievement.
Not only it is the fourth vignette where the exceptional moment of
disruption takes place, it is also where a salient effect of Ten’s program-
matic editing is foregrounded. Specifically, the scene encourages a mode
of inquisitive viewing by drawing attention to its fictional reality, con-
founding its fiction with elements of documentary.
The episode depicts an exchange between the driver and a young

woman. As the scene progresses, it becomes clear—from the allusions to
sex and sin, adultery and abortion, monetary exchange and marital duty—
that the passenger is a sex worker, who got in the car only because she
mistook the driver for a client. It adds to the uncertainty of the situation
that the scene starts in media res, with the young woman already in the
vehicle, so there is no way to check what actually happened against what
the characters say happened. Our protagonist insists on giving the stranger
a lift despite her repeated request to leave the car. This hints at the possi-
bility of a deliberate pick-up, but a pick-up not out of sexual but some
other interest. Or perhaps it is an accident that the driver is happy to go
along with, to make something out of. Her unspecified motive doesn’t
demand explication—it hardly dampens the scene’s intelligibility—instead,
it quietly colours and enriches our reading of the scene.
There is the impression that the driver simply wishes to talk to the pros-
titute. But her talk doesn’t find the form of a moralistic lecture or maternal
guidance. Neither condescending nor condemning, the driver is a sympa-
thetic peer who listens and responds respectfully. In particular, she is curi-
ous about the intimate details of the young woman’s life. The pair do not
talk in that watchful courtesy or coyness common between casual acquain-
tances. Nor is their exchange fraught with awkwardness due to the sensi-
tive nature of their topics. The fact that they are strangers—and will
probably remain so—means that there is little consequence for them to
speak their mind. The encounter affords the driver a chance to voice what
she cannot with her friends and family.
The first three vignettes in Ten have already given us a preview of the
daily conundrum that distresses the driver, who is a divorcee juggling the
responsibility of child-rearing and a career in photography. Her son Amin
(Amin Maher) hates her for divorcing his father and for remarrying; he is
also unhappy about her busy work schedule and poor culinary skills. This
prompts the driver to doubt her aptitude for being a mother, feeling guilty
about her life choices. Her guilt seems to be reinforced by the recognition
that, in the heart of hearts, she isn’t sorry for pursuing what she is sup-
posed to regret, for not making the sacrifices that are expected of her to
make. Her conversation with the sex worker revolves around this tension
between freedom and obligation: the conflict between personal interest
and social commitment, that precariously fuzzy line between being self-
reliant and being self-seeking. Interestingly, throughout the prolonged
eight-minute exchange, the driver is presented in an uninterrupted take
54 H. L. LAW
while the passenger remains off-screen, relegated to a voice without a

countenance.4 Why does the camera show the driver exclusively? Or, why
does the film refrain from showing the prostitute? What is the reason
behind the strategic long take, a choice which temporarily suspends the
film’s editing routine?
A Pursuit of Aesthetic Reason

In 10 on Ten (2004), Kiarostami’s documentary on the making of Ten
which is also a lesson on filmmaking, he sheds light on several key creative
choices in the fourth vignette. In line with the film’s deployment of non-
professional performers—of people “acting as themselves”, modelling
their role on their life—Kiarostami intended to cast a sex professional for
the part of the prostitute. Unable to persuade any to appear onscreen
because of the social stigma burdening the trade, he then decided to only
present character aurally. But he was quickly disappointed by how real-life
sex workers could “speak like chaste women” and ended up employing a
non-professional performer, Roya Arabshahi, to play—that is, against the
film’s principle of “non-acting”, to pretend to be—the prostitute. Laying
bare his creative process, Kiarostami’s report has nevertheless left a vital
detail unjustified: why does Ten still refrain from showing the character
even though she is not portrayed by a professional sex worker? One might
be cued by the filmmaker and see the choice as a means of resolving cer-
tain production problems.5 Such a critic might point out that since
Arabshahi appears in the seventh vignette as the heartbroken lover (a fact,
however, not learned from the credits, which, unconventionally, confirm
no such information), the concealment of her appearance in the fourth is
a practical solution to the double casting. But is this logical, plausible
explanation for a satisfying account of the puzzling choice of withholding?
What is a satisfying way to account for ambiguity? In the Introduction,
I proposed that ambiguity is what galvanises us into asking “why is it as it
is”. And this “why” looks for answers about what the feature in question
is and what it does instead of where it is from and how it comes about;
instead of an explanation of origin or an assignment of abstract motiva-
tion, we are asked to clarify the nature of ambiguity, inquiring into its
meaning, effect, and achievement. I called this a pursuit of “aesthetic rea-
son”. Now, in order to better understand the kind of critical response
ambiguity calls for, we need to have a closer look at this category.
The term is derived from the work of the philosopher Frank Sibley
(2001), who identifies two types of remarks about works of art. On the
one hand, there are “aesthetic concepts” whose application “requires the
exercise of taste, perceptiveness, or sensitivity, of aesthetic discrimination
or appreciation” (1): this is when we call a painting balanced, dull, or
estranging. By contrast, we are making non-aesthetic observations when
we say the same painting is symmetrical, in black and white, and free of
human figures. If the former type is an expression of judgment, the latter
recalls a statement of fact.
What I call an aesthetic reason, like an aesthetic concept, requires “the
exercise of taste, perceptiveness, or sensitivity, of aesthetic discrimination
or appreciation”. But a reason can take many forms other than a concept.
An aesthetic reason is typically more elaborate, and as a whole less explic-
itly evaluative, than a remark such as “estranging”. We can say that an
aesthetic reason encompasses a series of remarks in the way the expression
of an aesthetic concept, as Sibley points out, calls on the support of non-
aesthetic observations: “the painting has a dull sense of balance because of
its symmetrical use of black and white”. But an aesthetic reason, in con-
trast to a non-aesthetic one, necessarily involves more than statements of
fact and includes analysis, interpretation, or critique—all some form
of judgement.
Explaining Ten’s concealment of the prostitute in terms of a practical
solution to the double casting would be a resort to non-aesthetic reason.
This kind of response is unsatisfying not because such reasons are inher-
ently unfruitful but because this observation, deployed this way, doesn’t
engage with the specifics of the scene and explore their implications. It is
worth noting that what appears to be a non-aesthetic remark can in fact
function as an aesthetic one, depending on the context, determined by
how it is applied: “symmetrical”, for example, can serve as a word of praise
when referred to a painting with delicately complex patterns, for it recog-
nises the skill of the painter. Analogously, the distinction between aesthetic
and non-aesthetic reasons is sometimes a matter of use, of whether a
remark has been developed appropriately and sufficiently in the context of
an argument. A non-aesthetic reason can transform into an aesthetic one
if we redirect it towards, and pursue it further along, a suitable analytical
course. In the case of the withholding in Ten, if a critic wishes to claim that
it is a solution to the double casting, he or she would have to think hard
about and subsequently flesh out the choice’s importance, perhaps in pre-
cluding audience confusion (“why are two characters played by a single
performer?”) or preventing us from conflating the two characters. An
adequate account of ambiguity involves some form of aesthetic reasoning.
56 H. L. LAW
Room for Conjecture

But rather than a measure to ward off unwanted effects, I think a good
aesthetic reason for the withholding lies in the possibilities it opens up. If
the device would have kept anonymous the identity of a real-life sex
worker, here, in the final film, it has created the impression of accomplish-
ing precisely that. Put differently, it makes possible the belief, upon view-
ing the movie, that the prostitute character is indeed a real-life professional,
either cast to play a version of herself (i.e., a fiction) or picked up on loca-
tion to participate in a candid interview with the driver-performer (i.e.,
documentary). And this belief could become the basis on which we make
sense of the concealment; one plausible option is to situate the choice
within the cultural, historical context of the film’s making. Such an under-
standing would be something like this: made in and “about” Iran, Ten was
probably, to some degree, subjected to state censorship, which policed or
forbade the treatment of sensitive contents and social taboos. Kiarostami’s
tactful choice to present the prostitute indirectly—offscreen, as a voice—
has balanced the need for dramatic portrayal and the requirement to
uphold official norms of decency.
Probing into the origin of the withholding, isn’t the above understand-
ing short of a satisfying account of its perplexity? What I wish to highlight
here, however, is not the particulars of the hypothetical reading but the
fact that the scene encourages us to venture a reading of this kind, a kind
which is, more accurately, a speculation about the movie’s production pro-
cess, its conditions of making. It is an achievement of Ten—its fourth
vignette in particular—to systematically invite such speculations, exploit-
ing them to meaningful ends.
But first a word on the idea of speculation. We speculate when we can-
not ascertain; this is customarily what we resort to when we don’t know
something well enough. The practice has a bad ring to it, connoting a
whim rather than insights, by succumbing to intuition instead of searching
for valid evidence. To speculate, on this view, is to make things up on dan-
gerous grounds and, consequently, threatens to collapse into either super-
ficial or nonsensical reading, fallen into the rabbit hole of “reading into”.
The practice is therefore dismissed as uncritical or corrupted; it is a flawed
way of conducting criticism if it counts as criticism at all. (Interestingly,
according to the OED, the term used to mean “the contemplation, con-
sideration, or profound study of some subject”; it once had a much better
reputation.) This dismissal is perhaps why the strong link between
ambiguity and speculation remains unacknowledged. If ambiguity nour-

ishes uncertainty and stimulates reading, then it equally spawns specula-
tions. Speculation, that is to say, is an offshoot of ambiguity, but an
offshoot that common wisdom deems parasitic and cautions us to banish.
The worry lies in speculation’s resemblance to ambiguity’s unruly child:
interpretative anarchy. But the fact that certain speculations are destructive
and barren doesn’t necessarily mean that the practice is altogether inad-
missible. When is speculation a fruit of ambiguity? And how do we culti-
vate such a speculation—to make it fruitful?
In Ten, the conjecture about the sex worker is not only a function of the
scene, it also grows out of an underlying doubt across the movie, grounded
in its sphere of possibilities. Specifically, it is made possible by the doubt
surrounding the ontological status of the images, that is, of whether what
we see in the film is “unrehearsed actuality” (Perez 1998, 271) or its fac-
simile. Not all vignettes animate this doubt equally starkly, but they all
activate, to varying degrees, the expectation of “unrehearsed actuality”
due to Kiarostami’s systematic use of the signifiers of observational docu-
mentary: the low resolution of the image, the synchronised sound, the
car-camera-style fixed framings, the “real” people on the street and their
“accidental” looks into the camera (as markers of “unrehearsed actuality”,
these looks also, paradoxically, acknowledge the film’s artifice). The
reportage aesthetics also extends to editing, which presents the character
encounters in “real time”, preserving even dull and undramatic moments
(the second vignette is exemplary). There are no pronounced shot transi-
tions such as fade-outs and dissolves within the episodes; no obtrusive
ellipses during the exchanges.6 All of which invites us to see the film as a
documentary.
In his insightful study of documentary, Dai Vaughan doesn’t define it
as a mode of production or as a set of conventions but recognises its
unique reception: “the documentary response is one in which the image is
perceived as signifying what it appears to record; a documentary film is
one which seeks, by whatever means, to elicit this response” (1998, 58–9).
On this view, we find documentary in what has convincingly blurred the
line between signifier and referent, between representation and reality. Ten
may work as something like a documentary not because we know it records
real events and people but because we intuit and register it as such.
Documentary can be a matter of belief.
I said “something like a documentary” because, for reasons which
should have become evident, Ten is also unlike a documentary. The film’s
58 H. L. LAW
affinity to “unrehearsed actuality” is offset by elements that suggest oth-

erwise, specifically in tension with its strategic deployment of artifice: the
carefully devised plot, the purposeful countdown, the programmatic edit-
ing. This interplay between observation and intervention is in fact at the
heart of the movie’s unique stylistic rhetoric, which interweaves documen-
tary aesthetics and dramatic conventions.7 The result is a synthesis of
design and contingency, a reconciliation between an impression of the
“real” and a sense of staged fiction. At different junctures of the film, one
of the aspects gains prominence and overshadows the other. So sometimes
we see Ten as more of a documentary and sometimes as more of a fiction,
although it is always simultaneously both. The movie’s ontological status
is indistinct, indeterminable: a fusion which begets confusion.
This ontological indeterminacy is the reason why our speculation about
the prostitute character remains a speculation. Comparing Ten with reality
television, Mathew Abbott notes how they both “forwar[d] content that
can neither be believed nor imaginatively supposed; both leave the viewer
in a highly ambiguous epistemic position” (2016, 71). While it seems
justified to say we can’t make suppositions about the nature of Ten’s
images, we indeed do so regarding their implications. Even though we
cannot confidently decide the truth about the sex worker, we are never-
theless invited to entertain the prospect of her truthfulness, making specu-
lations about it. It is precisely because we feel uncertain about the truth
that we speculate, and can only speculate.8 Our “highly ambiguous epis-
temic position” in relation to Ten—a suspension of knowledge that com-
pels a desire for knowing—recalls the dynamics of uncertainty and curiosity
that Laura Mulvey identifies in Kiarostami’s cinema. If our speculation
about Ten similarly operates as a “criss-cross questioning between screen
and spectator” (1998, 25),9 it is because speculation is not automatically
an act of whimsy but can serve as a part of our negotiation with a movie.
Speculative spectatorship is a worthy subject of investigation.
Returning to the fourth vignette, what does the withholding achieve?
Why does Kiarostami encourage us to speculate about the prostitute?
Mobilising our “documentary response”, the withholding, as mentioned,
directs our attention to the profilmic, asking us to situate the movie in the
society in which it was made. By doing so, Ten strengthens the link
between its fictional world and the real world. Elevating the particular to
the general, this encourages us to think of the narrative allegorically, as a
story about an Iranian woman which is also a commentary on the Iranian
society. All this further imparts the movie’s interest in gender inequality
with a sense of urgency, enlarging its political relevance and gravitas. Our
appreciation of Ten, that is to say, would be enhanced if we take into
account the conjecture.
Note that while speculation appears to be the inverse of responsible
reading, the conjecture about the sex worker is not simply compatible
with but in fact complementary to our appreciation of the film. What this
suggests is that the speculation, working in conjunction with our reading,
is part of the aesthetic reason for the withholding. So, perhaps what is
irresponsible is not speculation as a practice but when it is put forward as
critical truth without involving some form of convincing aesthetic
reasoning.
We can think of irresponsible speculations as cases of what James Grant
calls “[i]maginative failure[s] in criticism” (2013, 86). They are failures
not for being imaginative but for being imaginative to unsuccessful ends.
For Grant, what is imaginative in relation to criticism is not what concerns
the act of imagining but what is opposed to unimaginative (i.e., there
exists instances of unimaginative imagining). It means the ability to come
up with “unobvious”—that is, imaginative—ways of thinking and talking
about works of art that allows for better appreciation and more effective
communication. A test case for such imaginativeness is the use of critical
metaphor (a topic to which Grant devotes half of his book). Imaginativeness
is a vital characteristic of a good critic alongside “judiciousness”, “sensitiv-
ity”, and “perceptiveness” (53–86). (This is a list of useful criteria for an
aesthetic reason too.) If one hurdle of taking speculation seriously is its
association with imagining (as opposed to interpreting, analysing, reason-
ing), imaginativeness offers an alternative framework to rethink specula-
tions. We can accordingly speak of their fruitfulness in terms of imaginative
failure and success.
Speculations are traditionally unwelcome in academic Film Studies,
and for good reasons. But there exists a handful of scholars whose works
exemplify the possibilities of critical imaginativeness without giving in to
imagining. It would be appropriate to refer to these works as speculative
instead of speculations. A fine example is Robert B. Ray’s The ABC’s of
Classic Hollywood (2008).10 Focusing on four Hollywood movies, Ray
collaborates with his students to produce twenty-six text entries on each,
with each corresponding to a letter in the English alphabet, for example:
“Art Deco”, “Blue Danube”, and “Coffin” are the first three entries on
Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932). These random parameters have
invited the authors to explore unusual angles of study by inspecting the
60 H. L. LAW
films from multiple perspectives. The texts are speculative in the sense of
pursuing an experimental way of inquiry rather than as a symptom of a
precarious manner of answering. But in order not to stray into precarious-
ness, the inquiries follow a set of critical guidelines, fulfilling at least two
of the following: (a) “generate knowledge about the movie at hand”, (b)
“speculate about classic Hollywood”, and (c) “reflect on the cinema in
general” (xxiii).
A quick example is called for. In the “Questions” entry (62–4), Ray
speaks of an enquiry that intrigues him: “In the scene with the Baron’s
coffin [in Grand Hotel], what are the men counting?” Inspired by the
Surrealist game, he names such questions “irrational enlargement ques-
tions”. They are “irrational” because they are, strictly speaking, “inconse-
quential to the story”; our moments of wonder about the fictional world
which we wish to entertain but know best to suppress. The “Coffin” entry
(12–5) doesn’t address this question directly but in a way answers it by
reading the scene as where Hollywood’s realism struggles; as an excep-
tional instance that reveals how the classical style becomes invisible and
why it may otherwise seem utterly mysterious. The lesson, I think, is sim-
ple but worth stressing, abstract yet also practical: what seems irrational
can be harnessed to instructive inquiry, providing we employ imaginative-
ness critically. Or, to use Grant’s terms, “imaginativeness” works best in
concert with, when kept in check by, “judiciousness”, “sensitivity”, and
“perceptiveness”. This is how speculative inquiry could again become
“the contemplation, consideration, or profound study of some subject”.
Conjecture, so conceived, may be called a critical conjecture; a suggestive
line of questioning that enriches instead of overextending a film’s horizon
of suggestion.
I have discussed the subject of speculation at some length not in order
to prescribe it as an analytic method or defend its every possible instance.
Nor is speculating an activity that most films animate. Kiarotami’s mov-
ies—especially Close-Up (1990) and the Koker Trilogy—belongs to a spe-
cial kind of cinema where speculations about its making not only enables
insights into its creative choices but also enriches its meaning and enhances
our appreciation. Speculation warrants scrutiny because, as a reasonable
answer to what is ambiguous, it can teach us something about both the
nature of ambiguity and its criticism. Specifically, I have demonstrated
how the speculative can offer a beneficial way to conceive the critical activ-
ity of questioning, to articulate the “why” questions of ambiguity. The
topic of how to formulate our “why” questions will be picked up again at

the end of this chapter.
All That Restriction Allows

Let’s return to the fourth vignette. As her conversation with the driver has
come to a close, the sex worker gets out of the vehicle. But the scene
doesn’t terminate here, as in the last three episodes, with the passenger
disembarked, and matched to the sound of the door closing. Instead, the
camera continues to show the driver, even though her expression is indis-
cernible due to the darkness of the moment (Fig. 3.1). After a beat,
Kiarostami cuts to a view of the street, in which a woman, presumably the
prostitute, is quickly picked up by another car (Fig. 3.2).11 The edit here
prompts us to read this view as what our protagonist is seeing from behind
the windshield. And the vignette ends with this point-of-view shot.
Fig. 3.1 Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

62 H. L. LAW
At the beginning of the chapter, I noted that this point-of-view shot is

the only deviation from Ten’s editing scheme; and by understanding the
pertinence of this deviation, we are able to better comprehend the rele-
vance of that scheme. Like the vase images in Late Spring, the ambiguity
of this shot concerns both narrative meaning and aesthetic reason. Why
does it take place here? Why only here? Our puzzlement is further deep-
ened by the difficulty in reconciling the two aspects: the nondescript con-
tent of the shot seems to fail to honour the singularity of the cut. There
appears to be a mismatch between the shot’s prominence and its signifi-
cance. And this raises the suspicion of a miscalculated creative choice.
How do we account for this seeming compromise of both stylistic consis-
tency (i.e., the editing regime) and aesthetic coherence (i.e., the achieve-
ment of the film)? To answer this question, we need to first have some
sense of this consistency and this coherence, of the things that the devia-
tion disrupts or risks jeopardising. Let’s look at Ten’s aesthetic scheme
closely.
Limitations and Possibilities

A sequence of alternating views of two characters, the editing routine in
Ten calls to mind the convention of the shot/reverse-shot. But it is unlike
conventional shot/reverse-shots: if the convention typically conjures up a
powerful intelligence teleporting strategically in the fictional world—
approximating to the perspectives of the characters12—the dual framings
in Ten suggest a stationary entity, tethered to the dashboard, mechanically
directing its gaze to one character and then another. While the ubiquity of
the former disguises the camera’s materiality to posit an “ideal” observer
(the impression of “we are here, looking at the characters”), the latter’s
restrictiveness of viewpoint invokes the conditions of the filmmaking cam-
eras, acknowledging their “presence” in the “fictional world” (the intu-
ition of “they were there, recording the actions”). This is why the film can
affect us like candid footage. Conflating fiction and reality, the paradoxical
presence of the camera triggers something like a “documentary response”;
to appropriate Vaughan’s formulation, Ten’s camera is perceived as signi-
fying how it appears to record.
All of which points to the way the film exploits our expectations and
engages our knowledge of the familiar. And this is how its parameters—its
unique formal scheme—operate. That being said, I do not intend to
examine Ten under the rubric of “parametric narration”. In Chap. 2, I
have discussed how the concept’s insistence on the unreadability of form,
together with its search for blanket motivations, makes it an unhelpful
candidate for the understanding of ambiguity; it fails to produce satisfying
answers to the questions of “why is it as it is”. In place of an abstract expla-
nation, what we need is an alternative framework to comprehend Ten’s
parameters, a framework that helps navigate their familiarity and distinc-
tiveness; a way to address their management of our knowledge and
expectation.
One such concept is the concept of cinematic dispositif.13 In his chapter
on the genesis and the evolution of the term, Adrian Martin speaks of it as
a “systematic set-up or arrangement of elements” which a filmmaker
devises to implement in her movie (2014, 181). But more than a model of
practical filmmaking, dispositif is also useful as a vocabulary of film analysis.
The concept’s capacious definition allows for inclusiveness, encompassing
a variety of things from a stylistic precept to a structural principle to a
recurring narrative scenario. But for something to be recognised as a dis-
positif, its elements have to be consistent enough to contribute to an
64 H. L. LAW
arrangement, and cohesive enough to constitute a system. Any critical

effort to understand aesthetic schemes would, sooner or later, have to deal
with this dynamics between device and design, the perennial question of
part and whole.
A major benefit of thinking in terms of dispositif is that it is a malleable
system, a still-evolving arrangement; it presents an organic part-whole
relationship. Martin describes dispositif as “more like an aesthetic guide-
track that is as open to variation, surprise or artful contradiction as the
filmmaker (who sets it in motion) decrees” (192). This susceptibility to
change is a vital feature that “parametric narration” fails to acknowledge.
Where “parametric narration” sees a finished work bounded by parame-
ters (a whole made of parts), dispositif pictures a work-in-progress. It
restores the progress in the work by appreciating the interactions among
its parameters and among these parameters and its other elements (the
parts are the whole). In this way, the concept enables a more robust under-
standing of the creative process behind aesthetic schemes: a continuous,
mutually reshaping dialogue between part and whole; that constant push-
and-pull between adherence, adjustment, and alteration. Dispositif is not
another name for artistic parameter. In fact, it is a special artistic strategy
that works creatively with parameters.
It is hardly surprising that Martin’s chapter makes extensive references
to Kiarotami’s late works.14 These films, typically shot on video, often
work with a dispositif. For example, Shirin (2008) is composed exclusively
of facial close-ups, wherein dozens of women are watching and reacting to
an offscreen movie about the titular mythic figure Shirin. While the dis-
positif denies our direct access to the film-within-the-film that so captivates
these female spectators, Shirin arrests our attention and invites us to envi-
sion that film, by means of its affecting soundtrack and vivid performance.
The result is all the more rewarding as it dwells on where fact meets imagi-
nation, probing the interval between what we see and what we hear. It is
in the space in-between that a “third film”15—neither straightforwardly
the movie Shirin nor the film-within-the-film about Shirin—resides. We
are enchanted by that film in and of the mind.
This highlights the capacity of dispositif to facilitate inspired artistic
choices. When a filmmaker settles on a set of creative options, she is at the
same time limiting herself to those options. Her challenge is to make good
use of these available resources at her disposal, perhaps by organising
familiar elements and conventions into a new, exciting configuration (like
Shirin) or by pursuing ways of articulating what has been curbed by the
constraints. In more than one way, dispositif challenges a filmmaker to

renew her habitual modes of thinking and working, offering her an oppor-
tunity to exercise her skills and imaginativeness. (An “imaginative failure”,
to translate Grant’s term here, would be a failing of attitude and its prod-
uct: an unthinking application of dispositif and the empty gimmick that it
produces.) It is this interest in both limitation and the possibility which it
allows that makes dispositif a productive framework to appreciate the stake
of adherence and the upshot of deviation in Ten. And we shall see that the
tension between conformity and transgression is not only a formal but also
a thematic inquiry in the movie.
In its openness to possibility, Dispositif recalls the familiar concept of
artistic convention. As Andrew Britton observes, conventions are “useful
not because of their invariance, but because they conduce to the most
complex particularized modifications and inflections of attitude” (2009,
233). If conventions are established ways of doing something across mov-
ies, dispositifs are unique ways of doing something that are established in
individual films. What convention is to cinema is akin to what dispositif is
to a movie. (Note that while it makes sense to speak of dispositifs as a film’s
internal conventions, calling conventions universal dispositifs seems coun-
terintuitive.) But the editing routine in Ten complicates this neat divide. It
is a dispositif and a (very unusual) variation of the shot/reverse-shot con-
vention. In dialogue with both concepts, the routine’s negotiation with
artistic possibility is accordingly twofold: on the one hand, it is pitted
against our expectations of the shot/reverse-shot; on the other, it con-
fronts its own logic of formal narrowness. The effects of the routine draw
upon both sources; its success entails a meaningful engagement with these
two fronts—these two kinds of creative constraint.
It is because of this consistent exploration of selected limits and their
possibilities that we expect a dispositif to be modified or altered only for a
good aesthetic reason. Like an artistic convention, a dispositif works like a
contract with the audience, and this contract may, in addition, come with
strict terms.16 The breaching of it runs the risk of trivialising the terms or
even forfeiting the deal. In other words, this throws into question the mer-
its of the proposed artistic remit, so perhaps jeopardising the film’s success.
If dispositif filmmaking, as Martin suggests, encourages or even stipulates
changes (i.e., change as a creative principle instead of a possibility17), we
want to understand whether and how a particular change of conditions
enriches the work. This is the type of concern raised by the point-of-view shot
66 H. L. LAW
in the fourth vignette: is the imaginative change of terms judicious? What

is its aesthetic justification? How does it fit our contract with the film?
An Aesthetics of Withholding
Ten’s main strategy for engaging the viewer is straightforward: it controls
what we see. But such controls are never simple; they seem so only because
their implications tend to be subtle. Kiarostami excels at exploring these
subtleties, often skillfully. The films discussed earlier can be couched in
these terms: in the case of Shirin, what we see is used systematically to call
attention to what is withheld; the fourth vignette in Ten works similarly,
except our attention needs no call here but appears to readily side with the
offscreen. In both scenarios, what holds the camera’s gaze insufficiently
sustains our interest. The images instead foreground what is out of sight,
what is withheld from us. What they have developed is an aesthetics of
withholding.
To speak of withholding as an aesthetic risks sounding pedestrian or
trivial. After all, isn’t withholding an inescapable fact of the cinematic
frame?18 Then it is only inevitable that movies control what we see.
However, not all films exploit the artistic possibilities of withholding, and
do so consistently and rewardingly like Ten does. A main source of this
achievement is the film’s dispositif, which not only gives new meanings to
the act of withholding but also charges what is withheld with renewed
significance. The editing scheme reduces the film’s fictional world into
two sets of representations and, as the narrative unfolds, trains us to see it
as such. This results in a special mode of viewing, a form of binary think-
ing: we come to expect the movie to be a series of either/or views. So,
even though we are privy to only half of the world at a time, we are cog-
nisant of its current missing part, having some sense of its shape, though
not its specifics. If the offscreen tends to connote uncertainty, it is some-
what predictable, knowable in Ten.19
Note that what is offscreen is not necessarily a consequence of with-
holding. Withholding suggests a refusal of access; it deprives us of some-
thing desirable or worth obtaining. But not everything offscreen is kept
from us intentionally or for aesthetic reasons; nor is it where things of
interest and importance always stow away. Withholding doesn’t happen
whenever there is a cut; it is not guaranteed by the frame. We should
accordingly speak of an aesthetics of withholding only if a movie
strategically edits to manipulate access, deploying the onscreen-offscreen

relationship to meaningful ends.
What is remarkable about Ten is that it makes this manipulation and
this deployment something like a fact of its editing. Every image in the
film feels more or less like a result of withholding due to our pointed
awareness of the offscreen. We are therefore constantly a step away from
experiencing our limited access as an epistemic lack. When such an experi-
ence happens—the fourth vignette is one of those—it dispatches us into
an analytic pursuit. The feeling of lack feeds into the desire for access; we
wish to understand “why is this withheld from us”. Only a handful of
instances in Ten are as persistently puzzling as the scene with the sex
worker.20 We don’t register every image in the movie as a lack. But our
alertness to the alternative view nonetheless encourages a pause every time
Kiarostami cuts—why now?21 This decision about when is an immanent
question of editing but it has become keener under the restrictive routine,
whose reduced means of articulation further allows such a choice to
assume greater prominence.22 We are more attuned to the precise timing
of the cut and prepared to read it closely. We seek to interpret its sugges-
tion and assess its eloquence. Not every cut withholds. But the one that
does refuse our access for an aesthetic reason. To see the point of with-
holding is then to see what its refusal achieves (i.e., its suggestion and
eloquence). In other words, how it stages the negotiation between limits
and possibilities.
This suggests what appears to be the opposite of withholding is in fact
closer to its preserve; withholding harbours the possibility of revelation.
While withholding derives its power from the desire for access, access feels
all the more like an achievement if it is previously suspended. Revelation
may be the reward, but that doesn’t mean the withholding of it isn’t
rewarding; a reveal may be dramatically rewarding because it is overdue.
Perhaps no other cinematic feature enacts the intimate link between the
twin concepts better than editing. An edit simultaneously shows and con-
ceals, and is therefore capable of being a means of withholding and the
delivery of revelation. But just like withholding is more than the fact of
omission, revelation is not a corollary of display. To understand how they
work requires our interpretation.
68 H. L. LAW
Showing and Revealing

That brings us back to the fourth vignette, where the interplay between
withholding and revelation is integral to its style and meaning. During the
extended shot, while the offscreen sex worker defies our direct scrutiny,
the driver is equally elusive despite being the onscreen focus. Driving at
night, under the city’s street lights, our protagonist’s face is tantalisingly
veiled by shape-shifting shadows. Not only is her expression partially
obscured, but, even for those fleeting moments of visibility, it seems
opaque (Fig. 3.3). The image only gets dimmer as the scene advances, as
if to match the sobering conversation about duty, desire, and disappoint-
ment. Making the driver’s countenance even less discernible, the change
in lighting nevertheless invites us to pay extra attention to what and how
she speaks. We may detect the swelling unease in her tone and a sense of
incomprehension through her pauses. But our incomplete, intermittent
access to the character leaves us without firm grounds to interpret her

thoughts and feelings. The camera’s attention to her claims no special

insight. What it shows reveals very little.
On the other hand, the singularity of the point-of-view shot creates the
expectation of a revelation. But what it shows, like the extended take
before it, doesn’t seem to be revealing: we see the sex worker being swiftly
picked up by another driver. In his monograph on Ten, Geoff Andrew
takes note of this shot and cites what Kiarostami told him in an interview:
“[I] wanted to show how [sic] men there are just waiting in the streets.
Two cars come along in a matter of seconds—the first for real!—which
looks really predatory” (2005, 65). The critic offers this as an example of
the filmmaker’s unique production method (which incorporates deceit)
without exploring the shot further. It is as though Kiarostami has the last
word; this is all there is to say about the moment. But is the brief remark
really a satisfying account? Has the image been exhausted by those words?
To be clear, I am not dismissing Kiarostami’s account. Nor am I taking
issue with Andrew’s silence on both the image and the comment; his con-
cern lies elsewhere. However, his neglect seems to me symptomatic of the
shot’s analytical challenge. It is challenging not for being unusual, com-
plex, or nuanced but for the opposite reasons: it appears strictly narrative-
serving, formally conventional, stylistically indistinctive, and therefore
critically uninteresting. In a word, it is obvious. And it is difficult to pursue
the obvious because, plainly, there is nothing to pursue. (Put this way, this
shot is everything that the vase images in Late Spring aren’t.) Is there
more to say about this obvious point-of-view shot of the driver?
One may flesh out the social commentary Kiarostami professed, which
suggests the prostitute not as a problem but a potential prey. And this is
further validated by the documentary moment of the unstaged pickup.
Ascertained by the filmmaker’s statement, the authenticity of the detail is
however not a revelation by means of the film’s showing; nothing in the
image allows us to see that. We might suspect that is the case due to our
documentary response to the scene but that’s far from certain. The
moment’s claim to truthfulness is not something evident. Without the
support of the anecdote, what the shot shows remains pale because of its
obviousness.
But to home in on what the shot shows neglects the importance of what
it does. What it does—as the one and only departure from the film’s dis-
positif—in fact defies all the connotations of obviousness associated with
its showing. A satisfying account of the moment needs to reconcile this
singularity of the cut with the obviousness of the image. What is required
70 H. L. LAW
is a holistic understanding of form and meaning that assesses the detail’s

significance in light of the film’s gradation of prominence. It entails that
we have to widen our critical purview and situate the point-of-view shot
within Ten’s narrative, stylistic, and thematic contexts.23 What a detail
reveals may take into account much more than what it readily shows.
A Narrative Divided
Let’s consider the film’s wider contexts. Ten’s exacting formal design is
matched by its careful storytelling structure. The ten vignettes follow two
narrative threads. The four episodes that feature Amin—the only male
presence in the film—trace the vicissitudes of the mother–son relationship.
The rest are the driver’s encounters with a mix of female figures; some of
them are recurring characters with a narrative arc, while others, like the
prostitute, appear only once yet serve important symbolic purposes in the
fiction. The two threads appear to enact a gender divide.
Most of the women the driver meets appear to be fixed by their rela-
tionship or bound by their responsibility, that is, whether they have a man,
whether they are married, and whether they have kids and a family. These
issues are often raised in the conversations and at times the preoccupations
of a character. The driver is not exempt from the struggle with gender
expectations. This is put into sharp relief in her opening exchange with
Amin, where she is sidelined, unacknowledged offscreen and deprived of
a proper entrance for some sixteen minutes. It is as though she is reducible
to her function as a mother before she is an individual. Disenfranchised or
disillusioned, divorced or widowed, the female individuals in the film
negotiate with their role and run up against confining social mores. Each
represents a distinct facet of female experience in a society where gender
inequality holds the reins.
On the other side of the divide is Amin, whom some commentators see
as the spokesman for traditional chauvinist attitude (see Andrew 2005, 44;
Abbott 2016, 64). The fact that he is an enfant terrible, rude and entitled,
is central to this reading. But this flattens the film’s complex treatment of
gender politics. If Amin embodies that attitude, it is worth remembering
he is also a son and a child. Apart from a stand-in for what the driver
resists, he is a person she loves and cares for; his behaviours indeed leave
much to be desired, but she nonetheless seeks his acceptance and compas-
sion, and feels obliged to take good care of him. Our protagonist is
conflicted.
And that encourages us to see the two narrative threads less in terms of
binary oppositions than as complementary components in the scheme of
the fiction. The episodes with the female figures often serve as opportuni-
ties for the driver to address the challenges in her personal life and to
broach women’s difficulties in the society. Contextualising her problems,
such conversations clarify the nature of her dilemmas. The episodes with
Amin, on the other hand, ground the theme of social struggle in a per-
sonal scenario. They are where the interrogation of gender roles is played
out on the level of an individual. The film shows that when such a struggle
and such an interrogation are lived, they are experienced as contradictions.
For our protagonist, happiness is therefore not a simple choice between
conformity and independence, or between duty and desire. Its promise is
fraught with compromises. The two narrative threads enhance the mean-
ing of each other by fleshing out life’s complication together.
At a Crossroad
One thing that the driver’s point-of-view shot reveals is her sustained
interest in the sex worker. This concern or curiosity is nevertheless not
something visualised in the image but implied by it. The shot stands for
her continuing presence at the scene, indicating her act of observing the
prostitute. Delaying the end of the episode to underline this act, the film
invites us to take interest in the driver’s interest. Though our attention is
not directed to a three-quarters view of her, as the editing scheme would
have prescribed, but keyed to her visual perspective. The prescribed fram-
ing would have encouraged us to interpret her thoughts and feelings from
her demeanour and expression. Kiarostami’s choice instead prompts us to
engage with what she sees. While the driver’s point-of-view shot feels like
a reveal by virtue of the unexpected edit, does it actually work as a revela-
tion? If so, what does it reveal about her concern and interiority?
Worth noting is how Ten’s formal digression also revises our relation-
ship with the driver. The point-of-view shot is the only instance in the film
where we don’t look at but look with the character. Our object of observa-
tion has momentarily become the surrogate for our observation. And the
identification between our view and her vision is further emphasised by
the composition: the interior of the car is faintly visible at the bottom of
the frame, as though we are looking out from the driver’s seat. What we
see in this point-of-view image cannot be divorced from the character’s
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subjective way of seeing. To understand what the shot reveals, analogously,

require us to explore the stakes of her spectatorial experience.
This experience is an instance of a character’s act of seeing becomes a
pivotal moment in a movie. And these instances typically take the form of
point-of-view editing.24 Among the most memorable examples is the finale
of Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937) where the titular character (Barbara
Stanwyck) watches her daughter Laurel’s wedding through a window.
Stella is supposed to be happy about the marriage—she has somehow
engineered it—but her design has also left her no place in Laurel’s future
happiness. A chief question of the moment revolves around what she sees
means to her. The sight of the wedding, Andrew Klevan suggests, “is not
a surrogate mirror, reflecting back her [Stella’s] own desires, or more
accurately, she no longer identifies herself in the scene, or wants to have a
part in it. Laurel has fulfilled this desire on her behalf” (2013, 55). In
other words, Stella’s relationship with what she sees is something between
investment and detachment. The scene has crystallised her entangled pre-
occupations. The clarification of such relationships and such preoccupa-
tions—what a character sees means to her—I suggest is a possibility of
such spectatorial moments.
Similar to Stella Dallas, the point-of-view editing in Ten suitably stages
the driver’s conflicted interiority. Here, the cut asserted by the conven-
tion—the divide between the onlooker and the view—simultaneously
serves as a metaphor for difference and stands for the wish to bridge that
difference.25 Seemingly contributing to the moment’s obviousness (“this is
simply what the character sees”), the editing in fact facilitates complex sug-
gestions. The protagonist’s absorption in what she sees, which motivates
the cut to her perspective, points to a simultaneous concern and fascination
with the prostitute’s carefree attitude. For the driver, the younger woman
represents something like freedom, not exactly for her chosen path of life,
but because of her audacity to stick to her own way, even though it means
being marginalised and misunderstood. But this version of freedom, the
character also recognises, is undesirable, or at least unsustainable in her
own case. She cannot really live carefree without also taking care of her
obligations. Freedom for her is not being free from responsibilities.
The point-of-view shot is a fictional device, Gilberto Perez observes,
because “our seeing through a character’s eyes is but a fiction” (2005,
22). The driver’s point-of-view shot is noteworthy not only because it
suddenly switches the film’s quasi-documentary mode into a pointedly
fictional moment but this moment further offers us insights into the
fiction. At this exceptional juncture sitting strategically at the midpoint of

Ten, our protagonist comes to an acute realisation of her conundrum: she
longs for freedom, she wants more of it, she wants it to be a right and not
a synonym for transgression. However, in light of her duties, she feels
guilty about wanting and getting, and about wanting and getting more.
Ideally, she would have a career and a happy family life. But, realistically,
to accomplish both is more than she can afford, more than the society
permits. She can’t exercise her rights without being labelled as transgres-
sive. She knows all that. And this knowledge has left her feeling disem-
powered. She has turned into a pensive spectator.
Prior to this moment in the film, the driver has been constantly in
motion. As a source of mobility, her car is also a symbol of her resourceful-
ness and independence. She knows where she is going and is capable of
getting there by herself. But realising the impasse of her freedom, the
character comes to a standstill—undecided and unable to act. The cross-
roads she is now looking at is equally metaphorical. This is a decisive
moment for the driver: what is the way forward?
Ripples of Change
The question extends to us by means of the open point-of-view structure.
Concluding the fourth vignette without returning to the driver, Kiarostami
withholds her reaction to what she sees. This enhances the moment’s
uncertainty of meaning and results in interpretive suspense. We look for-
ward to discovering how the driver actually thinks and feels about the
prior conversation. Most importantly, how will it affect her subsequent
choices and actions? How will she cope with her conundrum?
The driver never mentions this exchange to other characters. Nor does
the sex worker return to the movie. But their exchange is like a stone
being thrown into a pond. Hitting the protagonist hard, its emotional
turmoil sinks in and runs deep. The impacts it causes, like ripples, slowly
fan out to other corners of her life. The weight of the stone is to be gauged
by these ripples. How the character is changed becomes clear if we look
closely into the surrounding scenes.
In the symbolically charged third vignette, the driver is lost on the road
before meeting a pious old woman whom she gives a lift to the shrine. The
passing of the woman’s family has prompted her to find solace in religion.
Answering her religious calling, she gives up her worldly possessions and
devotes her time to praying, not for her own gains but for the weak and
74 H. L. LAW
the needed. This conviction of selfless charity is the complete opposite of

the prostitute’s transgressive self-interest, but it equally estranges the
driver. The protagonist’s polite refusal to visit the shrine with the old
woman symbolises a scepticism towards her spiritual recourse, her resigned
way of life.
The fifth episode is something of a spiritual sequel to the third. We find
out the driver has been visiting the shrine. Giving a fellow female visitor a
ride, they open up to each other about what they seek. Neither of them
practices worship purely out of faith. The woman prays for her love life
while the driver is unsure about what she wants except having some peace
of mind. Where one requests aid the other searches for relief. The driver’s
renewed attitude to religious practices is reflected in her notable change of
appearance; trendily dressed in the prior episodes, she is now without
make-up, wearing a modest outfit.
Placing the encounter with the prostitute between the episodes of dis-
regarding and accepting religion, Ten encourages us to see it indeed as the
stone that causes the ripples of change in the driver. But the film doesn’t
reveal the precise reasons for that change. Neither does it press such an
inquiry. The uncertainty of purpose that the character admits is a sign of
her lostness. Maybe she doesn’t understand why she turns to religion
either; she needs some time to figure out how to get on with her life; she
is exploring a path previously introduced to her. What this sequence of
vignettes depicts is three women, despite their distinctive problems and
diverging aims, all find a similar solution, pursuing the spiritual path. Their
lives run in parallels.
Coming Together
Such parallels are markers of narrative continuity and thematic coherence.
I have earlier discussed how the film’s two narrative threads work together.
But it is also remarkable how they operate differently from each other. If
one of the threads finds continuity in the mother–son relationship, the
other appears disjointed for its lack of an overarching narrative. These
female episodes invite us to interpret their links, discern their design, and
assess their coherence.
Referring to the religious old lady and the prostitute, Gilberto Perez
notes that the film’s inclusion of these “two women not from the driver’s
class […] signifies their exclusion from her bourgeois story” (2003, 198).
But as we have seen, although the two characters do not share the driver’s
bourgeois concerns, they nonetheless modify the terms of her struggle,

dispatching her to a spiritual quest. This testifies to Ten’s narrative scheme
as a journey where each episode not only clarifies its course but perhaps
revises its destination. As the scattered encounters in the film are in fact
intricately connected, implicating each other, the lives of the female char-
acters are inextricably intertwined.
This is manifested in the obvious and oblique cross-references through-
out the plot. For instance, the young woman in the seventh episode is
something like a foil to the prostitute. They appear in the film’s only two
nocturnal scenes. Though both are lovelorn, the prostitute represents a
dangerous path that the young woman might take. Another pairing is the
prostitute and the pious old lady. They are similarly hidden from view in
their episodes, which subsequently triggers our documentary response.
They respectively stand for enlightenment and corruption, the spiritual
and the profane. The female characters in Ten invite comparison.
Sometimes they are analogous and sometimes they are contrasting. The
movie weaves these individual stories into a tapestry of female experiences.
However, the fragmentary plot also suggests that even though the
women are all up against unjust gender expectations, each has to fight her
own battle. And the film’s exclusive uses of singles further picture their
fights in solitude, condemning them to isolation. Their commonalities do
not automatically make them a community. Are they fighting lost battles,
and for a lost cause? Is Ten lamenting the impossibility of social resistance
and reform?
In the penultimate scene, the driver meets up again with the woman
from the fifth episode. It turns out her prayers are not answered: her lover
has met someone else. Perhaps as an attempt to shed her cumbersome
past, she has shaved her head. Opening up to the driver, she gets emo-
tional and bursts into tears. Then, in perhaps the most beautiful moment
in Ten, the protagonist touches the woman’s face, gently wiping her tear-
drops away. The move is extraordinary: the only time a character inten-
tionally crosses over into another’s partition in the movie is also the sole
physical expression of care and compassion throughout the narrative.26
This unexpected move shatters the young woman’s bubble of sadness—
she laughs (Fig. 3.4). Conversely, this also means that the driver has tran-
scended her own container of isolation for the first time, reaching out to
the other in an act of acknowledgement. What this eloquent gesture envi-
sions is a form of female solidarity that begins with understanding. And it
76 H. L. LAW
is understanding that brings people together, making possible both com-

munities and changes.
An Ethic of Style
Now we are in a better position to appreciate Ten’s ambiguous editing
choices. The act of formal deviation, as we have seen, coincides with the
driver’s moment of change. It is as though the cut inspires her to probe
the possibilities of a spiritual lifestyle. What this exemplifies is an intimate
correlation between editing and narrative, between style and theme. And
this correlation, I suggest, further applies to the movie’s editing scheme as
a whole. It means that the scheme is a systematic articulation of Ten’s cen-
tral subjects of limited personal freedom, repressive gender roles, and
social isolation. The movie achieves a synthesis between form and
meaning.27
More specifically, the dispositif works like the oppressive forces that rel-
egate the women to their “proper” social stations. While the fixed fram-
ings recall the strict gender expectations about female behaviours, the
routined cutting suggests predetermination and evokes a sense of no
escape—“this is the way things were and will be”. It is against this context
of meaning that the formal deviation holds out a promise of change. The
point-of-view image, as it were, introduces the driver to a new way of see-
ing, a way of thinking outside the box of the restrictive framings. This
opens up unexplored paths of her life, whose charting may generate
insights and allow things to work out differently. The formal constraints
make possible this dramatic revelation.
Note that the deviation is a singular occurrence. It is not a change of
the system but a promise of such a change. Ten’s return to the editing
scheme, however, shouldn’t be taken as a belief in the failure of social
reform. The film may not depict the overturning of patriarchy, but it sees
the promise of change in a steady revolution from the ground-up, which
starts with the individual, drawing on the possibilities of resilience and
human understanding. This modest proposal is not defeatist but realistic.
It recognises the bearing of the personal on the political, and therefore
avoids to readily reduce the women’s struggles into a grand narrative of,
in Gilberto Perez’s words, “bourgeois feminism versus Muslim patriar-
chy, or of Western modernity versus Iranian tradition, [which] are seen to
be inadequate to the claims and complexities of life” (2003, 201). Instead
of seeing social injustice as a zero-sum game, Kiarostami is more inter-
ested in revealing its multifaceted nature and its conflicting effects on the
individual. The women’s struggle is an existential as much as a social
condition.
Ten’s form further implicates us into its drama. The constrictive editing
limits our perspective to the dual camera set-ups on the dashboard, as
though we are confined to the inside of the car. This instills a sense of
entrapment into the viewer that matches the driver’s experience of social
captivity. In so doing, the dispositif guarantees not only the charged sig-
nificance of the deviation but also its affective power. The film’s retreat
from the scheme is equally our temporary release from its claustrophobic
mise-en-scène. The moment’s powerful affect, its acute sense of relief,
makes us more sensitive to its significance. Ten’s editing allows its mean-
ings to be felt.
This implication of the spectator is indicative of the ethics of Ten’s style.
Ethics is a pervasive subject in movies, and film style necessarily possesses
78 H. L. LAW
a moral dimension. What is distinctive about Ten is its success in practicing

ethics through a suitable style, and in a way that takes into account our
participation. Rather than moral creeds and dogmatic instructions, the
film envisions ethics as rhetoric, that is, as a movie’s appeal to and engage-
ment with the viewer. To better understand the ethical aspect of Ten, we
can look at its rhetorical strategy.
This brings us back to the pedagogical aspiration of the movie. If Ten
teaches us anything about contemporary female struggles, it doesn’t
develop and deliver that as a single moral. The vignettes fail to add up to
a conclusive message, imparted to us at the end of the movie. Instead, the
film’s lessons are open and dialogical. The emphasis on conversation
allows various perspectives, voiced by the female characters, to be heard
and considered, and perhaps to pit against each other. What emerges is not
a cohesive picture of the social issues in question but a complex view of
their terms and implications. This is far from an analysis of the problems
but a call for our appreciation of the women’s difficulties and dilemmas.
Like what we learn from the driver’s point-of-view shot, the kind of moral
education Ten offers is something of a moral identification; it concerns our
capacity to acknowledge the experiences of others.28 The film’s request of
our acknowledgement sheds light on its countdown structure: concluding
with something like a beginning, it reminds us that the end of the fiction
shouldn’t be the end of its ethical lessons, which are useful to the extent
we may find use of them outside Kiarostami’s “class” and continue to
ponder and practice them in real life. In this way, Ten is a special kind of
road movie which invites us to learns from its journey and take up its
meaningful quest.29
Observations on Part and Whole

If the assessment of a film’s aesthetic scheme, as I suggested, entails a
reflection of its part-whole relationship, then we can shed light on the
ambiguity of Ten’s editing strategy by mapping it in such terms. The fol-
lowing are a couple of tentative thoughts.
1. An intuitive way to map the part-whole relationship in Ten is to see

the deviation as a part dislodged from the whole envisioned by the
dispositif. Not partaking in this whole, the point-of-view shot
appears to have no place in the film’s design, and that becomes a
source of its ambiguity. But if the earlier analysis has revealed oth-
erwise, what is suggested is that the envisioned whole is non-iden-

tical to the film’s aesthetic scheme. The design of the editing
regime has in fact taken into account the deviation; the actual
whole of the movie contains the ambiguity. In other words, the
coming into terms with that ambiguous part is also a renewal of
the conception of the whole. Our experience is akin to seeing both
the detail and the film in a new light, as if they have changed
their meanings.
2. The dispositif of Ten may envision a whole yet it is in fact a system of
parts. If it prescribes the two units—the dual framings—that prevail
in the film, the deviation is the piece that defies this prescription.
That is, the point-of-view shot is a part inconsistent with other parts,
and that partially accounts for its ambiguity. More specifically, this is
an ambiguity at odds with the cohesiveness of these other parts. It is
defined by its unconformity to consistency and cohesion.
3. There are multifarious ways for a part to relate to the whole, and this
is key to the effect of the driver’s point-of-view shot. The shot is not
at all confusing. The disruption of the dispositif and the sudden
switch from quasi-documentary to the fictional register may cause a
mild puzzlement but they do not hinder our understanding of the
narrative action. The detail is perplexing only in some respects and
not others; its different aspects relate to the whole differently. This
further suggests the many shapes of ambiguity. Instead of seeing it
as a zero-sum quality, it is by specifying its type and degree of inten-
sity that we can appropriately gauge its place in the whole.
4. It should be evident that this chapter has been dealing with issues of
coherence, revolving around concepts of part and whole, consis-
tency and cohesion, adherence and deviation. But the aim is not to
claim ambiguity and coherence as antitheses. Instead, my analysis
has sought to establish how the point-of-view shot fits in Ten’s aes-
thetic scheme by answering or illuminating its other parts. This
entails pitting it against the cohesion and consistency otherwise
obtained in the movie. By doing so, we are able to rethink the coher-
ence of the film.
80 H. L. LAW
Unraveling
At the beginning of the chapter, I noted the two-foldness of the Ten’s
editing strategy: the scheme of the dispositif and the moment of deviation.
Accordingly, a study of this strategy is a study of how these two aspects
operate on their own and, most importantly, how they work together.
Mutually implicated, the scheme and the moment require to be consid-
ered jointly. Our critical challenge is therefore to attend to the restriction
and the deviation in light of each other, engaging with their entangled
effects, exploring their complicated achievements.
What this makes evident is that an instance of ambiguity may be a
bundle of difficulties or a series of nested questions. This is why the
ambiguous sometimes defies ready schematisation and resists straight-
forward reading. Moreover, our employment of the term, frequently in
its singular, is liable to obscure its complexity; that it may involve an
amalgam of connected affairs, which further comes with a host of atten-
dant challenges. So, unless these affairs and challenges are identified
and given their due critical attention—each on their own and then col-
lectively—this kind of complex ambiguity would remain underappreci-
ated, in want of a satisfying account. Sometimes what we label ambiguity
is overloaded with referents that it requires careful unpacking to
comprehend.
This careful unpacking is what this chapter aims to achieve with Ten’s
complex editing choices. In Seven Types of Ambiguity, William Empson
observes that ambiguity’s coalescence of meanings, its simultaneity of sug-
gestions, “when teased out [are] too complicated to be remembered
together […] in one glance of the eye; they [have] to be followed each in
turn, as possible alternative reactions” (1961, x). What is entangled or
complicated deserves to be laid out. Analogously, I suggest that it is ben-
eficial, as a critical practice, to unravel an ambiguity’s compact clusters of
concerns into distinct threads of complementary questions. (And I have
further noted the possibility of such questions to take the form of specula-
tive inquiries.) By doing so, we gain a better grasp of what is at issue and
what is at stake, and that paves the way for a satisfying account. Most
importantly, the success of this practice depends on our attunement to the
complex or unexpected ways a film’s questions may manifest. We have
seen how the significance of the driver’s point-of-view shot is enhanced by
taking into account both the scenes before and after. In other words, the
questions it poses become more intelligible and interesting when situated
in context. At the end of the last chapter, I spoke of the difficulty of figur-
ing out the pertinent questions of a movie as well as our imperative to
search for them. Now we are able to see one reason why such a search is
difficult: the identification of productive critical enquiries calls for an
appropriate understanding of the whole. This whole may change as these
questions in turn invite us to rethink the possibilities of the film, enabling
a new conception of its coherence.
Notes
1. The story of the driver draws upon the biography of the performer. And
the driver’s son—the first character introduced in the film—is also Mania’s
son (see Andrew 2005, 36–7). This conflation between fiction and nonfic-
tion is not something we can know but intuit from watching the film. This
intuition, as we shall see, shapes our understanding of the narrative.
2. Kiarostami’s linguistic analogy is worth pondering. Instead of equating
shots to words, which is a familiar claim of film semiotics, he likens a par-
ticular framing to a word, a device to a meaning. This analogy reflects the
repetitive nature of Ten’s editing, but it gives the misleading impression
that the repetitions achieve similar effects or suggestions. The simplicity of
the analogy obscures the complexity of the movie.
3. The awareness of the medium and its various material bases is not alien to
Kiarostami’s cinema. For example, in the famous ending of Taste of Cherry
(1997), the line between life and what lies beyond, the link between fiction
and documentary, is staged as a clash between celluloid image and video
footage. There, video figuratively stands for the daylight of reality that
dispels the illusion of fictional death, the dark ending of the suicide
narrative.
4. Three other vignettes—namely the opening, the third, and the final—are
filmed in this way, focusing on one party of the conversation; the camera
only cuts away upon the termination of the exchange.
5. Obviously, there is a crucial difference between what a filmmaker says they
did and what a viewer thinks they did: while a filmmaker reports the pro-
cess—perhaps with omission, exaggeration, or simplification—a viewer can
only speculate about it. I shall return to the idea of speculation later.
6. The few jump-cuts in the opening scene are cleverly disguised, subtly
embedded into the flow of the action.
7. This is reflected in the film’s production process. Kiarostami reportedly
collaborated closely with his non-professional cast and incorporated their
life situations into the fabric of the film. His creative contribution varies
82 H. L. LAW
between, for instance, giving the performers precise acting instructions,

preparing them for the scenes with informal talks, and letting them impro-
vise on the spot during the shoot (see Andrew 2005, 35–9). His artistic
decision is subsequently to find a treatment that suits both the dramatic
requirements of the scene and the expressive repertoire of the performers;
this treatment may involve employing different strategies towards the two
performers within the same episode—say, allowing one to go “off-script”,
therefore in a way directing or provoking the reaction of the other—so as
to introduce an element of surprise and spontaneity to their interaction.
Ten is a mixture of planning and improvisation.
8. An apt term for this condition is Charles Warren’s “confidence issue”, a
feature of documentary where “[o]ne cannot decisively know that the
images are what they purport to be” (2007, 289).
9. Incidentally, this phrase is a good description of a certain kind of ambiguity.
10. See also Wadia Richards (2013). In film academia, videographic scholar-
ship is an emerging field where imaginativeness really flourishes. I would
also think of the works of Mark Rappaport—including his writings, video
essays, and several of his movies—as speculative, and fruitfully so.
11. This is not Arabshahi whom we see here but an unnamed friend of
Kiarostami’s, see Andrew (2005, 64–5).
12. The switch of viewpoint resembles a teleportation because, as David
Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Jeff Smith (2016) suggest, the reverse
shot suddenly reveals “the opposite end of the axis of action” (2016, 233–4).
13. The term, French in origin, is unfamiliar to English-speaking criticism. It
is frequently translated as “apparatus”: a phrase redolent of technological
connotations, hence over-emphasising the concept’s material dimension.
The translation therefore obscures the usefulness of dispositif to stylistic
analysis. The concept has enjoyed some recent attention, see Albera and
Tortajada (2015) and Kessler (2006, 57–70).
14. Such works include ABC Africa (2001), Ten, Five Dedicated to Ozu
(2003), 10 on Ten (2004), Shirin (2008), and 24 Frames (2017).
15. This is, however, not an allusion to what Roland Barthes (1977) calls “the
third meaning” which is the inarticulable significance of a film still. The
“third film” here emerges when Shirin is in “motion”, being screened.
16. It is Gilberto Perez who speaks of convention as a film’s “transaction with
the audience” (1998, 26). Another way to think of dispositif’s transaction
with the viewer is that of a promise. The breaking of such a promise betrays
our trust. We therefore suspect the film has been dishonest or manipula-
tive. This draws attention to the ethical aspect of style, a topic I will discuss
in this chapter and in Chap. 5.
17. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012) is such a movie, see Dominic Lash’s
“Achieving Coherence: Diegesis and Death in Holy Motors” (2020, 69–87).
18. This sounds temptingly intuitive but cannot be said without caveat.
Withholding implies the existence of an offscreen world, fictional or real.
But such a world doesn’t exist in and for every movie. Some films may feel
centripetal or self-contained enough that the commonsense understanding
of cinematic withholding loses traction: what does the frame withhold in
an abstract animation? Withholding appears to have as much to do with the
fictional world as with the frame.
19. Another way to say all this is that the fictional world feels shrunken,
reduced to the twin snippets which in turn stand in for that world. This
redefines Ten’s onscreen-offscreen dynamics in interesting ways. To begin
with, the onscreen and the offscreen are no longer “open” categories (that
can be, at any given moment, filled by any possible views of the fictional
world) but the exclusive hosts for the two predetermined viewpoints. If the
onscreen and the offscreen are usually related metonymically—a part in
and for the whole—their relationship in Ten appears oppositional: we no
longer situate what we see within the larger fictional world, as it were, but
against the other possible view.
20. Another example is the opening episode, where the driver is withheld from
sight for some sixteen minutes. The delayed entrance of the main character
is unusual; one may not register her importance on the first viewing
because of this treatment.
21. My argument here seems to rehearse a key idea of the theory of suture:
editing creates and capitalises on a felt lack that it is capable of mending.
See Oudart (1977) and Rothman (1975). However, this is only incidental;
my discussion should not be read as an illustration of that theory. My
points are specific to this film.
22. It is a hallmark of a skilful filmmaker to create subtle suggestions with what
seems to be conventional or formulaic editing choices. Even cutting before
or after a line of dialogue could result in a profound change of meaning,
see Henderson (1980, 55–7).
23. At first glance, this seems to magnify the shot’s analytical challenge. But in
fact the “challenge” would no longer be the kind that arrests the practice
of reading. The difficulty of obviousness can be dissolved, as Wittgenstein
would say, by understanding its use within the context.
24. Two examples from Hitchcock’s cinema readily come to mind: (1) when
Jeff (James Stewart) watches Lisa (Grace Kelly) risking her life to gather
incriminating evidence in the wife-murderer’s apartment in Rear Window
(1954); (2) when Scotty (Stewart again!) catches sight of Madeleine (Kim
Novak) at Ernie’s in Vertigo (1958). Note that while (1) consists of optical
POV shots, (2) deploys interesting variations of the convention. These
moments testify to the filmmaker’s artful exploitation of the act of looking.
84 H. L. LAW
25. Maybe this is why the convention is adept at the expression of wanting,
longing, or craving; its cut creates a felt absence central to these acts.
26. The power of this moment draws upon the film’s prior withholding of such
acts and expressions.
27. One may also read the editing scheme as an allergy of artistic creation.
Specifically, it conceives the movie’s creative process as a complex interac-
tion between choice and constraint (i.e., it invokes the same dynamics that
animates the reading of female struggles). At first glance, the dispositif is
the constraint from which the choice of the point-of-view shot departs.
But the dispositif, by definition, is a chosen constraint. Its nature as a deci-
sion is in fact put into sharp relief by the deviation. We have also seen how
the choice of withholding the sex worker appears to flag up censorship but
in fact solicits our speculation about the creative process. What looks like a
constraint, again, turns out to be a strategic decision. Also, as Sam Rohdie
observes, “to choose is to choose constraints” (2006, 118). Every decision
imposes distinctive limits on further choices. All this encourages us to
rethink the nature of the two categories and their roles in artistic creation.
While a focus on constraints/norms tends to conceive filmmaking as prob-
lem-solving, an emphasis on choice highlights the responsibility of the
filmmaker. (Incidentally, this distinction also stands for the divide between
cognitive film studies and interpretative film criticism.) Any useful theory
of film practice/film criticism should take into account the dynamics
between choice and constraint.
28. Murray Smith (1995) calls our moral identification with film characters
“allegiance”.
29. It is also an unusual road movie in which the road is barely shown.
References
Abbott, Matthew. 2016. Abbas Kiarostami and Film-Philosophy. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Albera, François, and Maria Tortajada. 2015. Cine-Dispositives: Essays in
Epistemology Across Media. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Andrew, Geoff. 2005. 10. London: BFI.
Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image, Music, Text. Translated by Stephen Heath.
London: Fontana.
Bordwell, David, Kristin Thompson, and Jeff Smith. 2016. Film Art: An
Introduction. 11th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Britton, Andrew. 2009. Britton on Film: The Complete Film Criticism of Andrew
Britton. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Cheshire, Godfrey. 1996. Abbas Kiarostami: A Cinema of Questions. Film
Comment 34-6 (July/August): 41–43.
Empson, William. 1961. Seven Types of Ambiguity. Middlesex: Pelican Book.

Henderson, Brian. 1980. A Critique of Film Theory. New York: Dutton.
Kessler, Frank. 2006. The Cinema of Attractions as Dispositif. In The Cinema of
Attractions Reloaded, ed. Wanda Strauven, 57–70. Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press.
Klevan, Andrew. 2013. Barbara Stanwyck. London: BFI.
Lash, Dominic. 2020. The Cinema of Disorientation: Inviting Confusions.
Martin, Adrian. 2014. The Rise of the Dispositif. In Mise en scène and Film Style:
From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art, 178–204. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Mulvey, Laura. 1998. Kiarostami’s Uncertainty Principle. Sight and Sound
(June): 24–27.
Oudart, Jean-Pierre. 1977. Suture: Cinema and Suture. Screen 18 (4,
Winter): 35–47.
Perez, Gilberto. 1998. The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
———. 2003. Film in Review: Abbas Kiarostami. The Yale Review 91 (4,
October): 185–201.
———. 2005. Where Is the Director?. Sight and Sound (May): 18–22.
Ray, Robert B. 2008. The ABCs of Classic Hollywood. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press.
Richards, Wadia Rashna. 2013. Cinematic Flashes: Cinephilia and Classical
Hollywood. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Rohdie, Sam. 2006. Montage. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. 2003. Abbas Kiarostami. In Abbas Kiarostami, co-
authored by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, 1–44. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Rothman, William. 1975. Against “The System of the Suture”. Film Quarterly 29
(1): 45–50.
Sibley, Frank. 2001. Approach to Aesthetics: Collected Papers on Philosophical
Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Smith, Murray. 1995. Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion and the Cinema.
Oxford: Clarendon.
Vaughan, Dai. 1998. For Documentary: Twelve Essays. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and
London: University of California Press.
Warren, Charles. 2007. The Confidence Issue: Rouch and Kiarostami. In Building
Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch, ed. Joram Ten Brink, 287–98. New York:
Wallflower Press.
CHAPTER 4
Depth of Suggestion
The Ambiguity of Gesture

Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950) exploits the pregnancy of gesture.
One exemplar is that of a shoulder-grasp. In his article on the film,
V.F. Perkins charts three successive performances of this gesture in the
space of a scene:
The first time, it is a perfunctory and patronizing greeting whose pretence

of warmth is a bare cover for the assertion of superiority. Then, between the
hero and an old friend, it conveys intimacy and genuine regard. Finally,
when a large-mouthed producer uses the shoulders on the hero himself as a
rostrum from which to publicize his latest triumph, it is seen as oppressive
and openly slighting. These moments are significant in their own right, but
their deeper purpose is—in a perfectly ordinary context—to dramatise the
ambiguity of gesture itself. (2006 [1981])
The suggestion of the gesture changes across the scenarios; the import of
each is distinctive to its dramatic situation. The “ambiguity of gesture”
that Perkins speaks of is the contingency of gesture, its dependence upon
context, its malleable meaning.
In this early moment of In a Lonely Place, we are introduced to the
protagonist—screenwriter Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart)—and his
Hollywood friends and enemies in a restaurant. Here, the shoulder-clasps

Switzerland AG 2021
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88 H. L. LAW
offer a vivid portrayal of show business as a trade where performance and

pretence is part of its ordinary commerce. Dix is caught in a world where
insincerity habitually finds the same expression as allegiance—in an all-
too-familiar gesture of affection. It is vital that Dix’s heartfelt shoulder-
grasp stands out against its fraudulent counterparts: his actions match his
feelings. But this intimate relationship between the inter and the outer is
not a guarantee of character transparency but, as we shall see, a source of
enigma. Indeed, the misleading transparency of Dix is something with
which other characters struggle and the viewer must grapple. In a Lonely
Place explores the tension between a gesture’s impression and its meaning,
between its typical import and its unique implication at a narrative
juncture.
There is another shoulder-grasp later in the film, when Dix proposes
marriage to his lover Laurel (Gloria Grahame). She is wary, however, hav-
ing growing doubt about his character as well as his reckless behaviour.
Laurel delays response by fleeing to the kitchen. Dix follows, approaches
her from behind, and clutches her arms with both hands (Fig. 4.1). This
grip sharply contrasts with his gentle gesture of affection in the restaurant
scene. The affection remains but the gentleness is replaced by a tinge of
intimidation. Here, the gesture grows out of Dix’s longing for Laurel. But
far from a loving embrace, it comes across as a means to crush her defence,
holding her hostage. The gesture unleashes the menacing side of the
shoulder-grasp untapped by its prior incarnations: to catch others unaware,
to ambush and coerce. Seizing Laurel from behind, Dix entraps her
between him and the stove. She cannot escape. His firm grips—like a set
of claws—scratches lines of wrinkle on her velvety dress (the silkiness of
the garment has yielded to his force and its paleness has brought out the
scores).
Dix presses his body against Laurel’s. The romantic speech that he
breathes into her ear is alarmingly a chain of commands: “No ‘of course’,
no ‘but’, no ‘why’. ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ will do”. He forbids any further talk and
any second thoughts about the proposal, demanding her definitive answer
right here, right now. The sequence of preemptive denials (“no… no…
no…”) betrays a premonition of defeat, maybe his defeatism; he antici-
pates rejection, rather prematurely, and refuses to accept it. Dix’s uncom-
promising attitude seems to find its source in insecurity. Bogart’s measured
delivery conveys a sense of vulnerability: the gradually softened tone, the
loosened grip, the pained expression. The moment’s nature as a passionate
plea is neither obscured by nor subordinated to its dimension of threat.
4 DEPTH OF SUGGESTION 89
Fig. 4.1 In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
Dix’s grasp here is simultaneously a signifier of profound desire and a

symptom of unsettling, unhealthy possessiveness. It is suspended between
understandings, revealing the tormented interiority of the character.
The revelation of gesture, however, may not be recognised or readily
recognisable. Andrew Klevan remarks on the restaurant scene of In a
Lonely Place: “[t]he sequence shows the power dynamics in ordinary ges-
tures without proclaiming them. It therefore remains faithful to the way
ordinary gestures incorporate power and obscure the dynamics” (2018,
173). Ordinary gestures may not concede their nature or intent; we could
see them without seeing their significance. Perkins, in his seminal book
Film as Film, speaks of the “‘invisible’ effect” of skilful cinematic gestures
(1993, 77). A gesture becomes “invisible” when it achieves a successful
balance between credibility and significance, when its presence is embed-
ded in the narration and its import integrated into the drama. This fluent
transparency allows the pertinent gesture to pass for inconspicuous narra-
tive data. As a result, Perkins suggests, “it does not demand
90 H. L. LAW
interpretation”. But if we study the gesture, “the significance of the

moment is enhanced”. The shoulder-grasps in the restaurant scene are
ample instances of the “invisible effect”. Their presence is not enlarged
with a close-up and their significance not given prominence with the per-
formance. They may go unattended. Perkins’ perceptive analysis not only
illuminates the meaning of the shoulder-grasps but, as shown earlier, fur-
ther guides us to recognise and appreciate the significance of an analogous
gesture in the kitchen. All this testifies to the reward of interpreting the
gestures in this movie, which, in turn, demonstrates the importance of the
interpretation of cinematic gestures.
This chapter examines how In a Lonely Place deploys the ambiguous
gesture to explore character complexity and its drama of doubt. Focusing
on character action and interaction, I will first consider the opaque nature
of Dix, then bringing that to bear on our interpretation of his gestures.
My discussion will look at ambiguity in the two senses raised earlier in the
text: the contingency of gesture—its malleable meaning across scenarios—
as well as the single gesture as an embodiment of conflicting understand-
ings. In other words, it considers gestures as moments and as a pattern,
studying how the individual instances flesh out an overarching dramatic
concern and how this concern finds focus in an individual instance. By
reflecting upon the stakes and significance of gestures, especially when
they are contingent or confounding, the film explores issues of philosophi-
cal scepticism, of the knowledge of oneself and others.
The gestures under scrutiny here are to a large extent ordinary and
“invisible”. But they may be more recognisable as salient actions—for they
are given more visual emphasis, for example, with a tighter framing—in
comparison to the three shoulder-grasps. (Note that a detail’s “visibility”
is a variable depending on, among many things, a viewer’s disposition and
familiarity with a film.) Their significance may however remain difficult to
fully fathom, even when registered, without an in-depth analysis of their
pertinence to motive, thought, and feeling, prior to an inquiry into the
deeper reasons for character deed and decision. This chapter unpacks such
notions of reading in depth and reading for deeper reasons. Putting in
dialogue the issues of depth and interpretation, I suggest, opens up an
alternative way to conceive and characterise ambiguity.
An Opaque Character
In a Lonely Place recounts a story of love doomed by doubt. Dix falls in
love with Laurel at the same time as he finds himself the chief suspect of a
murder. The suspicion plot then complicates the romantic prospect. As a
witness to several of Dix’s outbursts, Laurel becomes alert to his propen-
sity for violence. She starts to have doubts about Dix, of whether he mur-
dered Mildred Akinson (Martha Stewart) and of whether he is capable of
murder. Her mistrust drives Dix to increasingly aggressive behaviour,
which in turn “confirms” and heightens her suspicion. Eventually, Laurel
is consumed by her doubt—Dix’s forced marriage proposal is the last
straw—and has made plans to leave him. In the final confrontation, Dix is
overtaken by rage and nearly strangles Laurel. His awful act is interrupted
by a call from the police. They have arrested Mildred’s murderer, and that
leaves Dix in the clear. But the truth doesn’t matter anymore. The cou-
ple’s relationship has reached a point beyond repair; their love now lays in
ruins. In dejection they part.
Did Dix Kill?

In a Lonely Place’s drama of suspicion can be, as suggested, sorted into
two related enquiries: whether Dix has killed Mildred and whether he is
capable of killing. The two are interlaced and mutually informing. But it is
worth separating them for analysis. Each opens up a host of distinctive
issues about narrative and narrational strategy.
The issue of Dix’s culpability is eluded with an unobtrusive narrative
omission. On the night of the murder, the film fades out on the image of
Mildred leaving Dix’s apartment and cuts to the morning after. We do not
see how she is killed and do not know what he does for the rest of the
night. And we don’t even hear him closing the door behind her. (The slow
fade-out here, in retrospect, underlines what is omitted, serving as a con-
templative “dot-dot-dot” or a foreboding “and then she…”.) It is there-
fore not, as Perkins remarks, “clear that Humphrey Bogart’s Dix did not
kill her” (1992, 223). But the claim is more an overemphasis than a mis-
guided assertion. The innocence of the character is a wishful belief—
though not an unreasonable expectation, considering Bogard being a star
and Dix being the protagonist—rather than a verified detail. This belief
could have been easily substantiated, for example, by depicting Dix fast
asleep. (Note also the omission of Laurel’s witnessing of Mildred’s
92 H. L. LAW
departure.1) Instead, the film’s treatment yields neither a guarantee nor a

repudiation of Dix’s innocence but leaves it unclarified, more a product of
intuition.2
Dix’s culpability is however by no means a prioritised inquiry. It is not
posed as an urgent question whose answer is paramount to any appropri-
ate understanding of the movie. Its relevance and implication are not fully
fleshed out by the film. The narrative is not that of a whodunit; it hardly
takes interest in the detection and the identity of the murderer. It is vital
to the movie’s drama of doubt that Dix’s innocence is only disclosed in the
finale. As a result, this remains a relevant inquiry throughout the film. The
question of Dix’s guilt remains pertinent but not pressed and lingering as
a narrative undercurrent. It undergirds the central plot of suspicion.
Can Dix Kill?

In a Lonely Place’s careful narrative omission has important dramatic con-
sequences. A prompt reveal of Dix’s innocence would place the movie in
the thematic domain of the “wrongfully-accused man” (notably a
Hitchcockian territory). Other characters’ suspicion of Dix could then
appear unfair, misguided, or cruel. The last-minute confirmation allows
for a sense of necessity, perhaps urgency, to these doubts; they are not
presented as undue or misconceived despite clashing with our plausible
expectation of innocence. So why is Dix susceptible to wrongful suspi-
cion? Why does he look like a killer?
Dix has a bad reputation for being a brute. His abusive, savage behaviours
are widely chronicled in the newspapers, as the stuff of sensational tabloid
drama. (We see such clippings, briefly, in a police report. Their veracity is of
course questionable. And that’s the point.) More disturbing though is the
character’s irascibility. He exhibits an eagerness for brutality during the credit
sequence and rushes into a fistfight in the subsequent scene. He seems to have
anger issues or angry impulses; it is uncertain whether “madness” (both in the
senses of being unhinged and being enraged) is a symptom or the source. At
one point, Dix goes rampant and comes close to killing a man during a road-
rage incident. All this indicates the character’s struggle with self-control. It is
therefore not impossible to picture him “completely losing it” at any moment.
It is a reasonable worry that Dix is a ticking bomb of murderous instincts
which may eventually go off, realising his potential of killing.3
It is important, however, to complicate this worry. Robert Pippin
(2012a) usefully points out the problem of seeing In a Lonely Place as the
unmasking of Dix’s “real”, murderous nature. Such a conception, by pos-

iting murderousness as a concealed aspect of the character, grossly sche-
matises the film’s achievement of psychological intricacy.
Pippin’s argument draws upon Stanley Cavell’s work on philosophical
scepticism, which concerns our capacity for—but most tragically, our dif-
ficulty in—understanding other minds.4 The topic traditionally inquires
about the possibility of knowledge: what we know and how we come to
know about others’ feelings and thoughts. This is a quest for certainty. But
the notions of knowledge and certainty, Cavell suggests, misconstrue what
is at stake (see Hammer 2002, 63–8). There is only so much we know and
there is not much we come to know for certain. It is therefore vital to
rethink our framework of understanding others.
Cavell’s intervention is the introduction of acknowledgement.
Acknowledgement is not a retreat from knowledge; instead it requires us
to do something with our knowledge. Imagine, if I see you moaning, with
tiny droplets streaming down your face, it would be absurd of me—unless
I have very strong reasons—to step back and seek to ascertain you are cry-
ing. I wouldn’t just take a mental note of your sadness either. I wouldn’t
stop with that. In light of what I see (in the broadest sense), I will instead
try to comfort you or offer you a handkerchief. Put simply, to acknowl-
edge others is to become attuned to the claims of their actions and expres-
sions on us, and this attunement involves reacting accordingly or
appropriately.5 This elicits a moral responsibility (even though our response
may not be moral). Acknowledgement is not always straightforward—
despite the simplicity of the above example and formulation—and is typi-
cally, in Pippin’s words, “a struggle of some sort”. Social intercourse can
then be conceived as a mutual struggle, a dialogue of acknowledgement:
continuous, consequential, challenging. Acknowledgement stands for a
possibility of meaningful human bonding but it may equally be where the
collapse of communication lies.
The “unmasking-Dix” explanation mistakes our hindsight (e.g., his
attempt to kill Laurel) for a fact about the character (i.e., he is a killer).
According to this view, the failure of recognition, to have “caught him
out” earlier, is a failure of knowledge: “If only I’d known Dix better I
would have recognised his murderousness”. (This further represents a
simplistic, essentialist conception of human identity.) This view fails to
appreciate the complexity of character interaction, the mutual struggle for
understanding in the movie. It is worth pointing out that despite being
quick-tempered, Dix hardly displays “homicidal fury” from the start. As
94 H. L. LAW
Pippin argues, his rage is more accurately a reaction, as it dawns on him

that his trust in others—painfully, in Laurel—has been betrayed. This is
unbearable. Dix “is wounded, he changes, and then, and only then, does he
begin to evince what could be, and are taken to be, indications that he
really is ‘capable of murder’”. In other words, other characters, especially
Laurel, are morally implicated in Dix’s escalating violence, in abetting his
“capability to kill”. Their doubt and his rage feed into each other. The film
dramatises the failure of acknowledgement, the tragic repercussions of
misunderstanding.
The Uncertainty of Understanding

Dix is indeed hard to understand. In James Harvey’s words, the character
is “dangerous, mysterious, unalterably ambiguous” (2001, 150). Perhaps
this explains other characters’ compulsion to talk about him, about how
callous he is and how perplexing his actions are.6 He is an enigma to be
figured out.
The viewer is privy to pertinent information about Dix that are denied
to the characters. Two notable cases are him sending bouquets to
Mildred’s funeral7 and monetary compensation to the motorist he
assaulted. These respectively point to Dix’s compassion and repentance.
He is not without scruples like some characters believe. But the decision
to keep these actions anonymous exemplifies his disregard for public
opinions and, most importantly, his refusal to make his feelings accessi-
ble to others. Dix’s warped self-reliance makes him vulnerable to preju-
dice and misapprehension.
The above actions, as afterthoughts, are also evidence of Dix’s delayed
self-knowledge.8 The meaning of his deeds always comes to him overdue,
if not all-too-late. Most disastrously, this is the case with his acts of aggres-
sion. Pippin observes a kind of “passive agency” characteristic of doomed
film noir heroes: “events seem to come at them rapidly and slam into
them, leaving them stunned, with little time of reflective space to deliber-
ate, but having to respond and act nevertheless” (2012b, 17). Dix’s
destructive actions similarly manifest a sense of urgency, except he seems
to act without or in advance of thinking. There is a sense that he is in a
daze or being driven, cut off from motive and consequence, and frighten-
ingly blind to reality and reason. So more than being “passive”, it can be
said that he is “possessed” during his violent fits. Temporarily losing
control of himself, as though compelled by forces beyond his understand-

ing, Dix is unaware of what he is doing.
This failure to know himself points to the character’s self-opacity.9 Self-
opacity describes the condition when our deeds and decisions are not
intelligible to us, because our motives and feelings may become clear or
comprehensible belatedly or not at all. And such a lack of self-knowledge
or punctual self-knowledge can lead to our unsatisfying accounts of our
own actions and agency. Note that self-knowledge may come in degrees,
it is possible that we recognise our motives and feelings only partially or
we understand some aspects of our action but mistake others. So accord-
ingly, self-opacity also admits degrees. And this is why it is a thorny issue
with regard to film characters. It is not always straightforward to discern
what and how much they know or do not know about themselves. And in
a fictional world, as in real life, this discernment is often further entangled
with the difficult question of what the characters know or do not know
about each other. All this requires our sustained and careful interpretation.
As we shall see, the issue of self-opacity haunts Dix’s gestures throughout
the movie. Specifically, he seems alien to their effects and significance,
unable to fathom their tolls on others and revelations about himself. This
adds to the enigma of the character by introducing a layer of complication
to his intent and purpose, posing a challenge to reading. To what extent is
Dix cognisant of his action?
Appreciating Film Character

So, how do we approach and analyse challenging film characters? Film
Studies’ sustained investigation of narrative has curiously left out character
as a distinct area of interest.10 Character typically serves as a locus for other
critical concerns, for example, as an ingredient of star persona, as embod-
ied representation of gender and race, and as a vessel for audience identi-
fication.11 In such cases, the significance of individual characters are seldom
emphasised even when examined. It is worth inquiring into the possibility
of understanding character as character.
One such analytic avenue is to dwell upon what characters do and what
they mean, prioritising the study of action and agency. This position is
exemplified by the work of Robert Pippin. His monograph on film noir,
for instance, accounts for the baffling acts and obscure motivations of
iconic noir protagonists and, in so doing, renews our understanding of the
genre’s much-discussed modalities of fate and determinism (2012b). The
96 H. L. LAW
practice is predicated on screen character’s affinity with real people—not

least physically, but notably—the possession of an “inner life”. To make
sense of character behaviour requires us to pursue, among other things,
matters of motive and feeling, and to comprehend the role of belief and
experience in action. The strategy is akin to our everyday inspection of
other people. And similar to our interaction with real people, the discern-
ment of character interiority is necessarily the assessment of particularities:
“what does this character mean by doing this in that situation?”, “how
does his or her specific means of delivery complicate meaning?”, “how
does his or her unique background contribute to such a choice?”, and so
on.12 One fruitful way to engage character as character is to interpret var-
iegated specimens, exploring the interest of their action and the depth of
their inner life.
This approach is profitable towards the examination of ambiguity.13 To
begin with, by avoiding a reductive, flattened view of character—as a mere
vehicle for narrative linearity—it is less susceptible to schematic interpreta-
tion. To give an example, our awareness of the potential nuances of inten-
tion would prevent us from any unreflective acceptance of character
speech; there may be a gap between what a character says and what he or
she means or means to say. Moreover, it allows us to recognise character
ambiguity as different from—or at least, more than just—a lack of goal or
motivation.14 Ambiguity is affiliated with but not defined by such lacks. In
the most interesting cases, it instead comes from the presence of a compli-
cated motive or conflicting attitudes towards one’s goal. An attention to
character inner life may yield a more sophisticated understanding of narra-
tive, of how and why things happen in the fictional world. This enriches
our appreciation of a film’s human drama.15
What a character does and what he or she means is a pressing question
in In a Lonely Place. It is pressing because their actions, especially Dix’s,
preserve only “the strength of feeling” and “not its nature”. As Perkins
perceptively remarks, “neither hero nor heroine is sure whether the man’s
embrace is protective and loving or threatening, murderous” (2006).
Many of Dix’s gestures are like that—demonstrative and disconcerting—
simultaneously advancing meanings and suspending our judgement. Our
interpretative task is, importantly, multi-folded. Consider the embrace.
Not only should we account for the threat of the gesture but also the
couple’s awareness or certainty of it. And we need to further explicate how
the film directs us to see the threat, her doubt, and his seeming oblivion.
All this requires a special attention to both the matters of character
interiority and the matters of film form, of how character and form work
together to articulate meaning and grade significance. This is the concern
of the rest of the chapter.
Unsettling Gestures
A Lover’s Embrace?
Dix and Laurel’s beach picnic with the Nicolais (Frank Lovejoy and Jeff
Donnell) comes to an abrupt end when he learns about her secret interview
with Captain Lochner (Carl Benton Reid). Crazed, Dix drives away with
Laurel, recklessly, putting their lives in jeopardy. He then almost crushes a
man’s skull with a rock. Seemingly calm during the ordeal, Laurel’s faith in
Dix is in fact put to the test. “Laurel’s problem”, Perkins observes, “is that
it is not enough to know that Dix is innocent of murder. She needs to feel
able to deny that he is, in Lochner’s words, an erratic, violent man, or that
killing has a fascination for him” (1992, 299). Such a denial has now become
unsustainable. We see glimpses of Laurel’s growing worry.16
The sight of Laurel’s disquiet prompts Dix’s recognition of his awful
actions—characteristically belatedly. He then pulls over at a deserted spot
off the road while she strengthens her guard. Perhaps he wants to apolo-
gise? Dix embraces her with one arm. But Laurel doesn’t see this as com-
forting but distressing. Her unease is divulged by a swallowed gasp.
Frightened or startled by Dix’s gesture, Laurel nonetheless seeks to sup-
press her reaction. Having seen what she has seen—Dix’s murderous
rage—Laurel is now wary of him, and worrying about displaying her wari-
ness. Here, her worry is reasonable but its object is somewhat imaginary:
she is afraid of what he is capable of doing (to her) which can be as horrify-
ing as her imagination allows. Grahame’s performance is expressive but
not assertive; she articulates Laurel’s waxing fear and waning faith without
losing her sense of poise. Note that Dix indeed performs his embrace
more than a touch aggressively. Instead of resting on the shoulder, his arm
serpentines her neck, strongarming her to him (Fig. 4.2). It looks like—
for a split second—he is trying to suffocate her. Does Laurel imagine that?
Is the embrace, in Perkins’ words, “protective and loving or threatening,
murderous”? It is uncertain.
Dix seems unaware of the strength of his embrace. And people who
don’t know their own strength are prone to excessive force without know-
ing, hurting others without intending to. Yet our intention is not
98 H. L. LAW
consistently available for inspection (or introspection)—like recalling a

piece of knowledge—but often revealed by—becoming knowable
through—our action. Dix’s forceful embrace makes known his aggressive-
ness; he could have meant to harm Laurel without realising.
Ironically, the embrace evokes how Dix pictures Mildred’s murder.
During his dinner with the Nicolais, Dix hypotheses about the murder
taking place in a moving vehicle, “in a lonely place in the road”—not
unlike the above moment with the central couple. One hand on the wheel,
the killer, Dix believes, strangled the victim with his right arm. He then
invites Brub and Sylvia to stage the scenario, directing them. The scene
takes a sudden turn to the ominous as Dix recounts the killing in vivid
details. Suspenseful music creeps in while his face is theatrically lit, ablaze
with sinister excitement. Performing an imaginative chokehold, he further
instructs Brub to “squeeze harder”. (In the reaction shot, we see the hus-
band, as though hypnotised, suffocating his wife.) It is as if Dix is seeing
the murder in his mind’s eye, enacting it vicariously. Not only does the
scene foreground his disturbing identification with the murderer, it also

casts his subsequent embraces under the shadow of the murderous
stranglehold.
Back to the couple’s scene in the car. The false alarm hardly relieves
Laurel’s vigilance, especially with Dix’s arm still hanging around her neck.
Upon his request for a cigarette,17 Laurel abruptly leans back, strikes a
pause—perhaps pondering her next step—and swiftly turns away from
him. She eventually reaches for the cigarettes. It seems that Laurel’s move-
ments also serve as a furtive attempt to undo Dix’s firm grip. They are
ungainly but tactful. We come to recognise the tact because we notice the
off-key ungainliness. These moves are further timed with sudden blasts of
brass on the soundtrack, which teases a sense of menace, mimicking the
scene’s rise and release of suspense.18 The tension of the moment finally
dissipates when Dix withdraws his arm to smoke. But Laurel stays stiffly
on guard, maintaining her distance. Throughout the scene, Dix fails to
observe the telltale signs of Laurel’s doubt and caution: the passivity, the
darting eyes, and the detachment.
The film doesn’t take an exclusive interest in Laurel’s perspective. The
moment is more than a private drama of suspicion. Her reactions are
expressive but not emphasised by the framing. Instead, the scene is filmed
as a series of two-shots. This facilitates not only a study of Laurel’s alert-
ness but also of Dix’s oblivion. We can see that she is afraid to speak her
mind, but her thoughts and feelings are already bespoken by her demean-
ours. We also witness his effort to reach out to her, but his actions—with-
out him noticing—works against his best intentions. He couldn’t see her
doubt and she couldn’t help seeing him suspiciously. The pair are trapped
in their own perspective, unable to acknowledge what the other is experi-
encing. In a Lonely Place’s tragedy of misunderstanding is a tragedy about
the limited point-of-view—an all-too-human limitation.
It is suitable that a scene about character inarticulacy, the difficulty of
expressing oneself, closes with much unsaid, with “borrowed” sentiments.
On their ride home, Dix recites a passage he has been working on and asks
Laurel (now the driver) where it should go in his screenplay. The farewell
note, she says. Then he wants her to recite it. Laurel stops before the last
line, unable to finish, as if hitting upon a sobering thought. The passage
describes a man’s life renewed by a woman’s love, and the ruination of this
life due to the loss of that love (“I was born when she kissed me/I died
when she left me/I lived a few weeks while she loved me”). Dix is not
speaking these words in the first person. But it is not hard to see their
100 H. L. LAW
personal resonance: he too is reborn through love. (Is this what inspires
the lines?) What he doesn’t know, however, is that the sentiment of the
passage is prophetic of his breakup with Laurel. The speech will become
her farewell note at the end. She will pick up her unfinished line, saying
what she couldn’t say here. And she will mean it, making it her own—”I
lived a few weeks while you loved me”. Not only foreshadowing the finale,
the exchange in the car also signifies the beginning of the end: the couple’s
relationship has now reached a point of no return; their love is fast expir-
ing. The sequence concludes with Dix wrapping his arm—once again—
around Laurel, resting on her seat. Affection or intimidation? She steals a
glance. Doubt lingers (Fig. 4.3).
A Killer’s Kiss?
The undoing of the Dix and Laurel’s romance has been forewarned at its
dawn. The film draws attention to Dix’s overbearing passion and its

looming hazard during the couple’s first kiss. James Harvey perceptively
describes Dix’s kiss as “vampirelike”. In a high-angle shot, Dix hovers
above Laurel, “tak[es] her face in his hands, fingers on her throat, lifting
her mouth to his” (2001, 151).19 He looks like a menacing presence, prey-
ing on Laurel, perhaps strangling her (Fig. 4.4). His kiss represents a mur-
derous love.
Vampirism is indeed a potent metaphor for Dix’s consuming passion.
Pippin (2012a) speaks of the asymmetrical expectations of the couple: “his
desperate desire to be loved”, revealed in his speech before the first kiss, is
a sharp contrast to Laurel’s composed articulation of desire, exemplified
by her teasing remark “I am interested”. This imbalance leaves Dix inse-
cure, vulnerable. His threatening possessiveness, seen in many of his ges-
tures, can be read as a symptom of his insatiable thirst for love—like a
vampire’s lust for blood—an unhappy compensation for his impotence. It
is when Dix finds out about Laurel’s “betrayal” that his possessiveness

102 H. L. LAW
evolves into destructive fury. He is compelled to destroy what he cannot

possess.
A reversed image of the first kiss is seen later: this time, Laurel is
approaching Dix from above (Fig. 4.5). The kiss does not look “vampire-
like” but is equally indicative of his appetite for affection. Dix circles his
arm around Laurel’s head, palm on the crown, and presses her down to
him. From a performance perspective, it would have been easier for Bogart
to embrace Grahame’s head from her left. But the resultant gesture would
look more natural, and less forceful onscreen. Alternatively, if Bogart have
done it with his other arm, Grahame’s face could have been obstructed.
The gesture, as it is, looks contrived, and this contrivance subtlety intro-
duces a note of coercion to the kiss without denying its tenderness. After
all, it is a “goodnight” kiss. But the gesture points to a need to fix Laurel
in place, keeping her close and not letting her go. Indeed, Dix is always
seen holding her too tight, dragging her towards him, or keeping her head

still. His gestures of affection often resemble gestures of entrapment. Dix’s

love can be oppressive.
Moments of Recognition
“I will never let you go!” Dix declares while subduing Laurel in the cli-
mactic confrontation (Fig. 4.6). He just finds out about her plan to flee
the wedding, her lie about wanting to marry him. Dix’s chokehold is a
mirror image of his caress during the proposal scene (Fig. 4.7): the reversed
composition, the darkened colour palette. It is as though everything has
gone awry in Dix’s world. The chokehold, in retrospect, testifies to the
potential threat of the caress. The menacing aspect of Dix’s gesture, pres-
ent from the start, brewing throughout the movie, is at the end materi-
alised in a homicidal attempt.
Suddenly, the telephone rings. And the ringing sound, like an oppor-
tune alarm, snaps Dix out of his murderous daze. Stunned, he let go of

104 H. L. LAW
Laurel. His confusion about what he is doing gradually gives way to a

painful realisation of what he has done. He then utters a word, an inau-
dible word. Stanley Cavell has written about the possibility of being
“struck dumb” when made to confront the significance of our deeds;
when we realise we couldn’t come to terms with what we do; and when we
don’t recognise or understand what we mean by doing that (see note 9).
Dix is here “struck dumb” by what he was meant to do. He takes a pause
before picking up the call, recovering from his unspeakable action.
There is an analogous moment during the road-rage fight. Just when
Dix is about to bash the skull of the other motorist, he suddenly freezes,
shocked by the severity of his action. This is the first time both Dix and
Laurel (and the viewer) recognise his capacity for killing—a pivotal point
for the subsequent narrative. The event is particularly key to a better
understanding of his marriage proposal. Dix’s outburst during the beach
picnic, Perkins observes, is a result of, among other things, “the articula-
tion of the marriage prospect”: the character is more concerned about
what Laurel may have talked about (marriage) than whom she has talked
to (Lochner) behind his back (1992, 231). The marriage proposal, taking
place on the next occasion the couple meet, is therefore surprising. But
the film’s rapid unravelling of narrative action could distract us from this
surprise, obscuring a pertinent question: what makes marriage something
Dix “wants to rush into” if it is initially what “panics him”?
The answer seems to lie in the events succeeding the picnic, in the char-
acter’s realisation of his murderous brutality. Dix tells Laurel all he needs
is “a push” to get married. It is possible that he has come to register—
perhaps without fully understanding it—the intricate link between his
worsening violence and his desire to be loved. This allows us to see his
compulsion to marry, his need to secure love, as the result of a (likely)
unconscious wish to put a stop to his violence. That is, it is his effort to
redeem himself, to save himself from himself. The irony is that it is already
too late to save his relationship with Laurel: she has made up her mind
about leaving him. Both characters have reached a vital realisation after the
catastrophic night of the beach picnic. But the film only depicts Laurel
agonising over her decision while leaving Dix’s urge to wed to our
interpretation.
It is only when he confronts his attempt to suffocate Laurel that Dix
finally catches up with what we have witnessed all along (Fig. 4.8): the
violence of his gesture, the threat of his passion, and the murderousness of
his love—in other words, his ambiguity. This self-understanding, as always,
arrives tragically late. At the end it doesn’t matter that Dix is innocent of
Mildred’s murder; in Laurel’s mind, he is guilty of being murderous, of
trying to kill her. There is nothing left to be said between them. They part.
Both characters know that their love cannot be revived. It has perished
because of her mistrust and guardedness, as well as his violence and inse-
curity. In a sense, the lovers have killed their love.
The Depth of Understanding

Grasping the difficulty in its depth is what is hard.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1998, 55e)
In his article on the film, Perkins further celebrates an “invisible” yet illu-
minating gesture during the proposal scene (1992, 231). Preparing break-
fast for Laurel, Dix removes the curve of a grapefruit knife, picking the
right tool for the task but making a wrong correction. This can be taken
106 H. L. LAW
as a sign of “his unfamiliarity with domestic routine” or of “an anxious

desire to be of service”. But these readings, Perkins observes, do not go
far enough. He highlights the fact that the gesture has (inadvertently or
unconsciously) turned the utensil into a weapon, “something more like a
dagger”. This makes clear Dix’s unknowing penchant for violence. “In its
reconciliation of clarity with depth of suggestion, in its extraordinary mix-
ture of charm, humour and violence”, Perkins concludes, “this moment is
representative of the film’s achievement” (231).
It is not uncommon to conceive a film’s suggestion “geologically”, dis-
tinguishing between surface and deep(er) meanings.20 If surface meanings
are obvious, readily available, deep(er) meanings are obscured, more dif-
ficult to access. This divide allows for the distinction between what a film
means (i.e., depth) and what it says (i.e., surface), and consequently the
possibility for the film to mean differently from what it says.21 It is often
assumed that deep(er) meanings are more authentic, profound, and
worthy than “surface meanings”, and therefore should be what criticism

seeks and secures; that is, to detect, decode, and unearth.
It is, however, not easy to dissect the grapefruit-knife gesture into layers
of meaning. Its violent implication—the supposedly deep meaning—is not
exactly obvious but it is not in any sense obscured either. It is not hidden
behind or buried under the act of correcting. Nor is it a dissident or sub-
versive reading of the action. Instead, Dix’s erroneous modification repre-
sents his unconscious threat. This suggestion is grounded upon, revealed
by, or embodied in the gesture. It is less about “the depth” we didn’t
previously see than a fresh way of seeing “the surface”. The implication of
violence is not a deep meaning but, more accurately, an enhanced under-
standing of the moment.
“Depth” can be indeed a mark of rewarding interpretation. As a meta-
phor, Alexander Nehamas suggests, depth is “less an indication of the
location of what we understand and more of the quality of the under-
standing we are able, sometimes, to reach: the deeper it is, the more it
encompasses” (2007, 123–4). It has been the aim of this chapter to
develop a deeper understanding of Dix in this particular sense, by explor-
ing his pattern of ambiguous gestures throughout the movie. Specifically,
this calls for an appreciation of the way these gestures hold conflicting
meanings productively in tension. Rather than, as Perkins remarks, being
“protective and loving or threatening, murderous”, Dix’s actions in fact
balance the two sets of readings. An attention to the gestures’ equivocal
nature, to the correspondences between the opposite suggestions, makes
possible a nuanced account of the character’s complex interiority: his con-
flation between passion and possessiveness, his angst-induced anger, and
his murderous love.
To arrive at a deeper account of the character, we need to perform
detailed and in-depth reading. Inspired by the work of Pippin, I have out-
lined the benefits of pursuing character agency and action. This has to do
with, in the case of Dix, the state of his self-knowledge, of whether he
recognises the significance of his deed, of what he means by what he does.
We are encouraged to inquire into why he does what he does—for exam-
ple, why does he change his mind about marriage?—and into the perti-
nent reason for his action—that is, his likely subconscious realisation of
Laurel’s affection as the cure to his violence. Our task is to dwell on these,
sometimes very difficult, “why” questions and come up with a framework
to account for Dix’s ambiguous actions and gestures, both as a pattern and
as individual instances, in an intelligible, interesting, or illuminating way.
108 H. L. LAW
Such an account is in-depth because it explores the character’s deeper

reasons; it is detailed because it examines the film’s array of narrative and
stylistic elements as well as their configurations. Drawing special links
between ambiguity and the notion of depth, this chapter has highlighted
a salient but neglected aspect of the aesthetic category: ambiguity not only
accommodates a range of readings, it is also a call for the productive dwell-
ing on these readings. It can be both the multiplicity and the depth of
meaning. This is a reason why ambiguity is difficult.
One might wonder whether the practice of reading character in-depth
and in detail runs the risk of sliding into what is commonly called “over-
reading”. For example, my account of Dix’s rushed marriage proposal
appears to go into too much detail about his psychological depth: how can
I know about these “deeper”, half-developed feelings and thoughts? how
can I know for sure? This resembles the challenges of philosophical scepti-
cism discussed earlier. But as Cavell suggests, the true moral of scepticism
is that we need not resort to hyperbolic worry about our knowledge and
certainty about others. The day-to-day practice of interpreting other peo-
ple, after all, often involves reasonable speculation and guesswork.22 Our
interpretation of screen characters, like that of real people, is seldom, if at
all, measured against the “truth” but what we can readily see. The merit of
a particular interpretation needs to be put to the test, lying in whether it
facilitates a better grip on the character, in how it sheds light on his or her
actions, in how well it yields pertinent psychological insights. My deeper
account of Dix is of course only one viable interpretation; one among oth-
ers.23 But I believe this is one which succeeds to illuminate and appreciate
the difficulty of the character. The topic of “overreading”, however,
indeed warrants investigation, especially considering this book’s engage-
ment with interpretative uncertainty. We shall return to this issue in Chap.
6, which will address the worry of “overreading” what seems to be acci-
dental or erroneous.
Notes
1. This is Dix’s sole alibi. The significance of this omission is made clear by
Laurel’s later doubt about Dix. This doubt not only, as Dana Polan sug-
gests, “would indicate that her original observations allow for the possibil-
ity that Dix could have found a way to kill the hatcheck girl” (1993, 65),
but it also implies that she may not have actually witnessed such a scene
(see Pippin 2012a, n5). This then reveals something about Laurel, perhaps
her trust in her own intuition about people.
2. Chapter 6 further explores how our assumptions inform our interpretative
orientation.
3. The fact that even Dix’s close friend Mel (Art Smith) has doubt about
Dix’s innocence indicates the urgency of this worry.
4. Cavell’s examination of scepticism in tragedies is intertwined with his
reflection on the tragic aspects of scepticism, see, for example, “The
Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear” (2002).
5. Acknowledgement is therefore not a particular type of response “but a
category in terms of which a given response is evaluated” (Cavell
2002, 263–4).
6. This can take the form of Martha’s (Ruth Gillette) insidious words of gos-
sip that corrode Laurel’s faith in Dix.
7. This contradicts Dix’s professed indifference towards Mildred’s death
(something the police hold against him). Perhaps he doesn’t want to
look “soft”.
8. A further suggestion is that Dix doesn’t do the “right” thing and cannot
do the “right” thing at the “right” time. He straightens the supposedly
crooked grapefruit knife (and fails to correct it after the mistake is pointed
out to him); he discusses the unappetising topic of murder at the dinner
table. The character is inept at social convention and etiquette; he some-
what frustrates society’s idea of normality.
9. The following passage by Cavell eloquently formulates the issues of (self-)
opacity. It is primarily about speech but also applicable to action and ges-
ture: “whatever words are said and meant are said and meant by particular
men, and that to understand what they (the words) mean you must under-
stand what they (whoever is using them) mean, and that sometimes men
do not see what they mean, that usually they cannot say what they mean,
that for various reasons they may not know what they mean, and that when
they are forced to recognize this they feel they do not, and perhaps cannot,
mean anything, and they are struck dumb” (2002, 270).
10. Volumes devoted to film character are scarce. They include Michaels
(1998), Eder et al. (2010), and Rils and Taylor (2019).
11. See, respectively, Smith (2012), Doane (1991), and Smith (1995).
12. Cavell notes: “the individual significance of an act (like that of a word)
arises in its being this one rather than every other that might have been said
or done here and now” (1995, 153).
13. It is also important to point out a major risk of this approach. Pippin’s
monograph on the Western, Gilberto Perez suggests, occasionally reads
the movies “too psychologically” and, as a result, neglects other, some-
times more salient, aspects of their achievement (2019, 33–9). Some of the
110 H. L. LAW
discussions in this book are inspired by Pippin’s work. I hope the insights
gained from the analysis of character are the justification of such an inter-
est. Moreover, Chap. 2 has demonstrated how the engagement with char-
acter psychology allows us to see Ten’s political significance.
14. Such a position is implied in Bordwell (2008).
15. Pippin’s approach further accommodates the fact that a screen character is
embodied by a human performer, with his or her own thought and feeling.
How the two layers of “inner life” overlap is a key question both to the
theorising of film character and the appreciation of film performance.
16. Throughout the movie, Dix’s explosive temperament is offset by Laurel’s
mannered self-possession. If his gestures are demonstrative and impas-
sioned, hers are reticent, poised, at times calculated, see also Perkins
(1992, 227).
17. Earlier during the drive, Dix refuses Laurel’s offer of a cigarette. This has
symbolic significance. We have seen that smoking is something like an inti-
mate ritual for the couple in the piano bar scene. Both their moment of
closeness and moment of crisis are charted by their willingness to share a
moment of smoking. Later in this scene, it is Laurel who refuses Dix’s offer
of a cigarette.
18. The film’s conflation of passion and violence—exemplified by Dix’s ges-
tures—is somewhat simulated by its music, which is prone to change its
emotional register rapidly, sometimes awkwardly: from wistful to forebod-
ing to melancholic to suspenseful. The music can be erratic like the central
character. But it also creates critical distance. For example, the “main
theme”, through its association of moments of romance, gradually picks
up the growing uncertainty of the romance. It is at times unclear whether
this piece of music is supposed to be sentimental, ironic, or rueful.
19. Bogart performs a similar “vampirelike” gesture in his earlier film Dead
Reckoning (John Cromwell, 1947). The mixture between the predatory
and the vulnerable in Bogart’s persona is perhaps a worthy topic of
investigation.
20. A closely related dichotomy is between the explicit and the implicit mean-
ing, see Bordwell (1989). For a detailed critique of the surface/depth,
explicit/implicit view, see MacDowell (2018), Wilson (1997), and
Perkins (1990).
21. The model therefore underpins the 70s ideological critique of film, for
example, Comolli and Narboni (1971).
22. But we also have to bear in mind the impossibility of interacting with
screen characters: unlike with real people, for instance, we cannot ask char-
acters about themselves. This means that we cannot acknowledge them in
the most direct sense; there is nothing we can do for them. But we can
still “acknowledge” them, in some sense, by paying the appropriate kind
and degree of attention to their posture and gesture, speech and behav-
iour—to do something with the claims of their actions. What appropri-
ate means here is a vital part of this special kind of acknowledgement.
23. My account would be an inappropriate reading if demonstrated to be dis-
torting the film’s dramatic emphasis and narrative significance.
References
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Interpretation of Cinema. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 2008. Poetics of Cinema. New York and London: Routledge.
Cavell, Stanley. 1995. The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film.
Enlarged ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 2002. Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays, Updated ed.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Comolli, Jean-Luc, and Paul Narboni. 1971. Cinema/ldeology/Criticism. Screen
12 (1, Mar.): 27–38.
Doane, Mary Ann. 1991. Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis.
New York: Routledge.
Eder, Jens, Fotis Jannidis, and Ralf Schneider. 2010. Characters in Fictional
Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media.
Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Hammer, Espen. 2002. Stanley Cavell: Skepticism, Subjectivity, and the Ordinary.
Cambridge: Polity.
Harvey, James. 2001. Movie Love in the Fifties. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Klevan, Andrew. 2018. Aesthetic Evaluation and Film. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
MacDowell, James. 2018. Interpretation, Irony and “Surface Meanings” in Film.
Film-Philosophy 22 (2): 261–280.
Michaels, Lloyd. 1998. The Phantom of the Cinema: Character in Modern Film.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Nehamas, Alexander. 2007. Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a
World of Art. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Perez, Gilberto. 2019. The Eloquent Screen: A Rhetoric of Film. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
———. 1992. In a Lonely Place. In The Movie Book of Film Noir, ed. Ian Cameron,
222–231. London: Studio Vista.
———. 1993. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. New York: Da
Capo Press.
———. 2006. Moments of Choice. Rouge, 9. Accessed October 11, 2017. http://
www.rouge.com.au/9/moments_choice.html.
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Pippin, Robert B. 2012a. Passive and Active Skepticism in Nicholas Ray’s In a

Lonely Place. Nonsite 5. Accessed August 3, 2020. http://nonsite.org/article/
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———. 2012b. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy.
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Polan, Dana. 1993. In a Lonely Place. London: BFI.
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PART II
Drama of Doubt
CHAPTER 5
Uncertainty of Viewpoint
Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014) pivots upon an avalanche. But it

refrains from deriving its dramatic force—its prominent narrative ques-
tions—directly from this larger-than-life incident. Evoking the scenario of
a disaster, the film nevertheless eschews the tropes and conventions of the
disaster movie. It features no imagery of mass destruction, of civilisation
in ruins; neither does it celebrate human resilience nor lament heroic sac-
rifice. In fact, strictly speaking, there isn’t a disaster to begin with. As a
controlled occurrence, the avalanche in question may have brought about
chaos and confusion but it stops short of causing damage and casualty.
The film instead grounds its drama and finds its narrative premise, in a
crisis far more intimate in nature as well as in scale—a character’s untow-
ard act in the heat of the extraordinary happening. And by focusing on the
fallouts and grief implications of this act, Force Majeure delves into the no
less catastrophic potential of human deed and decision. The kind of dev-
astation it explores concerns human agency.
The movie depicts a bourgeois family’s holiday at a luxury ski resort.
What is supposed to be an occasion to strengthen familial bonds ends up
putting them to the test. During the aforementioned avalanche, while the
mother Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) stays with her two children, seeking to
shield them from harm, the father Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) flees the
scene alone, running for his life. His flight from danger is therefore equally

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116 H. L. LAW
something of a desertion of his family. Instead, he is supposed to have

done what his wife has done, putting the safety and survival of his children
before his own. He is also supposed to have stood by Ebba, weathering the
dire situation together with her. Unable to do either, Tomas has failed his
family, failing both his roles as a father and as a husband. This failure to do
what a good person is expected to do, under circumstances where doing the
expected is considered the right thing to do, is deemed a moral failure.
If real-life catastrophes tend to call for the reaffirming of accepted
moral codes, movie disasters, as Susan Sontag observes, accommodate an
imaginary renewal of these standards. The renewal is possible because the
fiction of life-threatening disruption harbours the fantasy in which “nor-
mal obligations” are jeopardised, open to renegotiation (2009, 215). The
scenario therefore offers an opportunity to engage with what we typically
judge morally compromised or suspect.1 In Force Majeure, the calamity
that doesn’t happen nonetheless prompts an ethical crisis. And this irony
is vital to its specific moral inquiry. The choice to make the avalanche “fic-
tional” is also a choice to lay bare the fiction of moral escape. In doing so,
the film draws attention to the ethical weight of Tomas’ flight, inviting us
to reflect on what it means and what it reveals about the character.2
This enquiry is tendered within the movie. Throughout its course,
numerous explanations of the act are tentatively offered. Mats (Kristofer
Hivju) gives his friend Tomas the benefit of the doubt. The flight, he pro-
poses, is likely the result of some innate survival instinct, and is therefore
defensible, as a natural reflex, beyond Tomas’ immediate control. To run
away in such a predicament is but a knee-jerk reaction; to self-preserve is
only human, in fact all-too-human. So, we shouldn’t rush to judgement.3
The problem with this proposal of course lies in its inability to account for
Ebba’s instinctive reaction, under the same circumstances, to protect the
children. In other words, even if the survival instinct is innate, perhaps
universal, it doesn’t mean we are necessarily governed by it. What also
makes us human, as Ebba’s behaviour suggests, is our capacity of defying
our instincts. It is not until late in the movie that Tomas addresses his
questionable action. His plea for forgiveness, however, doesn’t involve an
apology or an acknowledgement of his failing. Attributing the flight to
“another person” materialised in him, Tomas insists that he himself, not
unlike Ebba, is a victim. Divorcing agency from action, the account points
to his disavowal of his deed. Notably, both the aforementioned explana-
tions conceive the flight as something like a lapse of judgement. That is,
instead of being indicative of Tomas’ moral worth, it is a regrettable moral
5 UNCERTAINTY OF VIEWPOINT 117
blemish. His act is blameworthy, yet he is not a bad person. He is just a

normal—fallible—human being unfortunately caught in a bad situation.
Anyone could have, and might have, done what he has done.4
While the nature of Tomas’ exit, what it suggests about him, is open to
reading, the ways he deals with discussions about the act, in both the pub-
lic and the private spheres, are in themselves very revealing. His response
oscillates between evasive answer, silence, and unconvincing denial (“how
does one run in ski boots?”). More than once, he maintains that there are
alternative ways of interpreting his flight, though he is never able to pro-
duce any plausible alternative understanding, but instead of resorting to a
vague assertiveness of his innocence, a kind of nervous hesitancy that is
redolent of a guilt-ridden consciousness. The suspicion is that he is self-
deceived or being dishonest, knowing more than or differently from what
he discloses to other characters. In any case, it seems that he wouldn’t
admit the action in front of others because he couldn’t bear the shame of
admitting it. It is only when confronted with a phone video of the ava-
lanche, a video which he made that irrefutably shows his flight, that Tomas
hesitantly confirms: “I agree that it looks like I’m running”. But the
acknowledgement of a fact is not the same as an acknowledgement of its
meaning. To confess he runs away is still a step away from recognising his
abandonment. If Ebba is initially upset about Tomas’ flight, as the film
progresses, she is further troubled by his vehement refusal to own up to
this action, coping with its consequences. This is what she finds unforgiv-
able. The moral drama in Force Majeure therefore revolves around the
twin poles of action and accountability: not only what an agent does but
also his responsibility of accounting for his doing, of offering an intelligi-
ble account.
Tomas’ own account of the flight is of interest and importance all the
more for the indisputability of the act. It is notable that the scene of the
avalanche is filmed as a static, extended long shot. While this stylish strat-
egy, to recall André Bazin (see Introduction), promotes interpretative pos-
sibilities, its effect here is to render Tomas’ and Ebba’s contrasting actions
unambiguous. There is no mistake about his self-preserving escape and
her self-sacrificing gesture.5 She is right to accuse him of abandonment
and he is wrong to deny it. As a result, we are encouraged to side with
Ebba and see Tomas’ disclaiming of his deed as stubborn and unsympa-
thetic. This implication of the audience, this assignment of our allegiance,
is what makes the shot vital to the film’s moral drama.6 Only that this
implication may not be straightforward or seamless. The same stylish
118 H. L. LAW
strategy also heightens the possibility of overseeing the couple’s actions.

These pertinent details are not actively highlighted by the camera, declared
within the extended long-shot. What this scene hinges upon is a tension
between action and viewpoint, between the gravity of what happens and
the unemphatic way of seeing. It is as though the camera wants us to
barely see—nearly miss—the moment’s significance.
This chapter considers how Force Majeure strategically exploits the ten-
sion between action and viewpoint to ambiguous effects. Viewpoint here
means more than visual perspective but, as George M. Wilson defines the
cinematic point-of-view, the various ways in which a movie “systematically
structure[s] an audience’s overall epistemic access to narrative” (1986, 3).
Take the avalanche scene as an example. We can easily envision it—as the
Hollywood remake of the film Downhill (Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, 2020) in
fact does—being analytically edited into a series of close-ups of the perti-
nent details. But then the couple’s differing behaviours, despite being
similarly unmistakable like in the original version, would also become
unmissable. The difference here is a difference between viewpoints. And
the epistemic difference this makes further reflects dissimilar ethical per-
spectives. While analytical editing lays bare Tomas’ flight and therefore
feels like a blatant condemnation of it, the static, extended long-shot
seems to anticipate his act. It is as though the camera knows of, perhaps in
advance, Tomas’ objectionable behaviour but refrains from acknowledg-
ing it, pointing it out for us. This suggests a conflicted attitude. We are
uncertain where Force Majeure stands towards the character.
The following discussion will focus on the last three scenes of the
movie, which, as will be clear, pivots upon this kind of uncertainty. If most
of the film seeks to maintain a moral distance from Tomas and encourages
judgements of his behaviours—through the uses of irony, parody, and
awkward social comedy—the final scenes somewhat erode that distance in
plot terms yet open up a critical perspective by structural and stylistic
means. This seeming tension between content and form throws into ques-
tion Force Majeure’s point-of-view. And our inquiry into viewpoint, here
concerning the final twenty-five minutes of the movie, is of course bound
up with matters of film ending and its attendant issues. Accordingly, my
examination will take into account how the scenes resolve or complicate
the movie’s abiding moral drama: most importantly, whether and how
Tomas accounts for his flight and, as a result, whether the couple, and the
family, reunite in satisfying terms.
“Reconciliation”
Tonal Complexity
The first sequence we will consider takes place at the end of “Ski Day
Four”. It begins with Tomas’ act of accounting for his flight but, as the
scene develops, the question becomes how his account is taken by Ebba,
whether she accepts it.
Tomas has been wanting to make up with Ebba. His attempt earlier in
the evening is, however, interrupted by the children’s request to fix the
Internet connection (their interjection—“Daddy, it’s still not working!”—
equally describes and humorously comments on his effort). It is now day-
break.7 We see Tomas asking Ebba for a talk outside the hotel suite. The
camera lingers on her concerned expression before cutting to him, face in
palms, seemingly sobbing. But the pathos of the moment is punctured as
soon as it begins to set. The scene takes a turn to the comical as Ebba read-
ily sees through Tomas’ crocodile tears and calls him out, like catching a
crafty child in the act. And indeed like a kid holding his ground until his
wish is granted, he claims the floor, settling on it. (Note that he is also sit-
ting by the room door, as though stopping her from quitting the conver-
sation, cornering her.) The scene achieves comedy by presenting Tomas as
a man-child. Only that this comedy is dark. The moment, on the one
hand, highlights the husband’s insincerity. Not necessarily in the sense
that he forges remorse, yet he has at least embellished it to secure forgive-
ness. On the other hand, Ebba’s quick uncovering of the false cry marks
her mistrust, perhaps pointing to her familiarity with his tactics of deceit.
The unhappy implication is that Tomas is not new to petty duplicity or
even emotional blackmailing. All of which not only, retrospectively,
enhances our doubt about his insistent denial of the flight but also tinges
his subsequent plea for forgiveness. We may want to take his sayings and
doings with a grain of salt.
After admitting his pretence, Tomas takes a beat and, perhaps without
recognising the irony, delivers his confession in the third person. He speaks
of being a victim of his own instincts, which have run riot and taken over
his actions. He simply had no control of what he did. This account, as
mentioned earlier, conveniently explains away his accountability. The
character’s delivery is increasingly emotional. He weeps what seems to be
real tears and eventually bursts into a mix of crying and screaming. In her
reaction shot, Ebba turns away from the camera and therefore also away
120 H. L. LAW
from him—as if averting her eyes, in disbelief of what she saw—only

returns to reveal a look of pity. She seems softened and swayed by his
devastation.
Tomas is indeed a sorry sight (Fig. 5.1).8 His breakdown is, neverthe-
less, so fervid that it pushes the scene, which only just recovered its
emotional poise, once again towards caricature, perhaps even risibility.
And that, like earlier, raises the suspicion of playacting. This suspicion is
ours but also Ebba’s. But in this case, the nature of Tomas’ tears feels
even harder to ascertain. In fact, there is a sense the film appropriately
leaves that uncertain. It is worth noting that crying serves a public and a
private function; it can be both a performance and an authentic expres-
sion. In other words, Tomas’ tears may be simultaneously the release of
his emotion and an emotional claim on Ebba.9 It is possible that he cries
out of pretence, remorse, or self-pity, or something else entirely. But the
deeper reason, to recall the lesson of Chap. 4, is likely a combination of
several or all of them.10 This points to the poignancy underneath the
comic scenario. Tomas’ pathetic plea for forgiveness may be a perfor-
mance but that doesn’t mean it is not driven by real pain and regret. The
scene recognises the entwinement and complication of human feelings,
and it observes these via its conflicting tone. Like Ebba, we may feel
conflicted about Tomas.
The tonal complexity of the moment stems not only from the perfor-
mance but also from the editing. As Tomas starts screaming uncontrolla-
bly in the hallway, Ebba seeks to continue their exchange back inside the
Fig. 5.1 Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

hotel suite. The camera cuts from a shot of Tomas staying put on the floor,
like a stubborn kid refusing to give in, to a shot of a janitor looking on
impassively. The clash of tenors here—from a hyperbolic spectacle to a
deadpan countenance (with Tomas’ screaming still audible)—may pro-
voke laughter. But this laughter would not be without reservation. Not
only are we embarrassed for Ebba—as a case of fremdschämen—we might
also feel bad for Tomas, for embarrassing himself like that.
The edit further raises the possibility that the anonymous janitor may
have been watching them all along. Often miraculously showing up where
the drama is, the janitor is a man who knows too much. His presence at a
scene is sometimes only confirmed in a delayed, unexpected reveal, as
though he tends to lurk, habitually observing. And his “invisibility” to the
characters (in the way hotel cleaning staffs are “invisible” to guests) fur-
ther facilitates his silent observation, allowing him to look without being
noticed. So, it is not unlikely that some of his act of looking has gone
unremarked by the camera. In fact, the janitor has witnessed an earlier
hallway exchange between Tomas and Ebba. But in this previous instance,
they quickly detect his presence: in a shot which we read as the janitor’s
view, the couple look to the direction of the camera—so effectively
addressing not only him but also us—demanding their privacy. This invites
a comparison between his intrusive looking and our interested viewing.
The couple’s demand of privacy paradoxically highlights how much of
the film’s narrative revolves around the laying bare of what is primarily a
domestic dispute in public. Tomas and Ebba frequently convene in the
hotel hallway to talk things over, so as to protect their kids from their
fight, but at the risk of exposing it to public scrutiny. Their most heated
disagreements take place over meetings with friends and acquaintances.
Ebba is the one who brings up Tomas’ flight on these occasions. It seems
that she recounts the incident to others as a way to account for it to her-
self, and to seek their words of sympathy and emotional support. By doing
so, she further subjects Tomas’ action to the judgement of other charac-
ters, perhaps shaming him on purpose.11 A prominent instance of this is
the couple’s dinner with Mats and his girlfriend, which develops into a
mock trial of the husband. The presence of these outsiders serves as a form
of social pressure. This is why Tomas cannot but address his flight. This is
also why, in the wake of watching the phone video with the group, he has
to admit it. There is a sense that he admits it less because it is a fact—argu-
ably, he knows this all along—than because it is a fact now known by oth-
ers too. Most importantly, they know he knows it. And Tomas’ knowledge
122 H. L. LAW
of what they know causes shame. What this scene darkly dramatises is Force
Majeure’s interest in what can be called the “social consciousness”, which
concerns our agency of self-regulation, our management of action and
appearance in the public arena, especially when interacting with others.
Many of the movie’s situations expose how this consciousness can be a
source of stress and explore how a character’s failure of self-regulation in
public may cause embarrassment for others. For the viewer, however, such
awkward scenarios often result in amusement. The comedy of Force
Majeure is a comedy of fraught social behaviours.
An Expansive Viewpoint
Apart from the insert of the janitor, Tomas’ confession in the hallway also
incorporates intermittent cutaway shots of the children, in which they are
wide awake in bed, sobbing, eavesdropping on their parents’ exchange. On
the one hand, these heart-wrenching images counterbalance the moment’s
comedy, and therefore contributes to its tonal complexity. On the other
hand, these edits reassert the narrative significance of the perspective of the
children, reminding us that the film concerns more than the falling-out of a
couple but the disintegration of a family.12 As we shall see, the children are
key to the final scenes of Force Majeure. They hold the family together yet
also play a vital part in the scenario that drives Tomas and Ebba further apart.
What the film’s attention to the children and the social sphere points to
is its expansive viewpoint. And such a viewpoint, as seen earlier, is a stand-
ing possibility of editing. This is achieved—to name another recurring
strategy of the movie—when the camera intercuts narrative episodes with
unpeopled images of the snowy mountains in the resort. And frequently,
such images depict the mountains being cultivated by heavy machines,
whose purposes remain unexplained, as though they are inexplicable.
What these edits create is an enigmatic link between the story and the set-
ting. The implication is that those instruments of manipulation, seemingly
operating at their own will and unsupervised by people, have something
to do with the development of the narrative.13 The human drama is being
moulded by some unspecified, unstoppable force—a force majeure. This
metaphorical suggestion ties in with the mystery of action that lies at the
heart of the movie: our actions may seem mysterious to ourselves because—
as Tomas claims about his flight—they appear uncontrollable, and they
sometimes look mysterious to others—like Ebba’s panic reaction in the
ending, as we shall see—because they feel out of character, so that others
are left uncertain whether and how much these acts are intended by us or
indicative of our character. It is by forging meaningful parallels or
comparisons like this that Force Majeure broadens its moral purview and
deepens its ethical investigation. Its expansive viewpoint creates nuances
and complexity.
Image and Imitation

The couple’s embarrassing situation in the hallway is prolonged as their
keycard fails to work, so that they need to be let into the room by the jani-
tor. This comical episode further undercuts the moment’s pathos and
intensifies our laughter. Back in the privacy of the suite, Tomas continues
to give in to tears and woe, and finally collapses on, seeking refuge in, a
cushion, as though he is defeated—deflated. But instead of granting him
the solace of a hug, Ebba paces back and forth in the room, seemingly
pondering what to do, perhaps also keeping her distance. Then, as some-
thing like an ironic reversal of what happens during the avalanche, the
children enter the room and throw themselves on top of their father, as if
to shelter him from pain, repaying his lamentable flight earlier with com-
passion and generous acceptance. It is significant that Ebba doesn’t rush
into this act of moral support but only reluctantly joins in when forced by
her daughter. Unready to receive Tomas with open arms—both literally
and figuratively—she participates in the family embrace, but her heart is
not in it. She does it for the kids, made clear by the fact that she has been
only concerned with comforting them (“Daddy’s sad. That’s all”). Ebba
hasn’t come to terms with, and perhaps cannot reconcile with, what Tomas
has done. The image of family togetherness with which the scene ends
feels uncomfortably contrived (Fig. 5.2).
The scene of reconciliation is presented in one single take. The distance
of our viewing recalls the detached observation of the janitor and marks
the distance required for the moment’s irony. (Imagine how much more
emotional the scenario would be if it were shot as a series of facial close-
ups.) Typically, such an image—depicting family members being closely
together—suggests their togetherness. What this kind of tableau evokes is a
conventional image of family happiness, which draws upon our intuitive
conception of what a happy family looks like (it is intuitive perhaps because,
as Tolstoy observes, “all happy families are alike”).14 However, Force
Majeure strategically deploys such a tableau, at various points of the narra-
tive, less to celebrate the family’s happiness, despite appearing to be so,
but to invite us to reflect on its state of affairs. This reflexive aspect of the
device is introduced in the opening scene, which features a composition of
124 H. L. LAW
togetherness that actually highlights how togetherness is composed. Here,

the family is having their holiday photos professionally taken (Fig. 5.3).
The way that the photographer directs their poses mirrors the way the
daughter orchestrates the family embrace during their “reconciliation”,
and therefore puts into sharp relief its artificiality. Striking are the family’s
matching, chromatically coordinated outfits, which serve as something
like their team uniforms, emblematic of their solidarity (maybe a happy
family requires its members to be alike).15 What this scene calls attention
to are the effort and care that go into the reproduction of the family’s
picture-perfect togetherness. The moment deconstructs the artifice of its

tableau to expose the theatricality of their happiness.
The composition of togetherness, as we shall see, is a recurring figure
in the final scenes of the movie. And it will be again employed reflexively,
often ironically.16 Allowing the confusion between what is naturalistic and
what is contrived, the figure offers an eloquent means to dramatise the
film’s central tension between authenticity and its imitation. To better
understand Force Majeure, not only should we be capable of distinguish-
ing one from the other when needed but, most importantly, we also need
to be able to appreciate the difficulty or impossibility of telling them apart.
The dangerous resemblance or productive conflation between the two is
sometimes precisely the point, a key to the film’s ambiguity. We will look
at one such instance shortly.
State of the Union

One might see Force Majeure as a story of a happy family shaken up by an
unfortunate event, of a marriage shattered by the husband’s untoward
actions. Its resolution, accordingly, pivots upon the reconciliation of the
couple and the restoration of the family—the retrieval of happiness. But
this straightforward view is misleading. As the opening tableau suggests,
the family’s merry intimacy is threatened by a sense of contrivance. The
implication is that it is not exactly harmonious to begin with. Although we
have no access to the life of the family outside the resort, there are clues of
its infelicities (e.g., Tomas’ unhealthy devotion to work) throughout the
narrative. The couple seems to have long repressed their grievances and
bottled up their ugly feelings. So more accurately, the movie exposes the
family’s fragility and explores its undercurrent. Instead of disrupting the
couple’s happiness, the avalanche forces the latent blemishes of their rela-
tionship in the open. All of which suggests that Force Majeure’s resolution
is not a matter of reinstating equilibrium. In fact, without an equilibrium
to start with, it is the very possibility of such a thing with which the film is
concerned. The central question is whether the couple can discover the
necessary terms and conditions of the family’s happiness, reinvigorating
their intimacy. What is vital, then, is the nature of their togetherness, of
how they get back together. Together, but not in the way they were; not a
return to the previous status quo but the achievement of a more viable,
felicitous state of union.
126 H. L. LAW
The moment in the hotel suite presents a reunion but it feels unsettling,
unsustainable. Not only is it comparable to the opening tableau in its arti-
ficiality, the family reconciliation—pictured as a precarious heap of bod-
ies—also suggests a sense of desperation. Notably, this image perpetuates
the child-like caricature of Tomas, who is here in the protective embrace
of his kids, under the wing of the maternal Ebba. If it isn’t an attractive
portrayal of a patriarch who has regained the faith of his family, we may
find something of a remedy to this in the subsequent scene.
“Redemption”
A Heroic Rescue?
The fact that Tomas has accounted for his flight—perhaps insincerely,
however unconvincingly—means that the ball is now in Ebba’s court. Will
she be able to let go of her frustration and resentment? Will she give him
another chance for the sake of keeping the family together? The imminent
end of the holiday speaks to our mounting anticipation of the fraught situ-
ation to come to an end. While the moment discussed earlier can be read
as Tomas’ endeavour to put an end to things, his “forging” of a reconcili-
ation, the sequence we are examining below appears to feature Ebba’s
comparable effort, functioning as her answer to his unsuccessful “resolu-
tion”. Even at a cursory glance, this scene is equally theatrical as, if not
more so than, the prior sequence of passionate confession and emotional
reunion. And this is why the “happy ending” it proposes strikes us as
something staged by Ebba.
The scene depicts the family’s final ski in the resort. Although it is dan-
gerously foggy in the mountains, Tomas remains convinced of the safety
of their activity. As he leads the family to descend the slope, the camera
presents them in a way that it looks like they are disappearing into the
depth of the snowy-white frame, lost in the treacherous territory. Indeed,
when we see the family again, there are only three of them. Ebba is miss-
ing, apparently strayed or stranded somewhere, shouting for and in need
of help. Rushing to her rescue, Tomas instructs the children to stay put,
then scurries into the fog and vanishes. The camera waits with the lit-
tle ones.
Similar to them, we await Tomas’ return, hopefully together with Ebba.
The moment’s suspense—what is going to happen?—continues to grow as
the wait lengthens and gives way to apprehensiveness—has something

gone wrong?—until eventually, rather belatedly (after a minute and a half
of “nothing happening”), Tomas calls out to the kids. Then Vivaldi’s
“Summer” promptly soars on the soundtrack. This gleeful, ever-quicken-
ing concerto cues the father’s triumphant entrance. We see him re-enter-
ing the scene, carrying Ebba in his arms, welcomed by the children in the
foreground, like a knight returning from a gallant quest. “We made it!”,
he exclaims twice, as if in disbelief of surviving the “ordeal” and therefore
need to convince himself of it, to reassure his family about it. These words
of relief, on the surface, refer to the rescue of Ebba in the snow but they
can be equally a reference to the overcoming of the family crisis. The chil-
dren’s keen reception of their father reflects their revived coincidence in
him. He has just redeemed himself in their eyes by acting heroically, saving
the day. And he probably knows it too. The family’s renewed bonding is
commemorated by a tableau of togetherness (Fig. 5.4).
However, the scene does not conclude by revelling this togetherness.
The camera lingers on, not in order to savour the family reunion but to
exhaust its sense of achievement. Tomas’ moment of pride is undercut in
more than one way. Noticeably, the Vivaldi concerto hits an abrupt end as
soon as he congratulates themselves for “making it”.17 Its absence allows
us to recognise, on the one hand, how much the scene’s prior celebratory
mood is in fact conveniently borrowed from this piece of music and, on
the other, how anticlimactic the reunion actually feels.18 The moment,
supposedly an emotional climax, hardly yields heightened expressions of

128 H. L. LAW
care and compassion. There is neither a sentimental speech nor an impas-

sioned embrace. Instead, the reconciliation is marked by its quietness and
the characters’ silence, except for Tomas, who is hungrily breathing loud
and deep breaths. The result is a moment of awkwardness: Tomas is comi-
cally out of breath from his heroic deed, as though he is out of his depth,
trying too hard for his own good.
Most remarkable is Ebba’s strangely detached behaviour. Her first word
after the rescue is a coldly delivered “good”, as if complimenting Tomas,
a touch condescendingly, on narrowly passing a test. And her speedy
recovery from the (unspecified) accident is astounding. Neither in pain
nor in fright, she promptly gets up from the ground without help, dusts
herself off, and walks away from the family to retrieve her skiing equip-
ment alone. This readiness for practical business perhaps points to her
reluctance—once again, like in the previous scene—to commit to the
reunion. The tableau of togetherness in the snow disintegrates as soon as
it is joyfully assembled. The scene ends on a note of disillusionment.
A Necessary Pretence?
All of which calls into question the “damsel in distress” scenario. More
specifically, the suspicion is that Ebba doesn’t require to be but allows
herself to be carried back by Tomas. That she willingly complies with his
chivalrous gesture for dramatic effect, granting him the winning appear-
ance of a hero. That is, Ebba has exaggerated the seriousness of the inci-
dent and overplayed her injury; in fact, there might not be any incident or
injury in the first place (more on this later). On this view, the grand rescue
is mainly for show, because it is what the kids need to regain their respect
and admiration for their father. Ebba’s potential involvement in this show,
however, by no means indicates her forgiveness of Tomas. As her aloof
attitude after the rescue implies, she has yet to resign to his actions.
Though she is able to repress her personal feelings for the good of the
children, to retain the family in one piece.
Interestingly, the equivalent scene in Downhill confirms the pretence of
the “damsel in distress” scenario and is therefore something like an inter-
pretation of the original. It is indeed a characteristic of the remake to
interpret what is left uncertain in Force Majeure. The confirmation of the
pretence is secured by a simple alternation of viewpoint. Instead of staying
with the children, the camera follows the Tomas character, Pete (Will
Ferrell), searching for and “rescuing” his wife Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)
on the mountains. She is perfectly fine when he finds her, not at all in
danger, and speaks of the need to redeem him in the eyes of the kids. As
Pete admits in his earlier confession to Billie, what he finds unbearable,
and consequently motivates his denial of the flight, is how his family looks
at him in the wake of the avalanche, supposedly disapprovingly or disap-
pointedly. But she also insists that if he wants to redeem himself in her
eyes—implying he hasn’t—then he needs to earn it by being truly differ-
ent. In other words, not only does Downhill spell out Force Majeure’s
exploration of shame and social consciousness, Billie also gives voice to
what Ebba would want from Tomas. His ability to be different is required
to truly renew the family’s togetherness.
The clarified scenario in the remake puts into stark relief the ambiguous
effect of the original treatment. But this isn’t an ambiguity of meaning.
Both the moment’s implication of a pretence and the motive for Ebba’s
pretending (to redeem Tomas) are readily discernible. Instead, what
remains uncertain is the degree and detail of her involvement. A modest
claim on the issue might admit the existence of the accident but maintain
the embellished dimension of the rescue. But one could also surmise that
Ebba has engineered the whole situation, similar to what Billie does. And
that would explain her ill-advised, out-of-character agreement with Tomas
to proceed with the ski, despite the alarming weather conditions. Put dif-
ferently, it might not be his judgement that she trusts but Ebba needs a
chance to fabricate an “accident”.19 This reading further invites us to pon-
der when her scheme is conceived. To which one could point to the analo-
gous moments in the movies, both right before the ski, where the wives
are separated or visually singled out from the family, seemingly alone with
their thoughts, planning their next move.20 And finally, there is the equally
difficult, perhaps irresolvable question of Tomas’ part in the pretence: is
he aware of it at all? Is he, like Pete, let in on the scheme by his wife when
he finds her in the snow? In any case, there isn’t sufficient grounds for us
to determine or reasonably debate what precisely happens during or
behind the rescue. It is therefore suitable that a thick snow fog permeates
the scene, as if signifying its impenetrability. But we can speculate about
the event more or less justifiably—and we are indeed being encouraged to
do so. If the possibility of speculation, as Chap. 3 argues, deepens the
political implications of Ten, we may similarly ask how the allusion to a
pretence enhances our appreciation of Force Majeure’s redemption
scenario.
130 H. L. LAW
To inquire into this question requires us to probe why the moment is

presented ambiguously. And this entails a reflection on the significance of
the scene’s specific viewpoint. We can start by observing the camera’s
alignment with the kids as indicative of the movie’s expansive narrative
perspective, which, as suggested earlier, takes into account the children’s
role in the family reconciliation. By staying with them, we are invited to
see how they see the rescue—as a heroic endeavour. And this is indeed the
version of the event that both Tomas and Ebba would want them to see
(regardless of whether the incident is staged). So even though we are
placed in an epistemic position close to that of the kids throughout the
scene, the camera is equally, in an important sense, complicit with the
parents, motivated by and also materialising their wishes. However, it
soon becomes clear that we don’t really read the rescue in the way the
couple desire. I have analysed how the film undermines Tomas’ winning
image in narrative and stylistic terms. It is also worth pointing out that one
of the sharpest ironies about the rescue is actually emphasised by the very
viewpoint that purports to make possible its ideal appearance. Specifically,
the long wait with the children calls attention to the fact that Tomas has
left them alone and unattended in perilous terrain, jeopardising their
safety. In other words, the heroic act he is applauded for is also recognised
as founded upon a blameworthy decision.21 The camera presents both his
valiant effort and his poor judgement. This indicates complicity but also
critique.
What the earlier discussion hinges upon is two conceptions of view-
point: that of the movie and that of the character. Strictly speaking, the
latter is a function of the former. But their distinction is worth maintaining
because the possibility of their difference—though still a function of the
movie’s viewpoint—is an indispensable creative resource in films. A good
example is dramatic irony, which involves the discrepancy between what a
film allows us to know and what a character knows.22 However, there are
also occasions where an overlap between the two kinds of viewpoint are
exploited to meaningful effects. One interesting case is when a film’s per-
spective appears to be driven by a character; like how in the rescue scene
the camera’s choice of staying with the children fulfils the wish of Tomas
and Ebba. Gilberto Perez calls such a scenario, where “[t]he camera […]
identif[ies] with a character’s agency as a mover of the story”, efficient
identification (2019, 251).
It is by exploiting the affinities and divergences between the two types
of viewpoint, by employing both dramatic irony and efficient
identification, that Force Majeure’s presentation of the rescue creates con-

flicting suggestions and achieves a sense of inconclusiveness. And this
results in a more nuanced portrayal of Tomas’ “redemption” compared
with Downhill’s unambiguous treatment of the scenario. The distinction
between the two types of viewpoint will be again useful in our interpreta-
tion of Force Majeure’s ending.
“Reversal”
Downhill’s Resolution
The two versions of the “redemption” scene couldn’t be more dissimilar
in their meanings and effects. While the remake presents an ironic solution
to its narrative conundrum (the presentation of this solution, however, is
rather unironic), the original proposes a “happy reconciliation” dogged
and unsettled by ambiguity. Downhill offers a resolution by means of
Pete’s promise of change, gesturing towards the possibility of a genuine
renewal of togetherness. By contrast, the “redemption” in Force Majeure
resolves things only on the surface level. The moment has the look of a
reconciliation but hardly feels like one; it just doesn’t seem like Ebba has
reconciled to what Tomas has done. If the scene has forced an end to the
family crisis, it nevertheless fails to lay the troubles it incites to rest. There
are lingering uncertainties. We are left in suspense.
Having settled its narrative questions, Downhill proceeds to end with a
brief epilogue.23 As Pete and Billie gather with their younger couple friends
in front of the hotel to say goodbye, a big pile of snow falls on the group
from the roof. All of them dodge it in the nick of time, by breaking up
their joined hands and jumping away from the others. Their separation is
illustrated in pictorial terms, highlighted in an overhead image. Then the
film ends with a sequence of shot/reverse-shot, in which we see the cen-
tral couple exchanging looks with each other: (1) Pete seems to be at a
loss, perhaps looking for Billie’s response; (2) she sighs a sigh that simul-
taneously suggests relief and disbelief; (3) he sighs too, but hesitantly, as
though parroting her, unsure about what she means yet compelled to
agree with it. The incident is a version of the avalanche; the scale is smaller,
but the scenario is analogous. It is as though Pete is being tested for the
second time, being given a second chance. However, he appears to have
failed once again: neither able to stand by Billie nor to recognise or
acknowledge what he did. (Though, interestingly, in this case, one could
132 H. L. LAW
say the same about her.) This is ironic because only earlier in the day that
he insists he could and would change. But this irony is not biting but
comical, in the sense that the folly of repeating the same mistake is funny
because it is ironic. Earlier in the film, Pete flippantly speaks of being “hit
with a big dump of snow”, and as a result inadvertently upsets his family
by evoking the memories of the avalanche (Freud might not think of such
a joke as unconscious or incidental, or just a joke for that matter). The
ending evinces a comparable joke structure: serving as the punchline of
the movie, the little accident here also risks unsettling the resolution previ-
ously achieved in the “redemption” scene. As we shall see, the final scene
of Force Majeure threatens a similar and a similarly ambiguous reversal
effect. And this is why the conclusion of Downhill remains something of
an interpretation of the original ending, despite their differences down to
every single plot detail.
End of the Tunnel?

The Vivaldi concerto resumes at the very end of Force Majeure’s “redemp-
tion” scene and serves as a bridge to yet another tableau of togetherness.
What we believed was the cessation of the music is in fact only a pregnant
punctuation. The concerto again lends its celebratory mood to the film.
But since we’ve just learned about the possibility of what we see to have
opportunistically borrowed such a meaning, we are now inclined to
approach any ready identification between sight and sound with greater
caution, watching out for signs of irony and parody. Indeed, there is a
sense that the image is trying to ride the joyful mood of the music, to
deploy it rhetorically. Unlike in Downhill, the family’s exit from the resort
is depicted as a family occasion. In one single take, the characters walk
from the depth of the frame to the fore, working their way out of a tunnel
while the camera slowly zooms into them. The overall effect is symbolic,
as though to announce “they have arrived”, having overcome their crisis
as a team.24 Aligning across the frame (and symmetrically so), the moment
recalls the photo session at the start of the movie, evoking the image of a
happy family. And like that image in the opening, the current tableau also
courts a sense of theatricality. Only that this theatricality seems to partake
in a commemoration and not a deconstruction of the family’s together-
ness. For the most part, the family members are framed through the
mouth of the tunnel, which incidentally resembles a box of nesting frames,
a proscenium arch of sort. This appears to be their curtain call (Fig. 5.5).
All these details endow the moment with a sense of triumph. But such
a suggestion is at odds with our understanding of the current state of the
couple’s union, as the last scene pointedly calls into question both Tomas’
rescue and Ebba’s feelings. Moreover, the characters do not look glad or
grateful throughout the walk. In particular, Ebba seems distracted, espe-
cially seen alongside Tomas, who marches ahead in determination—per-
haps pridefully? (his countenance is obscured by his sunglasses)—while
she constantly looks left and right to check on the children, as though
there are other concerns on her mind. Seemingly marking the end of the
family crisis, the shot raises the question of what is going to happen. What
is awaiting them at the end of the tunnel, so to speak? In fact, as they
aren’t actually shown exiting the tunnel, perhaps their misadventure isn’t
over yet? Will things work out for the family at the end? How will the
film end?
Studying Film Endings

All films end. The end is where a movie’s shape and suggestion finally fall
into place. So, it is also what puts things in perspective.25 This is why how
a film closes is of great importance. Not only can the end illuminate what
we have seen but it may also revise what we have hitherto known and
believed, reconfiguring the implications of details or renewing our mode
of seeing. And by putting things in perspective, the ending proposes a
viewpoint, as it were, from which to inspect the meaning of the whole and
134 H. L. LAW
appraise the significance of the parts. The attainment of this “viewpoint”

therefore makes possible a deepened understanding of the movie, a more
satisfying account of its rhetoric and achievement. This is why the study of
how a film closes is of special interest.26 But while such a “viewpoint” con-
ditions how we read, it is also vital to point out it is not a given but equally
a construction of reading. We only start recognising what this “viewpoint”
entails as we interpret, and this recognition in turn guides our interpreta-
tion, so in a way also guiding how the “viewpoint” itself to be understood.
To say this is to suggest that the study of a film ending—the inquiry into
why it ends the way it does—involves the search of a critical viewpoint.
And this search is often ongoing, theoretically never-ending, until we
reach an appropriate rest, temporarily.27
Nothing comes after the end. So, in an important sense, it is also where
everything is at stake. Indeed, the ending appears to possess the excep-
tional power of defining a movie. According to Barbara Herrnstein Smith,
the finality of the end “confirm[s] retrospectively, as if with a final stamp
of approval, the valued qualities of the entire experience we have just sus-
tained” (1968, 4). But such a power can be an excessive burden; the end-
ing bears the possibility of altering our perception of a movie, of changing
everything about it for us. And such a burden is all the more apparent
when an ending is experienced negatively, when it seems to “ruin” what a
film has otherwise accomplished. Yvette Bíró likens a “hasty resolution” to
a “short circuit [that] can ‘extinguish’ the entire work” (2008, 203). And
Thomas Sutcliffe notes that we tend to find “disappointing endings”
harder to forgive because endings are where films become “incorrigible”,
so that their disappointment cannot be “rehabilitated by what follows”
like uninspired beginnings do (2000, 8). All of which suggests that the
end is both something like a test and a testament to a film’s achievement.
That’s why it is fruitful to analyse and assess an ending by placing it in rela-
tion to the rest of the work.
In other words, the study of how a film ends, among other things,
involves the consideration of part and whole. And this typically concerns
whether the ending is a fitting conclusion of what comes before. This is
made clear by some of our colloquial evaluative shorthands for disappoint-
ing endings such as “cop-out” and “tacked-on” (again, it is when an end-
ing fails that we become acutely aware of the nature of endings). The
former indicates a failure of commitment, a betrayal of the original artistic
cause; the latter describes a case of aesthetic incongruity, a tactless addition
of unproductive materials. Put simply, the concern with the fittingness of
an ending is the concern with whether it is appropriate, productive, or

rewarding.
The ambiguity of Force Majeure’s ending lies in its meaning and merit
as a part, its contribution to the whole. Its unfitting nature is underlined
by several reviews of the film. For Jonathan Romney (2015), the conclu-
sion “is a coda that feels a bit superfluous”, adding nothing to the movie
but belabouring its “point”. And Richard Brody (undated) is outright
dismissive of the ending for its “convenient resolutions” and “superficial
ironies”, implying that it is both unearned and uninteresting. The two
reviewers neither explore the ending in detail nor explain their evaluation,
but I suspect a main source of their discontents concerns a key event in the
scene, stemming from its blatancy and seeming opportunism. Specifically,
this event is something like a reversal of what happens during the ava-
lanche and, as such, it appears to effect an all-too-neat resolution of the
narrative issues. The ending therefore feels “unnatural” as a conclusion
and courts the suspicion of a cheap or clumsy contrivance which, as we
shall see, simultaneously evokes a “cop-out” and a “tacked-on”. Not only
does the scene define the film for us—“altering” the film’s suggestions—
but it also changes things for us—throwing into doubt the prior accom-
plishment of the film. It is a questionable ending that raises many questions.
And being ambivalent towards the “viewpoint” that it proposes, we are
uncertain about the appropriate way of understanding it and its relation-
ship to the rest of the movie.
Ebba’s “Flight”
Things are never truly over until the end. The family find themselves in yet
another trying situation in the final scene. The fact that dramatic events
happen in swift succession in Force Majeure suggests the deliberate design
of the drama, flagging up the contrivance of the events. The situation
concerns the family’s bumpy coach ride down the mountains. Although
they are not in immediate mortal danger, it is evident that their driver has
difficulties negotiating the narrow and winding path with the mammoth
vehicle. Notably, the moment enables a complex view of Ebba’s reaction.
On the one hand, in several medium shots, she looks terribly stressed by
the drive and becomes restless, agitated. This distances us from the char-
acter by framing her anxiety as excessive, especially in light of the passive
watchfulness of the other passengers. She is right to worry but she gives
way to it alarmingly quickly. On the other hand, the camera invites us to
136 H. L. LAW
acknowledge Ebba’s experience by identifying with her affectively.28 Most of

the later ride is filmed from a position approximate to her seat. We therefore
have a strong sense of how she would perceive the precarious drive. From
this perspective—which we take to be hers—the windscreen is enormous,
extremely close, nearly as big as the frame.29 And this enlarged view magni-
fies the impact of the coach’s dangerous manoeuvres, its abrupt starts and
stops. The effect is almost visceral (especially if we watch the film on a big
screen). It feels like the vehicle might lose control at any second; every bend
of the road seems to threaten an awful accident. The scene invites us to take
Ebba’s distress as overwrought but understandable.
But this view loses hold as soon as she shows signs of going out of con-
trol. And this is signalled by the remarkable moment when the character
walks into (what is previously taken to be) her own point-of-view shot,
runs to and screams at the driver, demanding to disembark immediately.
She then sits near him, next to the door, perhaps to monitor his driving
and prepare for her imminent departure. It is not before long when the
driver makes another mistake. This time, Ebba couldn’t hold it anymore
but storms out of the vehicle alone, almost in tears, seemingly having a
breakdown. We observe all the above from her “optical viewpoint”, so in
a sense acting as her proxy, as though she is “split”, witnessing herself
unravel. The composure of this viewpoint further evokes the poise of her
“normal” self, and therefore serves as a contrast to the Ebba we see out
there. If our adoption of her perspective fosters emotional identification
earlier, it also promotes critical distance now. And this distance encourages
us to think of Ebba as not quite herself at the moment.
In this way, the coach ride mirrors the avalanche scene. Not unlike
Tomas, Ebba appears to have acted instinctively. And this, again like in
Tomas’ case, unfortunately leads her to “desert” her family and neglect
her children. The reversed scenario then seems to suggest something like
this: similar to Tomas, Ebba is also liable to be overtaken by her impulse
and woefully “let down” by it. Put differently, her selfless behaviour dur-
ing the avalanche is no guarantee of her praiseworthy actions in other dire
situations. Accordingly, Tomas’ objectionable flight should be taken as an
isolated incident, and not as conclusive evidence of his moral defect. The
action is regrettable but not unforgivable. After all, it is a very human pos-
sibility that we fail ourselves despite ourselves, failing our moral ideal and
responsibilities, against our better judgement. In other words, the scene
“redeems” Tomas—but at best partially, as we shall see below—in a more
subtle and effective way than the rescue in the snow. But is this “redemp-
tion” justified?
It is important to observe some key differences between the two sce-
narios. While Ebba’s flight is potentially an uncontrollable action caused
by a panic attack, Tomas’ is dogged by the possibility of a decision, as he
lifts and promptly drops his son to pick up an item on the table before
running away (see note 4). In other words, if Ebba seems less accountable
for her action than Tomas is for his deed, then we also want to say that her
“failing” is not on a par with his moral failure. That her flight is actually
excusable, and his desertion demands further explanation. In fact, there is
a sense that Ebba’s flight, especially compared with Tomas’, is not much
of a desertion, as the children are not in any imminent danger in a station-
ary vehicle. On the other hand, the bigger-than-life threat of the avalanche
calls for Tomas’ urgent attention to his family. Therefore, he is not just
blameworthy for fleeing but also for not acting on this urgency. His failure
here is partly the failure to act.
It is then ironic that Tomas is “redeemed” by a scenario in which he
does nothing. He has neither said anything about nor acted in response to
the reckless coach ride.30 While, in fact, a more sensible course of action,
in light of the increasingly hazardous scenario, is arguably closer to what
Ebba has done, to challenge the driver or at least raise the issue with him.
So, it is also ironic that Ebba’s “overreaction” is, to a considerable extent,
a reasonable reaction. But we are nevertheless prompted to read it as irra-
tional, largely due to Loven Kongsli’s persuasive performance of fidgets
and fright, which are often intensified in medium close-ups. Moreover, the
longer camera distance later in the scene promotes the registration of the
character’s erratic bodily movements and ungainly agitation. Ebba’s insta-
bility is further pitted against Tomas’ clear-headedness. He remains calm
when other passengers rush to vacate the coach upon Ebba’s exit, and
takes care of his children in a reassuring manner. The episode paints an
unfavourable portrait of Ebba.
Tomas’ “redemption” is indeed made possible by Ebba’s fall into “dis-
favour”. And this points to its questionable dimension. Specifically, since
the scenario erodes Ebba’s moral high ground, it seems like a humbling
lesson for her; further robbing her of some of her dignity, it is also an
embarrassing, if not humiliating, experience. And these feel all the more
brutal for the scene follows the character’s “staging” of the rescue. It is as
though she is being punished for that, for gaining the upper hand in the
marriage and in the moral drama. In fact, from a storytelling perspective,
138 H. L. LAW
it is curious, rather unconventional, that Ebba receives her “comeup-

pance” when Tomas is the one who has erred and strayed, and in need of
reformation, moral education.31 This exposes the movie to the suspicion
of favouritism towards Tomas—excusing and exonerating his wrongdo-
ings—at the expense of Ebba. The ending of Force Majeure appears to
endorse a partisan point-of-view.
Inappropriate Identification?
Indeed, earlier in the chapter, I have referred to the possibility of a movie
to identify with the perspective of its character, in the sense of being moti-
vated or shaped by it. Now, having examined Force Majeure’s final three
scenes in some detail, it becomes evident that this idea may afford a useful
way of reframing their significance. Note that such an identification admits
of types and degrees. The three moments represent different positions
towards Tomas. The scene inside the hotel flaunts its critical distance by
mocking the character’s atonement, highlighting its theatricality. It iro-
nises the family “reconciliation”. The viewpoint of the “redemption”
scene is somewhat self-conflicting. On the one hand, the camera adopts a
position that privileges the appearance of the rescue—and not its details—
making possible Tomas’ heroic image. But on the other hand, the movie
undermines the credibility of the rescue through a whole host of other
stylistic means, making it impossible to miss the likeliness of a pretence.
Finally, we have seen how the episode on the coach presents a “redemp-
tion” of Tomas to the detriment of Ebba’s moral standing. By saying this
is something of the film’s identification with Tomas, I am not suggesting
that it carries out his will, or that he seeks to punish her; though he might
unconsciously want to undermine his accuser. But the film seems to sym-
pathise with the character by offering a narrative solution that serves as his
convenient “acquittal”. In that sense, the ending works as a
wish-fulfilment.
We can therefore say that Force Majeure’s position towards Tomas
moves from that of critique to ambivalence to complicity. Or, put differ-
ently, the film seems to trade its loose alignment with Ebba for an identi-
fication with Tomas. And this is one reason why the final scene feels
puzzling, disconcerting. It defies our expectations—developed through-
out the narrative—of the film’s moral order. The ambiguity of the resolu-
tion partly arises from this subversion of viewpoint and its seeming moral
inappropriateness.
Inappropriate Resolution?
If resolution can be conceived as a movie’s answer to its questions, then
one useful way of exploring Force Majeure’s resolution is to examine how
it engages with the film’s questions and functions as their answers.32 The
final scene works an answer by revisiting a key narrative question. While
the rescue in the fog has already somewhat “redeemed” Tomas, the coach
ride reintroduces that issue by providing another way of answering it, as
though to replace the previous answer, correcting that ironic “redemp-
tion”. However, on reflection, we realise that this new answer is only an
incomplete answer; it might be a justification of Tomas’ flight but remains
no account of his stubborn denial of it. Yet what is most blameworthy
about Tomas, and therefore most in need of an account, is the denial.
Leaving this prominent and difficult question unanswered, the ending
feels unsatisfying. The partial “redemption” is hardly a true redemption.
And letting Tomas off the hook, the resolution risks trivialising the mov-
ie’s prior concern; its astute, if often comical, study of the character’s
moral responsibility. In fact, this inquiry into individual accountability is
somewhat nullified at the end by the appeal to the universal condition of
human fallibility. This arouses the suspicion of both a “cop-out” (a failure
of commitment) and a “tacked-on” (an unearned solution). There is a
sense the resolution only answers the movie’s questions selectively or mis-
leadingly, as though it is seeking to “rewrite” these questions for us, to the
benefit of Tomas, for the sake of his “acquittal”. And this is one reason
why it feels inappropriate.
But the ending’s questionable moral complicity might not be indefen-
sible. In fact, one could argue that it is part of Force Majeure’s reimagina-
tion of the disaster movie, its provocative way of partaking in the genre’s
interrogation of ethical values (recall Sontag). Specifically, not only does
the film depict a narrative scenario in which a character’s moral responsi-
bility is under scrutiny but it further implicates itself in that scrutiny by
enacting the viewpoint of that character through means of style and struc-
ture, making moral responsibility a subject of (its) aesthetics. In other
words, not unlike Ten (see Chap. 3), Force Majeure explores ethics with
film form. If this is the case, then the question is whether the movie suc-
cessfully convinces us that its “identification” with Tomas is not an
unthinking endorsement but a strategy to stimulate reflection. We need
some indicators of the movie’s critical standpoint.
140 H. L. LAW
Equilibrium?
Let’s look at the rest of the ending. Having abandoned the coach, the pas-
sengers continue their journey on foot. Some time has passed; the day has
turned darker, and colder. But they still haven’t reached their destination.
In a medium close-up, we see Ebba and the daughter from the front,
walking towards us, before the camera starts moving to the right slowly, as
if to unfurl a picture, revealing other characters: Tomas and the son—then
Mats—and eventually Mats’ girlfriend. All appear to be lost in their own
thoughts. The physical interval between them, emphasised and enhanced
by the lateral movement, reflects their isolation. Then the camera reverses
its direction of travel. And two notable interactions ensue. First, Ebba asks
Mats to help carry her daughter, instead of entrusting Tomas with the
task. This is suggestive of the couple’s unresolved estrangement. Shortly
after, Tomas accepts a cigarette from a stranger despite his initial decline
of the offer. Seemingly unaware of his father’s smoking habit, the son asks
about it. To which Tomas plainly confirms (“Yes, I do”), but only after a
sigh—which also sounds like a quiet chuckle—as though being surprised
by his own action, relieved by the possibility of admitting it. The camera
pulls back to include the whole group in the frame. Force Majeure ends
here, with a tableau of togetherness. But this time, it transcends the family
and marks the coming together of a makeshift community (Fig. 5.6).
In an interview, Östlund speaks of the passengers heading down the
mountains “in solidarity”. But this is at odds with Ebba’s act of distrust as

well as the emphasis on separation that we see during the camera move-
ment. More accurately, the moment depicts a group of strangers sticking
to each other because they are stuck, in some middle of nowhere. Though
the image of the characters walking towards us echoes the earlier tableau
of the tunnel (see Fig. 5.5). If the family’s march in that tableau signifies
that they are reaching the end of the crisis, here, still walking, at the close
of the film, it is as though they still haven’t reached that end, still working
their way out of the crisis. The uncertainty of their future is made evident
by the family’s unsustainable “equilibrium” at the end. As we have seen,
things “balance” out at the close of Force Majeure not through the reform-
ing of Tomas but through the undermining of Ebba. The “equality”
between the couple, in other words, is far from a desirable state of har-
mony. Rather, it entails the uncharitable recognition that they are now
equally blameworthy, both having failed their family. There is a sense that
this recognition is the shared guilt, the mutual understanding, that binds
the couple together. But this knowledge affects them differently. If Tomas’
act of smoking hints at relief, Ebba’s silent look of regret points to resigna-
tion. What is to him a grateful reunion is to her a thankless one. He is a
hero (to the children) despite his desertion and denials while she suffers
from shame because she is “responsible” for getting everyone into this
awful situation. (And this is particularly awful for her because shame
enlarges in the presence of others.) In a way, the closing tableau is a pic-
ture of people being stuck with each other. If it registers togetherness at
all, it is not a happy togetherness.
In fact, it can be said that the last image is less about togetherness than
self-possession. It seems to be all about Tomas. Foregrounded in the cen-
tre of the frame, walking slightly ahead of the others, he is cast as the
patriarch who is leading everyone out of the predicament. And this appear-
ance of authority is augmented by the act of smoking, which evokes the
look of cool confidence and calm control. Is the ending meant to be a
favourable portrait of Tomas? Östlund claims that the character’s admit-
tance of smoking is “a positive step” (ibid.), presumably because it signals
his honest acceptance of who he is, which in turn stands for his possibility
of change. However, in light of the character’s unearned “redemption”—
that he is not reformed but unjustly acquitted at the end—his self-assurance
here feels hollow, suggestive of misguided complacency. And that’s hardly
a reason to be hopeful about the future of the family. Having the charac-
ters walking towards instead of away from us at the end (the latter’s sense
142 H. L. LAW
of withdrawal and closure is perhaps more suited to a happy ending), it is

as though the film confronts us with its uncomfortable “resolution”, its
challenging moral enquires.
Rhetorical Unreliability
But my claims about the ending is conditional. Specifically, whether we see
the hollowness of Tomas’ “positive step”, whether we recognise the com-
placency underneath his confidence, is dependent on whether we interpret
his “redemption” as unjustified. The orientation of our reading hinges
upon our critical perspective, our understanding of the film thus far.
Earlier in this chapter, I suggested that the study of how a film closes
involves the search of an appropriate critical viewpoint. Serving to orien-
tate our account, such a viewpoint is instructive to the analysis of ambigu-
ity. Our search is made possible because the end, by putting things in
perspective, offers something like a comprehensive analytical position to
assess the movie’s meaning and significance. However, it is crucial to
maintain the possible difference between these two positions: a rewarding
standpoint is informed but not guaranteed by a “full” perspective.
This is the case with Force Majeure. A pertinent critical standpoint is
difficult to obtain due to the film’s unstable, somewhat puzzling overall
perspective. On the one hand, the movie invites us to view Tomas from a
critical distance, bolstered by its uses of irony, especially through the
deployment of the imagery of togetherness. But on the other hand, spe-
cifically at the end, the movie appears to display favouritism towards the
anti-hero, as though acting out his wants. There is a sense that the film, as
a whole, is torn between two opposing forces, oscillating between con-
flicting viewpoints on the character. Such a self-contradiction is not in
itself problematic. What is perplexing is that not only is the stance with
which the film identifies—and therefore invites us to entertain—question-
able but, most importantly, the unforewarned change of stance feels like a
betrayal of its previous commitment. This rhetorical unreliability is a
source of ambiguity. We question the “morality”—specifically the sincer-
ity—of the film like we question the conduct of its main character; the two
critical activities are inextricably linked, and that adds to the complexity of
our inquiry. Leading to more quandaries than answers, Force Majeure’s
ethical investigation results in discomfiting moral ambivalence, leaving us
in a difficult state of reflective uncertainty. Ultimately, we don’t know
which is really “on trial” morally, the movie or the viewer.33 Perhaps both.
We are not sure whether Force Majeure is “confused” or being confusing,

or maybe we have missed or underappreciated its point.
The critical ramifications of our reflective uncertainty take the centre
stage in next chapter.
Notes
1. Seen in this way, we can say that a prominent question of disaster movies
revolves around the nature of our moral responsibility, of whether “normal
obligations” still apply in exceptional circumstances, or whether these cir-
cumstances in fact call for “special obligations”. This book reflects on how
individual movies present distinctive inquiries. But the exploration of genre
specific questions is also a fruitful avenue of study. Chapter 4 has touched
upon the investigation of human agency in film noirs, which is the central
subject of Robert Pippin’s book on the genre (2012).
2. Put another way, the movie is more interested in the reach and the nature
of “normal obligations”.
3. An alternative suggestion is made by Mats. But it sounds too absurd to be
a reasonable account of the flight. According to this proposal, Tomas
ensures his own survival in full awareness that he could later come back to
rescue his family. This hypothesis rings false as it exaggerates the purpose-
fulness of Tomas’ action.
4. Philosophers call such a situation, where an agent commits an action of
moral merit or demerit under circumstances beyond his or her control, the
issue of “moral luck” (see Nagel 1979). In his article on Force Majeure’s
exploration of moral questions, Christopher Falzon speaks of the film “an
ethical experiment in which the main character is put to the test of experi-
ence and falls woefully short. It is implied that human beings, engaged in
a perilous encounter with the world, are constitutionally susceptible to
failure” (2017, 295). Falzon gives a good account of the moral significance
of Tomas’ flight. However, he seems to downplay what I see as an equally
important aspect of the film’s ethical exploration: the character’s reluc-
tance to acknowledge and account for his action. As a result, Falzon has a
more generous view of Tomas’ moral failure than I do.
5. In fact, Tomas briefly lifts his son, perhaps intending to carry him to safety,
before dropping him to pick up an item on the table. This swift gesture is
easy to miss because of the commotion of the moment. But its recognition
would complicate our moral understanding of Tomas. It seems to suggest
an impulse to protect his son. Though it is not followed through but sur-
passed by the urge—or is it a choice?—to take something else with him. It
is important that this item is unidentified, as its revelation may encourage
144 H. L. LAW
us to reach an adamant moral judgement of Tomas (imagine what he picks

up is a luxury watch).
6. The shot also juxtaposes Tomas’ action with the controlled avalanche,
inviting a comparison. If the titular force majeure refers to the incident, we
are reminded that it can be equally an attribute of the action. (The fact that
Force Majeure is the international English title of the film—it is called
Turist in Swedish—doesn’t make the comparison any less valid.) The film
advances a metaphorical connection by putting the disastrous effects of the
latter on a par with the destructive potential of the former.
7. The shot of the sunrise before the sequence seems to suggest that. Perhaps
the scene, more accurately, happens on the fifth day of the vacation.
8. Östlund frequently refers to the scene as the “worst man cry ever” in
interviews.
9. As Roland Barthes suggests: “By weeping, I want to impress someone, to
bring pressure to bear upon someone” (2002, 182).
10. Then our interpretive effort entails less the settlement on one meaning but
the gauging of the relative contribution of these elements. Uncertainty
may encourage an impulse to ascertain, to treat it like an either/or ques-
tion. But what is called for sometimes is the assessment of weight and sig-
nificance. I shall return to this later in the chapter.
11. This is not to suggest Ebba is getting great pleasure from shaming Tomas.
The experience of recounting is difficult for her too, as indicated by her
emotional distress. Moreover, she may feel embarrassed about making a
scene and embarrassed for Tomas’ cowardly action.
12. What the children think and feel matters a great deal to Ebba, who is estab-
lished as the more caring and considerate parent of the two. She often
explicitly voices her concerns about the children, making her decisions
based on their needs. This is, however, thrown into question at the end of
the movie.
13. The film’s final scene presents an instance where a machine seems to pos-
sess a life of its own.
14. The rest of this famous first sentence of Anna Karenina reads “each
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.
15. But the scene also hints at the trouble underneath the family’s attractive
facade. The most suggestive detail being the couple’s little bump of the
heads. This minor accident prefigures the major clash between them.
16. The recurrence of the tableau enhances its ironic possibilities. Motifs, as
Raymond Durgnat notes, “change meaning each time they’re repeated,
they easily carry ironies” (2002, 102).
17. He might as well say “I made it!” instead of “we made it!” earlier in the
scene, considering he is the one who is on “trial” in the movie and there-
fore needs “making it” the most.
18. Also, the concerto has been thus far used to accompany those unpeopled
images of heavy machinery working on the snowscape. That is, it is associ-
ated with the themes of control and cultivation. Keyed to Tomas’ gallant
act, the music seems only to suggest the act’s comparable contrivance.
19. This points to an uncomfortable suggestion. Allowing the kids to ski in
such circumstances, Ebba, like Tomas, is putting them at risk. And her
doing that knowingly, as opposed to his misguided judgement, makes it
more questionable morally.
20. In Force Majeure, it is the two facial close-ups of Ebba when the family is
travelling to the top of the mountains. In Downhill, it is when Pete and the
children have left Billie to ski down the slope alone. The fact that Pete has
suddenly changed his mind about skiing—claiming he is tired and wants a
cocoa—despite his excitement about it earlier in the morning and pretty
much throughout the narrative, is worth commenting. There is a sense
that he changes his mind in order to relieve his children from the “obliga-
tion” to ski with him. Earlier in the scene, one of the sons has finally admit-
ted that he hates skiing. And this seems to finally trigger Pete’s realisation
of his selfishness; asking his family to do what he wants to do instead of
finding things they can happily do together for the holiday. This seeming
realisation makes Pete a more sympathetic character than Tomas. Indeed,
if Pete is portrayed as foolish in a very human sense—he makes mistakes
but he is also willing to make amends—Tomas is cowardly in an objection-
able way—ashamed of what he did, he therefore shamelessly denies it, pre-
tending it didn’t happen, waiting for things to blow over.
21. His poor judgement here perhaps stems from his rush to prove himself to
his family. The fact that he rises up to the occasion, even though by taking
a questionable course, suggests that he might deserve a second chance.
22. See MacDowell (2016).
23. Michael Walker speaks of the “two endings” of a film: the resolution and
the epilogue. “The resolution sorts out the problems the film has set up
[…] and the epilogue shows the stability thereby achieved” (2020, 7).
24. I am aware that what my claim evokes—”the light at the end of the tunnel”
and “somebody has arrived”—are (as far as I know) English expressions.
So, it would seem I am imposing these meanings on a Swedish film made
by a Swedish filmmaker. But I believe my reading is justifiable. For what
these expressions suggest or imply—the endurance of difficulty and the
obtainment of success—are hardly cultural specific suggestions.
Accordingly, when I speak of the scene in these terms, I am not imposing
cultural specific meanings on it. Instead, my reading invokes the expres-
sions as something like figures of speech, in the sense that criticism often
calls for and can be enriched by the act of speaking figuratively. For a dis-
146 H. L. LAW
cussion of the importance and benefits of exercising our critical imagina-

tiveness, see Grant (2013).
25. Both ends of a narrative—the beginning and the ending—are not only
evitable but also functional because, as Frank Kermode suggests, they
“endow the interval with meanings” (2000, 190).
26. All these are also reasons why the study of film ending—a related but dis-
tinct subject—is of special interest. But of course, the study of ending as a
component of film requires the sustained consideration of how a variety of
individual movies end. Also, it is interesting that the study of film ending
has generated a much more substantial body of critical literature in com-
parison to the study of film opening. A notable recent attempt of the latter
is Insdorf (2017).
27. This is another way to say that close reading is predicated on the idea that
the practice of reading cannot be totally, terminally closed.
28. Gilberto Perez speaks of “affective identification” as a camera’s
“identif[ication] with the movement of characters whose feelings it thereby
draws us into” (2019, 251). The concept is applicable here even though
Ebba’s “movement” in her point-of-view shots is technically the move-
ment of the coach.
29. By likening the windscreen to the movie screen, the film also likens Ebba’s
experience to the experience of movie-watching: that is, the experience of
being in the presence of a world in which one cannot intervene. The com-
parison highlights her feeling of helplessness.
30. And this is simply no comparison to what Ebba has done in the reversed
scenario: staying with and shielding the children. In fact, the praiseworthi-
ness of her action is not at all remarked upon in the film but taken for
granted as a parental responsibility. But, if to fail morally is human, instinc-
tively human, as the coach ride scene seems to suggest, then Ebba’s action
should deserve some recognition. The film’s neglect of it seems to me
symptomatic of its unfair treatment of the character towards the end,
which I shall discuss soon.
31. It is a prevalent element of what Stanley Cavell (1981) calls the remarriage
comedy that the reconciliation of the central couple requires the re-
education of (at least) one of the partners. Such an education makes pos-
sible the equality between them and therefore also makes possible their life
together. One could argue that Force Majeure contributes to the develop-
ment of this genre (it is key to Cavell’s idea of the genre—and genre in
general—that its features are open to continuous revision). But as we have
seen, the “equality” between Tomas and Ebba, secured by her punishment
and not his education, is only problematic. If Force Majeure is a remarriage
comedy, the remarriage it presents is dark and its comedy is wry.
32. In film scholarship, the issue of narrative resolution is typically addressed in

relation to closure, in studies on closure. (The connection between the
topics is highlighted by the fact that both can be conceived in terms of
questions-and-answers, see Carroll [2007] for such an account of closure.)
As a result, these discussions may not engage with, or at least not directly
explore, the appropriateness of a resolution. My analysis here, focusing on
how Force Majeure answers its questions, is inspired by V.F. Perkins’ brief
remark (1993) on Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959), in which
he sees the appropriateness of its resolution not as a matter of answering all
the dramatic questions but the satisfying answering of the pertinent ones.
If this is also how the film achieves closure, then Perkins’ account further
serves as a corrective to Carroll’s theorisation of narrative closure, where
he proposes closure as a work’s successful answering of all its narrative
questions. For detailed studies on closure in film, see MacDowell (2013)
and Neupert (1995).
33. This echoes Stanley Cavell’s remark on modern art. Complicating issues of
the genuine and the fraudulent, this kind of artwork is capable of inspiring
profound critical uncertainty: “The only exposure of false art lies in recog-
nizing something about the object itself, but something whose recognition
requires exactly the same capacity as recognizing the genuine article. It is a
capacity not insured by understanding the language in which it is com-
posed, and yet we may not understand what is said; nor insured by the
healthy functioning of the senses, though we may be told we do not see or
that we fail to hear something; nor insured by the aptness of our logical
powers, though what we may have missed was the object’s consistency or
the way one thing followed from another. We may have missed its tone, or
neglected an allusion or a cross current, or failed to see its point altogether;
or the object may not have established its tone, or buried the allusion too
far, or be confused in its point. You often do not know which is on trial,
the object or the viewer: modern art did not invent this dilemma, it merely
insists upon it” (2002, 166).
References
Barthes, Roland. 2002. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. London: Vintage.
Bíró, Yvette. 2008. Turbulence and Flow in Film: the Rhythmic Design.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Brody, Richard. undated. Review of Force Majeure, The New Yorker. https://www.
newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/force-majeure-2. Accessed
3 Aug 2020.
Carroll, Noël. 2007. Narrative Closure. Philosophical Studies: An International
Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 135 (1, August): 1–15.
148 H. L. LAW
Cavell, Stanley. 1981. Pursuits of Happiness: the Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage.

Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
———. 2002. Music Discomposed. In Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of
Essays. Updated edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Durgnat, Raymond. 2002. A Long Hard look at Psycho. London: BFI.
Falzon, Christopher. 2017. Experiencing Force Majeure. Film-Philosophy 21
(3): 281–298.
Insdorf, Annette. 2017. Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes.
New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Kermode, Frank. 2000. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction.
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MacDowell, James. 2013. Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema: Cliché, Convention
and the Final Couple. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
———. 2016. Irony in Film. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nagel, Thomas. 1979. Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Neupert, Richard. 1995. The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press.
Perez, Gilberto. 2019. The Eloquent Screen: A Rhetoric of Film. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Perkins, V.F. 1993. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. New York:
Da Capo Press.
Pippin, Robert B. 2012. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic
Philosophy. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press.
Romney, Jonathan. 2015. Review of Force Majeure. The Guardian (15 April).
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/12/force-m ajeure-f ilm-
review-ruben-ostlund-avalanche. Accessed 3 Aug 2020.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. 1968. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sontag, Susan. 2009. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. London: Penguin.
Sutcliffe, Thomas. 2000. Watching. London: Faber and Faber.
Walker, Michael. 2020. Endings in the Cinema: Thresholds, Water and the Beach.
Cham: Springer Nature.
CHAPTER 6
Threat of Insignificance
“It All Began the Day I Looked at You …”

I was re-watching Fritz Lang’s Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956).
It is about seven minutes into the movie. In a close-up, a record player
is playing a love song, setting the mood of the scene. The shot lasts for a
few seconds before cutting to the central couple—Tom Garrett (Dana
Andrews) and Susan Spencer (Joan Fontaine)—who have just set a date
for their wedding. But their passionate kiss is cut short by the ringing
telephone. Garrett goes to answer the call as Susan is leaving his apartment.
Coming to the foreground, in a frontal shot, Garrett picks up the
receiver, ready to speak. Then, suddenly—for a fraction of a second—he
looks into the camera. Wait! Did I just see that? I paused the DVD to
replay the scene. This time I planned to closely study Andrews’s eyes.
Again, the telephone rings. Garrett picks up the call and … Aha! he has
indeed looked into the camera! (Fig. 6.1). I had never noticed this glance in
my prior watching of the film. Its brevity makes it difficult to detect.
Neither foregrounded with a closer shot nor dwelled upon with slow
motion, the look is instead absorbed into the flow of the action. And the
scene promptly dissolves into the next as Garrett greets his caller. All this
allows the detail to easily pass unobserved. Why is there a “secret” glance? Is
it intentional? How do I account for it?

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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62945-8_6
150 H. L. LAW
Fig. 6.1 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)
Re-watching the scene, my awareness of Garrett’s look had changed

how I perceive the surrounding details. Most remarkably, it is uncanny
that the song playing in the background starts with the line: “It all began
the day I looked at you”. In light of the look, the otherwise clichéd lyrics
acquire further meaning, becoming furtively self-referential. The words
seem to announce, in advance, the arrival of a momentous glance, maybe
inviting us to look out for it, to be watchful. Later, after conducting some
research, I learned that the ballad in fact shares the movie’s title, as though
to declare the importance of how things look in the narrative and establish
a link between the issue of sight and the matter of doubt. The song asserts
the power of appearance. But what is it, if anything, the character’s look is
trying to tell us? What remains beyond and above suspicion in the movie?
In fact, Garrett nearly looks into the camera again towards the end of
the scene (Fig. 6.2). This glance is not as brief as the previous one, but
taking place during a lap dissolve, it could similarly escape attention. Here,
the eyes of the performer don’t quite meet the gaze of the camera. Instead,
he avoids looking into the lens but looks past it.1 This avoidance, never-
theless, puts into sharp relief the confrontational directness of the first
glance. There is the strong impression that the first look is not only pro-
jected to my direction but indeed directed to me, intended for me. But
how could that be? What would that entail?
6 THREAT OF INSIGNIFICANCE 151
My mind was full of questions. I wanted to understand what the glance is

and what it means. I couldn’t unsee it. I couldn’t set aside my curiosity. I
couldn’t help but think about it.
So, it all began the day Garrett—and Andrews?—looked at me. This
chapter explores the import and implication of this unsettling detail, of the
uncertainty that it introduces to our understanding, and of the ways we
can come to terms with this uncertainty, coming to an understanding. Our
uncertainty, on the one hand, has to do with meaning: what does the look
suggest? On the other hand, we are also unsure about its significance: is
the look truly meaningful? If so, in what respect? And this further presses
the urgent question of how much interpretative weight we ought to place
on this fleeting yet arresting detail. How should we proceed with our
analysis? What would an appropriate reading look like? How far should
our account go in unpacking the look’s suggestion?
Like the prior passages, the following discussion will take into account
my viewing experience, evoking my reactions and voicing my reflections
on the look (often as chains of italicised enquiries). However, my aim is
not to revel a private moment—something like a Barthesian punctum—a
detail that only “pricks” me.2 Nor am I resorting to the subjective for
caveats to my whimsical, wayward reading. The subsequent analysis builds
upon my individual understanding but it is not intended to be confes-
sional or idiosyncratic. Not only are my observations shareable, but so are
152 H. L. LAW
my interpretations. Garrett’s direct look is—to use V.F. Perkins’ words—a

detail “for all to see, and to see the sense of” (1990, 4). The reader is
invited to check what I say against what they see onscreen, to compare his
or her findings with mine, to see the sense of the look in light or in spite
of my reading. A main task of criticism is indeed to make personal under-
standings shareable, establishing the grounds for conversation. As we shall
see, this sometimes requires us to articulate our uncertainty, to address it
in our critical account.
Recounting and probing my viewing experience, importantly, gives me
an opportunity to explore a prominent meta-critical implication of ambi-
guity: its power to animate a drama of doubt. My doubt about the mean-
ing and significance of Garrett’s ambiguous look initiates something like
an inner critical dialogue, wherein competing understandings are pitted
against each other and put to the test (think Descartes’s Meditations). And
these dialogues are often formulated into the discursive dynamics of, for
example, “yes … but …” and “if that is the case … then why …?” By
doing so, this chapter reflects upon how ambiguity fuels our critical con-
viction even though—and sometimes precisely because—it keeps our
understanding in suspension. Serving as a kind of productive doubt, ambi-
guity encourages us to dwell on it, to revisit it, in order to produce a sus-
tained, detailed, and responsible account. Our attunement to uncertainty
could make us a more careful, reflective, and diligent reader.
A Look That Seems Out of Place

I haven’t actually made clear why I found Garrett’s look striking, and why
it has left me in doubt. This has to do with the impression that the detail
is, in some sense, out of place.
We customarily call a character’s look into the camera a direct address.
Direct addresses, Tom Brown suggests, are instances when “characters in
movies fictions […] appear to acknowledge our presence as spectators;
they seem to look at us” (2013, x). The crucial terms here are “appear”
and “seem”. Fictional characters can neither “acknowledge” nor “look at”
us in any familiar, traditional manner. They can only do so in some special,
indirect sort of way. When a fictional character “acknowledges” or “looks
at” us, what is created is only an impression of contact, an imaginary con-
nection. This aesthetic possibility is put to meaningful purposes in musi-
cals and comedies where the direct address is a generic convention. But
even without the generic licence, a movie can develop the device as part of
its dramatic repertoire. In other words, while a character’s look into the
camera disturbs the movie’s verisimilitude, highlighting its nature as arti-
fice, the effect is not necessarily disruptive. The artifice can be integrated
into the film’s expression. As Perkins remarks: “[b]ecause the [fictional]
world is created in our imagination it need not suffer damage from any
foregrounding of the devices that assist its construction. We can, if we will,
glide over inconsistencies and absorb ruptures, or delight in them”
(2005, 38).
It is unclear how Garrett’s look assists the narrative, stylistic, and generic
construction of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. None of the film’s generic
references—the social problem picture, the courtroom drama, and the
film noir—prepare us for the convention of the direct address. Having no
immediate narrative consequences (e.g., being picked up by a character),
the detail doesn’t seem to belong to the fictional world. While the look
may come across as an acknowledgement of the viewer, it nevertheless
doesn’t quite constitute an address, in the sense that it remains far from
obvious what the look is seeking to deliver. (I will therefore hereafter call
the detail a “direct look/glance” instead of an “address”.) Moreover, the
detail has a sense of stealthiness to it. It takes us by surprise and denies us
sufficient time for recognition, as though it is not supposed to be seen,
only meant to be missed. Importantly, it is the one and only instance of
this kind in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, while its heightened self-awareness
further sets it apart from the seamless verisimilitude of the rest of the
movie. Garrett’s glance is something of an aesthetic anomaly.
The incongruity of the direct look adds to the suspicion that it may
have been a production error. And this view hinges on the distinction
between the character Tom Garrett and the actor Dana Andrews.
Specifically, the suspicion is that Garrett’s glance was an accident/a mis-
take during the filmmaking process. That is, the detail could have been the
unwanted but avoidable result of, for instance, Andrews accidentally look-
ing at the camera or a take mistakenly chosen by the production team. Or,
it could be both.3 Put simply, the look seems like a consequence of a failed
or faulty creative decision.
But this view is not satisfying. Instead it is close to explaining the glance
away by neglecting its effect and possible narrative significance. Production
errors, once so labelled, are likely deemed unworthy of scrutiny, being
exiled to the wasteland of the irrelevant and the meaningless. Is this why I
haven’t read about the direct look in pre-existing literature on the film? Not
only because it is missable but also because it is prone to dismissal, even when
154 H. L. LAW
seen? To think of the glance as a mistake of the performer or the filmmak-

ers prompts one to prematurely forgo, or permanently foreclose, interpre-
tation. There is a deep-seated assumption to equate the production of
meaning to artistic intention (narrowly conceived), so much so that it is
counterintuitive to interpret what seems unplanned or unplannable. Such
an undertaking would sound misguided. What is declared erroneous is
robbed of its narrative significance, its claim to further reading. Because
any further reading, in that case, dangerously approaches the territory of
“overreading” or “misreading”.
However, ambiguity sometimes indeed assumes the form of an artistic
flaw or failure. Certain details in a film are ambiguous precisely because
they raise the suspicion of being accidents or mistakes; it is uncertain
whether they are intentional or meaningful. Worth noting though is that
there are different types of flaws and different degrees of failure. And we
need to engage with these aspects in order to better appreciate the ambi-
guity of Garrett’s direct look. Looking into the camera could be a produc-
tion error, but it would not be an error in the same way as, for example, a
visible boom microphone in the frame is. We would be more inclined to
disregard the narrative meaning of the latter if it were to happen in Beyond
a Reasonable Doubt. Not only is it not an established filmmaking conven-
tion, the display of a boom microphone would also radically depart from
the verisimilitude achieved throughout the movie; it would err too much
to the side of aesthetic failure, recalling too forcefully the production pro-
cess, to be reasonably accommodated by the possibility of the fictional
world. My doubt about the direct glance, by contrast, stems from its con-
siderable degree of its embeddedness within the fiction. Straddling both the
profilmic and the filmic, it creates a wrinkle rather than a rupture in the
narrative. The detail feels simultaneously, perhaps paradoxically, erroneous
and meaningful, autonomous but also as a part of a cohesive whole. Its
nature is defined by a sense of indeterminacy.
Everything in Its Right Place

The suggestion that the direct look is somewhat out of place is at odds
with a prevalent critical view of Fritz Lang’s cinema. Fritz Lang is fre-
quently portrayed as a filmmaker who exerts great command on every
aspect of his direction, to the extent that his artistic ambition can unfail-
ingly manifest onscreen as a coherent and distinctive vision. This
perspective is articulated in the work of Leo Braudy, who argues that

Lang, together with Alfred Hitchcock, are the masters of what he calls the
“closed film”. It is a type of movie in which “everything within it has its
place in the plot of the film—every object, every character, every gesture,
every action” (1976, 46). “Lang’s details”, Braudy further remarks, “form
a plot in both the aesthetic and the conspiratorial sense” (48). That is, not
only does every element in a Lang film serve a plot purpose, together they
may work like a conspiracy, advancing some kind of clandestine scheme or
strategy. One way to understand this is that certain details in a Lang film
could appear incidental, incongruous or inconsequential unless a favour-
able viewing position is adopted, sometimes only in retrospect, which
allows us to see them as carefully planted, meticulously planned parts of
the plot.4 Could Garrett’s look have a plot purpose? Does it contribute to a
clandestine scheme or strategy? What or who is it “conspiring” against?
According to this view, everything in a Lang film is really in its right place
despite its initial appearance to be otherwise.
In his survey of Lang’s films from 1936 to 1960, Robin Wood unpacks
the idea of “functional precision”. He writes
a Lang film has something of the perfection of a polished mechanism. This

is the quality that, in Lang’s achieved works […] one frequently has the
sense that every shot is necessitated by its predecessor. As in a perfect
machine, every shot, and every detail, gesture, movement within the shot,
has a precise function in relation to the working of the whole. (1980, 600)
What is being esteemed here is the skilful composition of Lang’s movies,

the tight fit between their components.5 At their best, the details of his
films do not simply hang together but enhance the functions of each other.
They are masterly arranged and assembled like a well-made machine.
This “functional precision” is further complemented by the aesthetic
“economy” of the films. In these movies, as Wood observes, “[e]verything
is stripped down to essentials” (ibid.). The view that Lang’s cinema
employs no embellishment but only the essentials resonates throughout
the criticism of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Douglas Pye remarks on the
film’s concentration on the “narrative ‘kernel’” of the scenario (1992,
104). Jacques Rivette describes the film as a series of “denials”, and one of
them being the denial of mere expository information. “No concession is
made here to the everyday, to detail: no remarks about the weather, the
cut of a dress, the graciousness of a gesture; if one does become aware of
156 H. L. LAW
a brand of make-up, it is for purposes of plot. We are plunged into a world

of necessity” (1985, 140). Lang’s aesthetic economy is a marker of the
streamlined, no-nonsense logic of his narrative.
It is of special interest to my discussion that gesture and performance
are frequently singled out as the epitome of Lang’s rigorous mise-en-scène.
The acting in Lang’s films, Wood remarks, is “pared down to the necessary
gesture, the necessary expression” (1980, 600). Joe McElhaney (2006)
goes further to say: “[t]hroughout Lang, one so often has a heightened
awareness that every gesture of the actor is controlled and choreographed,
that nothing (and certainly not the body of an actor) escapes a relationship
to the film’s overarching conception and network of meanings”.6 Put dif-
ferently, Lang’s performers often resemble puppet-like figures, being
orchestrated to articulate preordained suggestions.7 This seems to be the
case with Dana Andrews’s performance in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. As
we shall see, his acting helps create and cultivate certain misreading view-
ing expectations, as though working in accordance with the movie’s devi-
ous manipulation. Finally, Rivette speaks of the characters in the movie as
“hav[ing] lost all individual quality, are not more than human concepts”,
limited to what they literally say and do (1985, 141–2). What Garrett says
and does indeed seem to be straightforward and pragmatic, serving less to
furnish character interiority than to convey narrative information. As a
result, unlike with Dix in In a Lonely Place (see Chap. 4), we are not
encouraged to inquire into the deeper reasons for Garrett’s gestures and
expressions, because they seem so transparent, almost bland. It is against
this background of calibrated performance and colourless characterisation
that Garrett’s direct look becomes so remarkable.
Traps for the Mind and Eye
Misleading Narration
It is imperative to summarise the plot of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt before
examining whether and how Garrett’s look fits into its conspiratorial story
and underhand narrational strategy.
Garrett and Austin Spencer (Sidney Blackmer)—Susan’s father, who is
a newspaper editor—have decided to work together to expose the fallibil-
ity of the legal system. They wish to demonstrate how easily the innocent
can be condemned to death by virtue of inconclusive or circumstantial
evidence. To achieve that, false clues are planted to frame Garrett for the
murder of Patty Gray. The plan is that, once he is convicted, Spencer

would produce the photo documentation of the frame-up, to prove his
innocence.8 Unfortunately, Spencer is killed in a car crash, with the all-
important photos destroyed in blames. Garrett is sentenced to death as
anticipated, only saved in the nick of time by a statement of fact left by
Spencer. But as Garrett is about to be pardoned, he reveals his knowledge
of the real name of the murder victim and therefore incriminates himself.
(While it is poetic justice that the character eventually pays for the crime
he has committed, this triumph of justice some how doesn’t feel justified,
for the film has never prepared us for Garrett’s culpability.)
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, in other words, revolves around not one
but two secret plots; one of them we are privy to since its conception, the
other we only find out belatedly. Importantly, the two overlap. Tom
Gunning likens the superimposition of the schemes to the figure of
“palimpsest” (2000, 453). Garrett’s personal agenda is not only cloaked
by but also incorporated into the campaign against capital punishment—
the film’s narrative premise. It is as though Garrett’s secret has been hid-
den in plain sight all along; we are looking at it throughout the movie
without being able to discern its significance. In fact, by letting us in on
the scheme of exposé, the film creates the impression that it has already
worn what is secretive and what is significant on its sleeve. It appears to
place us in a position of knowledge. There is a sense that we know more
and better than any of the characters. The narration is procedural, relaying
the essential information of the (surface) plot. We closely follow the unrav-
elling of Spencer’s plan as well as the key developments of the police inves-
tigation. This dramatic focus results in a powerful narrative expectation;
our concern is directed towards whether the scheme of exposé works out,
not who the murderer is. It is only in retrospect that we recognise the
peculiar viewing position we were ensnared. In Serge Daney’s words
(1981), upon our first viewing, we are “at the same time innocent and
guilty. Innocent because we know nothing, guilty because we believe
everything”. We fall because we are being gullible; because we believe,
almost automatically, in the reliability of the narration. In this way, the film
exposes the complacency of viewing by turning it, perhaps unfairly, against
us. Is it part of the movie’s conspiracy?
Central to the double-scheme of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, as is clear,
is its carefully controlled narration. Discussing the film’s sophisticated
strategies of suppression, selectivity, and schematism, Pye perceptively
points out: “[t]he incompleteness of our access to the narrative is in fact
158 H. L. LAW
constantly stressed, though we are likely to remain blind to its scale and
significance” (1992, 105).9 In other words, it is not that we lack awareness
of the movie’s restrictive viewpoint but we are mistaken about its nature,
which led us to think that it strictly serves the relentless procedural logic
of the plot. A Lang film only presents what is essential, right? We do not and
cannot know the real purpose of this restriction. And that has a vital con-
sequence to our understanding. Throughout the movie, we are given an
unreliable basis by which to assess the import and implication of its ele-
ments; to judge what is relevant, what is significant, and what is suspicious.
The immediate effect is that we “misconstrue” the movie’s pertinent
questions; we “misread” certain details, or simply “miss” important sug-
gestions. But what does it mean to say we overlook or misunderstand these
things, considering there is no way for us—upon first viewing—to register
their significance and assess their appropriate meaning? Pointing out the
murkiness of the idea of the “ideal viewpoint” in film, George M. Wilson
suggests that it can be what a viewer “would want and expect to see by way
of satisfying his or her interest in the action” or it can be that of what this
viewer “ought to see if the questions that focus his or her interest are to be
answered correctly” (1986, 44). At first glance, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
seems to afford an “ideal viewpoint” in both senses. This is revealed to be
false, but only at the very end of the movie. Then we suddenly realise the
film has been merely promoting the “wrong” narrative expectations and
providing answers that satisfy our “misguided” interest. The “ideal view-
point” turns out to be manipulative, deceitful.10
Deceptive Appearance
The question of appearance is vital to Lang’s cinema. “For Lang”, Gilles
Deleuze notes, “it is as if there is no truth any more, but only appearances,
of false images […] Everything is appearance, and yet this novel state
transforms rather than suppresses the system of judgment” (2005, 134).
The observation points to Lang’s interest in complicating matters of cred-
ibility and falsehood, of truth and the mere appearance of truth. What is
remarkable is how this complication does not lead to a crisis of meaning
but instead enables fresh ways of understanding. How does our interroga-
tion of appearances lead to insights into Beyond a Reasonable Doubt?
In Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, appearances can be elusive. Pye discusses
how the restrictive narrational strategies pose challenges to the interpreta-
tion of performance (1992, 107–9). While it seems to us that the exposé
scheme serves as the most immediate point of reference to explain Garrett’s

behaviours, especially his nervousness and detachment, there are also
moments in which the character’s action and gesture strain the explana-
tory coherence of this framework. They hint at some unfathomed aspects
of Garrett.
Consider the television footage of Garrett’s trial. At one point, the
character silently scribbles on a piece of paper, then tears it up while look-
ing into the fast approaching courtroom camera. We see something like a
direct look: aimed at the audience within the film but also looking in our
direction (Fig. 6.3). For Susan, as her pained expression in a reaction shot
makes clear, the moments suggest Garrett’s despair, perhaps his call for
help. But the availability of Garrett’s countenance doesn’t give ready
access to his thoughts and emotions; his bland expression resists straight-
forward reading. Our knowledge about the exposé scheme instead invites
us to see this as a moment of inattention. The doodling betrays Garrett’s
boredom or impatience with the trial, his urge to busy himself with some-
thing, anything. The character is not following the court proceedings
because he foresees where things are going. The repetitiveness of his ges-
ture reflects a restless mind in action, circling around the same thought,
engrossed in it.11 But what is bothering him? In hindsight, Garrett’s culpa-
bility adds to the complexity of his appearance, introducing an extra layer
of performance to his pretence. If he looks bothered here, it remains

160 H. L. LAW
impossible to pinpoint its origin. This can be an attempt to appear a

wrongfully-accused man and a genuine concern about the cover-up
scheme. Re-watching the film, Garrett’s actions beckon a host of possible
but unverifiable explanations. Perhaps this is what Deleuze means by
“there is no truth any more” in Lang’s cinema. We are instead required to
appreciate the resonance and rich implications of appearances.
Andrews’s performance is indispensable to the film’s exploration of
appearance, to its conflation of the innocent and the culpable. Here, it is
useful to recall Robert Pippin’s idea of “passive agency”, discussed in
Chap. 4. A characteristic of film noir protagonists, Pippin notes, is that
they act as if they are “hypnotized, dazed, or sleepwalking” (2012, 17).
Rather than being the bearer of action, they react to external forces unre-
flectively, almost automatically. Pippin in fact praises Andrews as the exem-
plary performer of passive agency. In Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Garrett
seems to be caught in the unravelling of events: it is Spencer who initiates
the plot of exposé; and later, with Spencer’s death, Garrett is left at the
mercy of fate. It is only at the end that we discover the nature and degree
of Garrett’s agency. He is an agent adept at performing passivity.
The character’s seeming passivity is also reinforced by the unique pres-
ence of the actor. Andrews’s Garrett is reticent, unassertive, just like
another regular guy. This has to do with the performer’s inexpressive and
almost bland physiognomy, as well as his screen persona of normality and
ordinariness. It is against this that Lang successfully dramatises the unreli-
ability of character appearance.12 Indeed, Andrews is at his best when his
image of normality and ordinariness is tested, ruptured, or subverted. A
good example is his role as the brutal detective in Where the Sidewalk Ends
(Otto Preminger, 1950). David Thomson (2010) writes eloquently about
Andrews’s “strain of moral ambiguity in his bearing”: the actor “could
suggest unease, shiftiness, and rancour barely concealed by good looks.
He did not quite trust or like himself, and so a faraway bitterness haunted
him”. The actor is therefore suitable in depicting “an apparent hero with
something to hide”; he is “ideal […] as the lying hero in Beyond a
Reasonable Doubt”.13
As the above discussion makes clear, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt’s nar-
rational strategies and performance style are instrumental in keeping
Garrett’s culpability out of the question, and not as a plausible line of
inquiry. It is as though the movie is complicit in the character’s double-
scheme by setting up a labyrinth of “false doors, false bottoms, traps for
the mind and for the eye” (Elsaesser 2000, 186).14 As a result, the film
functions like a testament to Garrett’s control until he slips up at the end.

Then the contraption springs back. The ending feels abrupt partly because
our alignment with him is brutally severed. (In this sense, the ending of
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is puzzling in a way that is opposite to the
moral reshuffle at the close of Force Majeure.)
A Look That Is Out of Place?

So what is the significance of Garrett’s direct look in Beyond a Reasonable
Doubt? Is it vital to the film’s “secret structure”? Or is it a wrench in the
perfect Langian mechanism? The detail calls into question the design of
the movie. We need to look at the moment closely and carefully, within
contexts.
Who Is Calling?
Given the film’s rigorous procedural narration, the scene in the apartment
has a curious sense of redundancy to it. The couple’s home retreat is brief
and barely advances the plot. Instead, it shows what will be promptly
explained in detail: in the next scene, Garrett tells Spencer and Susan
about a phone call from his publisher—presumably the one we just wit-
nessed—pressuring him to finish his book. And this is why he needs to
postpone the wedding. Why does the film show us what it can, and indeed
does, cover in dialogue? This is unworthy of Lang! Perhaps there is more to the
scene than meets the eye? Perhaps the camera has shown something that the
character does not say?
First-time viewers have no reason to doubt the account volunteered by
Garrett. Hindsight, however, allows one to understand the oddly empha-
sised call differently. It is important that the film withholds the content of
the phone conversation as well as the identity of the caller. This leaves
room for reading. Tom Gunning refers to it as “Patty/Emma’s apparently
catastrophic entrance into his [Garrett’s] life” (2000, 455). In other
words, this is when the murder victim starts blackmailing Garrett, and is
therefore the secret watershed moment in the film when its plot thickens
and bifurcates. But the nature of the call is not as “apparent” or definite as
Gunning observes. As we shall see, it is more accurate to say that the film
only encourages such an understanding, supported by a set of devices and
details in the scene.
162 H. L. LAW
Who Is In Control?
Although we stay behind with Garrett at the end of the scene, our epis-
temic position is instead close to that of the departing Susan. The camera
carefully curbed our access to the details of the call, as if working in collu-
sion with the murderer. Garrett’s control throughout the film is indeed
the control of information; the exposure of his crime is the exposure of his
superior position of knowledge.
“[T]he characters who perform direct address”, Tom Brown notes,
“generally know more—or are in a position of greater knowledge within the
fiction—than other characters” (2013, 14). Garrett’s look may not be
strictly a direct address but it nonetheless appears to be a signifier of his
knowingness. Crucial to our understanding of the look is the charac-
ter’s smirk, with the dangling cigarette adding an air of self-assurance. In
light of his prior intimate moment with Susan, the glance is charged with a
sense of complacency. It may also be a playful disapproval—a “tsk tsk, shame
on you!” perhaps—as the character catches us intruding on his private ren-
dezvous. These interpretations are complemented by further suggestions
upon re-watching. Our awareness of Garrett’s clandestine scheme allows us
to read the direct look as a disclosure of his greater knowledge. The smug
expression points to a sly, sleazy, or villainy side of the character that is alien
to his otherwise upright appearance. It is as though he is tipping us a wink
about his secret persona. Would it make any difference if I were to notice the
direct look during my first viewing? Even if I did, without knowing the upcom-
ing twist, would I be able to recognise its significance? Unlikely. But the detail
would still create the impression that there is something off about the character.
I understand that at this point of the narrative Garrett hasn’t committed his
crime so there is no cover-up plan yet. My knowledge of the ending, however, has
transformed my appreciation of the film, colouring my subsequent viewing.
Every time I see Garrett’s direct look—and I do see it in every one of my view-
ings now—I feel like it is implicating me in his secret scheme, making me an
accomplice in his crime. Again and again.
A more complicated picture emerges if we take into account the subtle
details of the scene. Garrett’s control is perhaps not as secure as it seems.
The couple’s affectionate conversation is readily disrupted as soon as it
commences. Upon the sound of the ringing telephone, the camera
abruptly cuts from a tight framing of the couple to a wider view of them
in the apartment, as though their cocoon of intimacy has violently burst
open. The phone now visually comes between the couple—a metaphor for
the call’s effect on their relationship. The moment is less indicative of the
pair’s cosy togetherness than of the vulnerability of this togetherness.
Note how Garrett’s smirk vanishes as soon as the phone conversation
starts. His self-assurance has quickly deflated. He looks worried. Who is
calling? Is it Patty? Most revealing, however, is the lap dissolve at the end
of the scene. The fading image represents a temporary suppression of the
character’s worry, which is now relegated to the background, waiting to
strike again. The slowness of the dissolve makes it also a remarkable super-
imposition: the shot of Garrett is overlapped with a close-up of a pair of
hands (see Fig. 6.2). It looks like the character is entrapped by an enor-
mous paw, as if the phone call embodies a malignant force closing in on
him, acting as a ghostly presence constricting or controlling Garrett’s
action. The threat invoked by the moment reinforces—but hardly con-
firms—the suggestion that Patty is the caller.
But as the camera promptly reveals, these powerful hands are in fact the
character’s own. They are holding a lighter, a gift from Susan. Garrett
indeed has the upper hand throughout the movie. And he will later plant
this lighter in the crime scene, turning a token of love into a device of
duplication. Superimposing Garrett with his own hands, the movie is mak-
ing the ironic suggestion that the character is both the perpetrator and the
victim of his own scheme. It prefigures his self-undoing. Gunning speaks
of Garrett as “the ‘author’ of the plot […,] the Mabuse figure, the grand
enunciator” (2000, 455). But the film, as we have seen, also observes his
fallibility, exposing his precarious position of power. Its viewpoint towards
Garrett is ambivalent, moving between complicity and critical distance
(this, again, makes the movie an interesting comparison with Force
Majeure, see Chap. 5).15
The scene’s meticulous mise-en-scène and calibration of viewpoint point
to the authorial presence of Lang. The slow superimposition is an instance
where the filmmaker’s shaping influence is strongly felt. And its irony tes-
tifies to a knowing intelligence at work, an intelligence that understands in
advance where the plot is heading. There is a sense that the giant paw is a
visual stand-in for Lang’s puppeteering hand, asserting his command.16
But does he “author” Garrett’s direct look too? Is the movie “aware” of
this detail?
Ever since I noticed the direct look, my attention was naturally drawn to
the character’s eyes when I watched the scene. But this time, I made the effort
to free my gaze from them, actively scanning for clues of potential correspon-
dences between the detail and the scene. It was then I discovered an obvious yet
164 H. L. LAW
somehow hitherto overlooked feature: upon Susan’s exit of the apartment,

the camera gradually approaches Garrett, tightening the frame into a
medium shot of the character. The framing permits a close enough view of
his countenance—enough for the direct look to be recognisable—but not
too close that the feature would claim our attention. Remarkably, the cam-
era movement stops at the moment when Garrett steals a glance into the
lens. The movement and the glance appears perfectly timed, deliberately
choreographed. It is as if Lang is gesturing towards the significance of the
look, inviting us to look at it. Perhaps the detail is not accidental but
“intentional” after all? Interestingly, it was my very absorption in the
ambiguous direct look that has previously prevented me from recognising
the camera’s “acknowledgement” of it. Compelling our attention, ambi-
guity can sometimes distract or blind us from seeing the larger picture.
Intention and Care

I have been trying to gauge and clarify the uncertainty of Garrett’s direct
look. A prominent issue here is whether the detail is part of the movie’s
design, which typically means whether it lies within the filmmakers’ con-
trol. My discussion has demonstrated the look’s contribution to the con-
spiratorial narration despite the possibility that it may be misconceived or
accidental. There is no way, based on what is onscreen, to ascertain its
nature. In fact, the glance’s potent suggestion of knowingness, its hint at
character secrecy would arguably persist even if it is proved to be a produc-
tion mistake. In other words, details in film can harbour unintended
meaning and significance: unintended in the sense of contingent or
unplanned, but in a way not necessarily infelicitous, uninteresting, or
undesirable. All of which raises the broader issue about the role of inten-
tion in film interpretation.
The concept of intention remains underdeveloped in relation to cin-
ema, partly due to the complication posed by the collaborative nature of
most movies, partly due to the incompatibility of the subject with the
pervasive critical frameworks in the discipline of academic film studies.
The concept is unhelpful if it strictly refers to the mental content of the
filmmakers before, during, or after the production process, which is not
only challenging to access and ascertain, but it may also have difficulties
accommodating readings that conflict with it, even if they are appropriate
and rewarding. Intention in this narrow sense is an external force capable
of informing, regulating, and refuting our interpretation. However, it is

also possible, generally more useful, to think of intention as a matter of
interpretation, that is, something to be intuited, discerned, or recovered
from a film through the practice of reading.17 Intention, so conceived, is
embodied by a detail, it concerns what is meant by this detail, the aesthetic
reasons behind it.
The challenge of Garrett’s look is that it can be simultaneously inter-
preted as intentional and unintended; read as a suggestive detail and a
consequence of aesthetic mistake or misjudgement at the same time. This
strains the concept of intention, laying bare its shortcoming as a frame-
work for comprehending filmic details. Not everything meaningful in a
work of art, Simon Jarvis observes, can be explained in terms of “inten-
tion”. He speaks of the category of “care”, which is related to “intention”
but is closer to “a concern”. He notes:
The blank between a stanza or the blank at the end of the line is surely, pre-
cisely, an example of something which a poet might very well care about
without its being easy to say that it is the textual repository of a “meaning”
which the author “intended”. (2009, 67)
The notion of care opens up an alternative way to conceive film pro-

duction. There are many details in a film—partly because film is made up
of so many details—that filmmakers may care about, which are not strictly
intended or intended to be meaningful. For example, instead of an out-
come of deliberation, Garrett’s look can be a throw-away playful gesture,
improvised by Andrews on the spot, as a whimsical provocation directed
at the audience. Alternatively, it may indicate a lapse in attention, an over-
sight by the film’s editor Gene Fowler, Jr. that temporarily fails the mov-
ie’s convention of verisimilitude. It is also possible that Lang recognised
the glance as a defect but saw no necessity to rectify it due to its missabil-
ity or because the merit of that specific take outweighs its irregularity. If
the concept of intention emphasises the problem-solving aspect of artistic
creation (to use In a Lonely Place as an example: “What do the filmmakers
do to depict Dix’s possessive passion?” “By having him kiss like a vam-
pire”), the language of care helps us appreciate the complexity of the
creative process. Specifically, it invites us to see every filmmaking “prob-
lem” as an array of conceptual and practical concerns or interests which
are likely at variance or in tension. Accordingly, any creative “solution” is
the result of a chain of evaluative acts in which the filmmakers prioritise
166 H. L. LAW
certain cares or objectives over others—a process of making creative pref-

erences.18 In this way, the notion of care enhances our understanding of
the authorial role of filmmakers, by drawing attention to how certain
creative choices in movies are more appropriately seen as authorised—
rather than straightforwardly intended—by them. A fruitful account of
film production should take into consideration both care and intention.
The Doubtful Critic

We typically equate meaning to meaningfulness. And since a filmmaker’s
care does not necessarily presuppose meanings, a moment’s significance
may be difficult to appreciate. This is a major challenge of Garrett’s direct
look. Seeing it through the lens of care, of authorial authorisation rather
than intention, I become concerned about whether I have given the glance
its due significance in my reading. I wonder if my fascination—if not out-
right obsession—with the look has driven me to overstate its relevance and
if my critical enthusiasm has prompted me to see it in outsized promi-
nence. I fear that the mesmerising detail has indeed stolen too much of my
attention, holding me captive, blinding me from the bigger picture, derail-
ing or compromising my analysis. I am unsure how much interpretative
weight I ought to place on the look. My anxiety, in other words, is the
critical anxiety of “too-close-reading” and “overreading”.
We can say that “too-close-reading” and “overreading” are labels for
unorthodox, undesirable critical practices that seemingly distort a work’s
meaning and significance.19 If “too-close-reading” exhibits a pointillist-
like fixation, “overreading” is an exertion of excessive critical energy.
Together they represent the risk of “reading into”, as opposed to the
accepted procedure of “reading out of”. The direct look in Beyond a
Reasonable Doubt raises a pointed awareness of this risk because its appear-
ance of inconsequentiality looms large. It is not that the detail is impossi-
ble to read but that our reading seems forever shadowed by a sense of
implausibility. The worry is that we have misunderstood its significance
and consequently overemphasised its weight in our interpretation. The
ambiguity of the direct look perpetuates a form of metacritical doubt.
Ambiguity may divide critics because of its capacity for competing read-
ings. But ambiguity is also capable of dividing a critic, leaving one in
doubt, poised between judgements. Doubt is not a defect of understand-
ing but a form of reflexivity. It stems from an uncertainty about the
truthfulness of what one knows, of whether what one knows is knowledge

at all. That is, it is a useful (meta-)awareness of our knowledge. We have
to know enough to doubt, and that makes it something like an interpreta-
tion, or, occasionally, a form of reasonable speculation (recall Chap. 3).
This reasonable speculation may subsequently double back to our knowl-
edge, enriching or discrediting it. The result is an internal drama of doubt:
my reading is unsettled, coloured, deflected, and confounded by my
uncertainty, constantly torn between opposing directions of understand-
ing. And this critical tug-of-war has a double-edged effect on criticism.
Doubt can dog us like a phantasm. Uncharitable, it contaminates or
corrodes our understanding like a lasting shadow or echo, akin to a linger-
ing hue or murmur. Its main tactic is not confrontation but slow, perva-
sive, insidious undermining, spreading a near-paranoia. Under its watch,
one may start to see signs everywhere, becoming vigilant. In a sense,
doubt is like a critical Superego. Not only does it pressure us to censor our
interpretation but, most importantly, it presses us to perfect our reading.
Doubt fuels, to borrow Denis Donoghue’s phrase, a sort of “introspective
fury” (1984, 13). It prompts one to thoroughly interrogate her own
understanding, give it a violent shake, and leave it trembling in harsh day-
light. Our self-investigation is liable to get out of control, out of propor-
tion. Doubt can turn unforgiving, consuming our attention. Suddenly,
nothing is safe from our vengeful suspicion and fervent scrutiny. The result
is a hermeneutics of prosecution—not unlike an extreme variant of the
“hermeneutics of suspicion”.20
Excessive doubt can impede critical progress by animating the stifling
nightmare of arrested development, bringing criticism to a standstill or a
deadlock.21 It may entrap us. The paralysed critic can neither move for-
ward with her reading nor disregard her uncertainty. Doubt may also esca-
late into an over-commitment that drives us to look “too” hard and go
“too” far, losing a sense of proportion with regard to a work’s meaning
and significance. Careless, unprofitable “over-” and “too-close-” readings
may indeed follow. With doubt comes danger.
Doubt’s challenge to understanding can nevertheless become an inte-
gral, beneficial part of our account. The risks mentioned earlier are also
critical opportunities. Our analytical suspension forces open a space for
in-depth exploration and patient questioning, facilitating the development
of attentive interpretations and responsive arguments. By doing so, doubt
invites us to reflect upon our reading practice, sharpening our awareness
168 H. L. LAW
of our critical responsibility. A doubtful critic can make a better critic.

(I shall return to this issue in the Concluding Remarks.)
One can read Beyond a Reasonable Doubt as a cautionary tale of being
credulous. By dramatising the danger of believing in what seems to be
beyond suspicion, the film is an object lesson of the importance of doubt
in criticism. Specifically, the lesson takes the form of a direct look which
introduces an irreparable wrinkle to our understanding. In order to
account for it, we are compelled to study the look closely, consulting the
surrounding details as well as the global contexts of the movie. This helps
us construct an appropriate scale of judgement by which to assess the
meaning and weight of the look. Most importantly, the detail not only
draws attention to the design of the movie but also calls it into question.
It complicates the movie’s widely assumed status as a “closed film”. It is
precisely because Lang’s cinema upholds the impression of total control
that we should be cautious not to take it for granted. Critical doubt is
sometimes necessary.
My account of the film is the result of repeated viewings. Beyond a
Reasonable Doubt is indeed one of those films which reveals an extra
dimension of meaning upon revisit.22 The ambiguity of the direct look
needs to be understood in light of both our initial experience and subse-
quent viewings. As Raymond Durgnat aptly notes: “the second viewing
adds another layer, which doesn’t invalidate the first but interacts with it”
(2002, 102). Reconsideration may help rectify our flawed assessment but
this is only one benefit of the practice. Our understanding of a movie is in
fact accumulative, palimpsestic; each encounter adds to it. It is also worth
noting that subsequent viewings can activate new modes of attention: we
may end up concentrating on a different set of details onscreen or adopt-
ing a different approach to the film. It is indeed during our revisit that our
attention is likely directed to the inquiry of “why is it as it is”, to the con-
sideration of the choices involved in the making of the movie. Ambiguity
encourages re-watching.
My doubt about Garrett’s direct look might sound trivial to some. And
there is a worry that I have taken it too seriously. Indeed, there is a world
of difference between those who practice doubt and those who rush to
expel it; between those who doubt too much and those who do not doubt
enough. For those of us who do and do it too much, being credulous is
no longer an option after the day Garrett looked at us. Its ambiguity has
captivated our critical attention, making a claim on our reading.
Notes
1. Avoidance is indirect acknowledgement. Avoiding looking into the cam-
era, Dana Andrews is acknowledging its presence.
2. The famous concept of punctum is developed by Roland Barthes in Camera
Lucida (2006). He writes: “A photograph’s punctum is that accident
which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)” (27). Punctum
is stubbornly private (“me … me … me”). It is unpredictable, unplanned
(“accident”) as well as affecting, perhaps hurtfully so (“pricks … bruises”).
3. The difference between doing something by mistake and doing something
by accident is helpfully hinted at by J.L. Austin’s anecdotal remark: “You
have a donkey, so have I, and they graze in the same field. The day comes
when I conceive a dislike for mine. I go to shoot it, draw a bead on it, fire:
the brute falls in its tracks. I inspect the victim, and find to my horror that
it is your donkey. I appear on your doorstep with the remains and say—
what? ‘I say, old sport, I’m awfully sorry, etc., I’ve shot your donkey by
accident’? Or ‘by mistake’? Then again, I go to shoot my donkey as before,
draw a bead on it, fire—but as I do so, the beasts move, and to my horror
yours falls. Again the scene on the doorstep—what do I say? ‘By mistake’?
Or ‘by accident’?” (1956–7, 11 n4). The distinction between mistake and
accident in film, however, is often impossible to discern, for we generally
lack access to the intention of a detail and to the particular way it ends up
onscreen. To speak in the terms of Austin’s story: we wouldn’t be able tell
whether it was an accident or a mistake if we simply see a dead and a live
donkey in the field. However, one can argue that the filmmakers are in fact
accountable for everything that we see on the screen. So, there is a sense
that any apparently flawed or faulty detail is, to a certain extent, a mistake:
the filmmaker could have corrected it but failed to, perhaps due to over-
sight, perhaps due to misjudgement.
4. See Wilson (1986) for a fine analysis of how the adoption of such a “favour-
able view” opens up exciting ways to understand Fritz Lang’s You Only
Live Once (1937).
5. Elsewhere Wood refers to a film’s structural perfection as “organicity”,
which is a “particularly intensive coherence, when the various aspects of a
work seem scarcely separable from each other” (2006, 27–8). Likening a
work to something alive, “organicity” departs from the machine-like
“functional precision”.
6. This chimes in with Michel Mourlet’s remark that Lang turns his actors
into “a completely neutralised vehicle for mise-en-scene considered as pure
movement” (quoted in Elsaesser 2000, 189n11).
7. An example: three different characters (Tom, Susan, and Susan’s father)
lower their head in a measured, emphatic way at some point during the
170 H. L. LAW
arrative. The performances are similarly unnatural, contrived. Interestingly,

n
it is at these characters’ most emotionally distressed that they appear to be
most puppet-like, as if being animated by an invisible hand.
8. The documentation can actually only prove the planting of the evidence,
not the character’s innocence.
9. Some of these strategies are sketched above but the reader is encouraged
to consult Pye’s account.
10. There are also misdirections on the narrative level. Tom Gunning points
out, for example, the way the film hints at Spencer’s involvement in the
murder (2000, 453–4).
11. Michael Fried notes our compulsion to project “a conviction of inward-
ness” onto fictional figures, reading the “lack of outward expression as an
unmistakable sign of intense inwardness and sheer depth of feeling, […]
the endowing of the figures in question with an imagined inner life com-
parable, if not superior, in intensity to the viewer’s own, proves irresistible”
(2010, 77).
12. This is why Wood considers the actor “the ideal Lang interpreter”
(1980, 600).
13. The clash between Garrett’s surface passivity and his secret scheming is one
of the reasons why the film’s ending is surprising, perhaps even shocking.
14. Wood speaks of Beyond a Reasonable Doubt as “one of the cinema’s great
audience traps” (1980, 607).
15. Wood talks about how Lang’s sudden detachment from its characters
effectively prompts our judgement. The critic singles out the filmmaker’s
“fondness for moving back from an action to long-shot” (recall the abrupt
cut to wide shot in the apartment). On the scene where Garrett and
Spencer plant the lighter, Wood writes: “As the two men walk away, Lang
suddenly cuts back to a high-angled long-shot. Tom, who thinks he is
controlling the game, is suddenly a pawn in it. The effect is ambiguous,
and the ambiguity is central to Lang’s cinema: we can feel ourselves placed
above and at a distance, as judges; or we can interpret the long-shot as a
sudden intimation of Tom’s subjection to a destiny that, unknown to him,
is working itself out” (1980, 602). Here, ambiguity is linked to a film’s
perspective on its characters, a topic which we have looked at in the previ-
ous chapter.
16. Could that be actually Lang’s hand? Gunning notes the filmmaker’s hand
cameos in his movies (2000, 2).
17. For a philosophical account of intention which stresses the importance of
discernment, see Anscombe (1979).
18. My remark here condenses several accounts. The problem/solution para-
digm is central to David Bordwell’s monograph on film staging Figures
Traced in Light (2005), see especially pages 249–54. While Barbara
Herrnstein Smith draws attention to the complex “evaluative” dynamics of

artistic creation (1991, 44–5), E.M. Gombrich sees this as a matter of mak-
ing aesthetic priority according to what he calls the “principle of sacrifice”
(1978, 81–98).
19. Readers are encouraged to consult the works of D.A. Miller’s (2016) and
Colin Davis (2010) on these topics.
20. What I have been talking about in relation to doubt indeed evokes the
notion of “the hermeneutics of suspicion”, first coined by Paul Ricoeur.
Rita Felski (2015) has carefully examined this prevalent critical stance (see
also Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s discussion of “paranoid reading” [2002]).
The stance is closely linked to the practice of cultural critique, to the theo-
ries of ideology, to symptomatic and “against-the-grain” readings. Notably,
Felski speaks of “the hermeneutics of suspicion” as a critical mood rather
than a method; it stands for an attitude that a critic takes up towards—or,
more precisely, against—a text. It assumes a work to be always more than
and different from what it seems. A text is, by default, “guilty” of hiding
something before it is proven “innocent” (yet no text is quite “innocent”
under intensive scrutiny; one always discovers “something”). The task of
critique is then to “interrogate, unmask, expose, subvert, unravel, demys-
tify, destabilize, take issue, and take umbrage” (2015, 5). The critic acts as
a policing force. I have been speaking of doubt instead of “the hermeneu-
tics of suspicion” not only because I wish to dissociate myself from some of
the questionable assumptions of the method of critique, but it also seems
to me there is a crucial difference between doubt and suspicion. Adam
Phillips notes: “Suspicion is a philosophy of hope. It makes us believe that
there is something to know and something worth knowing. It makes us
believe there is something rather than nothing” (1996, 41). What I mean
by doubt has less to do with the discovery of knowledge but with what we
already knew changes our practice of reading.
21. Adam Phillips suggests the difference between getting lost and being lost as
that of “between the artefact you must make, and the experience you are
powerless to avoid”. Getting lost, Phillips continues to say, “is our best
defense against being lost; and partly because it makes us feel that we have,
as it were, taken the problem into our own hands, turned […] passive into
active”. Getting lost involves a deliberate “working out” of the problem at
hand (2001, 173–4). Doubt may start as an experience of being lost. But
one can take it as an opportunity to “get lost” in our understanding, to
weigh different interpretive possibilities, to work out an appropriate
reading.
22. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) is another.
172 H. L. LAW
References
Anscombe, Elizabeth. 1979. Intention. Oxford: Blackwell.
Austin, J.L. (1956–7). A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address. Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society, new series (57): 1–30.
Barthes, Roland. 2006. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by
Richard Howard. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.
Bordwell, David. 2005. Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. Berkeley,
Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.
Braudy, Leo. 1976. The World in a Frame: What We See in Films. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Brown, Tom. 2013. Breaking the Fourth Wall: Direct Address in the Cinema.
Daney, Serge. 1981. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Translated by Steve Erickson.
Chronicle of a Passion. http://home.earthlink.net/~steevee/Daney_beyond.
html. Assessed 31 Oct 2017.
Davis, Colin. 2010. Critical Excess: Overreading in Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas,
Žižek and Cavell. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 2005. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson
and Robert Galeta. London: Continuum.
Donoghue, Denis. 1984. The Critic and the Arts. Circa 15 (March/April): 12–13.
Durgnat, Raymond. 2002. A Long Hard Look at Psycho. London: BFI.
Elsaesser, Thomas. 2000. Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical
Imaginary. London: Routledge.
Felski, Rita. 2015. The Limits of Critique. Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press.
Fried, Michael. 2010. The Moment of Caravaggio. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Gombrich, E.H. 1978. Norm and Form. Oxford: Phaidon.
Gunning, Tom. 2000. The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity.
London: BFI.
Jarvis, Simon. 2009. What Does Art Know. In Aesthetics and the Work of Art. ed.
Peter de Bolla and Stefan H. Uhlig. 57-70. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
McElhaney, Joe. 2006. The Artist and the Killer: Fritz Lang’s Cinema of the
Hand. 16:9 (17). http://www.16-9.dk/2006-06/side11_inenglish.htm.
Accessed 3 Aug 2020.
Miller, D.A. 2016. Hidden Hitchcock. Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press.
———. 2005. Where Is The World? The Horizon of Events in Movie Fiction. In
Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film, ed. John Gibbs and
Douglas Pye, 16–41. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Phillips, Adam. 1996. Monogamy. London and Boston: Faber and Faber.
———. 2001. On Balance. London: Penguin Books.
Pippin, Robert B. 2012. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic
Philosophy. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press.
Pye, Douglas. 1992. Film Noir and Suppressive Narrative: Beyond a Reasonable
Doubt. In The Movie Book of Film Noir, ed. Ian Cameron, 98–109. London:
Studio Vista.
Rivette, Jacques. 1985. The Hand. In Cahiers du Cinema, Volume 1: The 1950s:
Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave, ed. Jim Hillier, 140–144. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2002. Touching Feeling. Durham and London: Duke
University Press.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. 1991. Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives
for Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Thomson, David. 2010. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf.
Wood, Robin. 1980. Fritz Lang: 1936-1960. In Cinema: A Critical Dictionary,
The Major Filmmakers, ed. Richard Roud, vol. II, 599–608. New York: The
Viking Press.
———. 2006. Personal Views: Explorations in Film. Detroit: Wayne State
University Press.
CHAPTER 7
Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt
Explanations come to an end somewhere.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein (2009, 6e)
If ambiguity, as the direct look in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt testifies,

maintains a sense of inconclusiveness, then how should an account of it
suitably “come to an end”? How do we secure that “somewhere” to con-
clude our reading? In fact, in what sense may we speak of “an end”?
The possibility of “a complete interpretation”, Stanley Cavell sug-
gests, “is not a matter of providing all interpretations but a matter of see-
ing one of them through” (1981, 37). This remark observes and contrasts
two understandings. On the one hand, “completeness” entails compre-
hensiveness. That is, the end of an account is reached when every avenue
of study is exhausted. What this envisions is a reading that ends all read-
ings. It is not difficult to see why this view is untenable.1 However, posit-
ing the existence of a “definitive” account, such a view can feel reassuring
(this is arguably one reason why the “film-as-puzzle” analogy is attractive,
see Introduction). This feeling of reassurance is absent in the practice of
“seeing one interpretation through”, which, by contrast, doesn’t appeal to
an abstract, universal notion of critical completeness. Instead, it requires
us to figure out the concrete, distinctive conclusion of our analysis, by
reading closer, deeper, and further—courting the possibility of going “too

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176 H. L. LAW
far”. On Cavell’s account, criticism cannot come to an appropriate close

without taking an analytical risk.
At first glance, Cavell’s model of appropriate “completeness”, of “see-
ing our interpretation through”, appears unsuited for the criticism of
ambiguity. Although comprehensiveness is unachievable, there remains a
strong sense that our reading should seek to cover ambiguity’s multitude
of suggestions as much as possible, so as to appreciate its significance more
fully or at least to prevent “misreading” or “under-reading”. That is,
because of its very nature, ambiguity seems to demand a comprehensive
account.
But the commitment to encompass “ambiguity’s multitude of sugges-
tions”, intuitive as it may sound, is somewhat misleading. As noted in the
Introduction, “multiple interpretations” is an unhelpful conception of
ambiguity. Not that it isn’t a feature of the concept. But what makes an
ambiguity ambiguous, as this book has demonstrated, is instead a sense of
interpretative suspension. Indeed, what emerges from my close readings
of film is not a picture of ambiguity defined by an array of divergent, ada-
mant interpretations, each independent of or incompatible with the oth-
ers, so that we are pressed to adopt a single analytical course or a firm
stance. Rather, my readings have revealed ambiguity’s capability of unset-
tling or undermining our understanding, pulling it into different direc-
tions. That’s why the ambiguous frequently throws our reading into
question or even into seemingly irresolvable doubt, suspending our judge-
ment. What becomes prominent then is the tension, the contradiction, or
the complementariness between possible ways of seeing. We consequently
feel torn or poised between suggestions, having difficulties resolving ques-
tions of meaning and significance.
Such a condition is acutely activated by the direct look examined in the
previous chapter. But other movies I have discussed also put a pause to our
understanding in various ways and to varying degrees of intensity. For
example, the editing in Late Spring implies that Noriko is seeing the vase
even though she isn’t beholding it at that moment. This paradox is vital to
the effect and achievement of the scene. And in In A Lonely Place, the
equivocality of Dix’s gestures misleadingly encourages us to settle on
whether they are loving or murderous. But such a pursuit would only flat-
ten their significance. The pertinent question is instead what these ges-
tures’ conflation of tenderness and violence reveals about the character’s
interiority, his deeper reasons.
7 CONCLUDING REMARKS: REASONABLE DOUBT 177
What these instances also indicate is that while ambiguity involves plu-
ral suggestions, it does not necessarily manifest in a range of distinct read-
ings. Rather, since these suggestions are often mutually implicating,
inextricably bound, they work as a whole and need to be evoked and
examined as such. This prompts us to rethink “comprehensiveness” in
relation to the criticism of ambiguity. More specifically, what an ambiguity
requires us to comprehend is in fact its weave of suggestions. It is precisely
the comprehension of this that enables us to see our reading through. By
appreciating the push-and-pull of our understanding, we are in fact attend-
ing to the dynamic between our reason and doubt. It is the central claim
of this book that this dynamic is at the centre of the criticism of ambiguity.
This study begins by proposing ambiguity as an invitation to the inquiry
into “why is it as it is”. And this question calls for the pursuit of what I call
aesthetic reasons, which are, simply put, readings that concern matters of
narrative meaning (in its expanded sense), effect, and achievement (see
Chap. 2). As each chapter fleshes out a distinct way our analytical pursuit
can take form, the nature of the “why” inquiry has also become more
evident. More specifically, there is an urgency to come to terms with the
pressing uncertainty that is vital to ambiguity. This uncertainty should not
be readily dismissed, rationalized, or explained away but carefully worked
through, perhaps dwelt upon. Our pursuit of aesthetic reason does not
entail using reason to disambiguate doubt, making what is ambiguous
conformable or straightforwardly accessible. A satisfying account instead
requires us to acknowledge the reason for our doubt and to reason with it.
The aim is to demonstrate the aesthetic reasons for why doubt is a part of
a film’s expression or effect, how that enriches its meaning, and whether it
deepens its achievement.
Doubt can indeed launch and sustain the pursuit of reason. For exam-
ple, it was my puzzlement over the character’s direct look in Beyond a
Reasonable Doubt that prompted me to revisit it and to ponder over its
nature and implications. And by sharpening my appreciation of the details
and the design of the movie, my doubt becomes beneficial to my analysis.
If my reading remains haunted by uncertainty, it is because the incongru-
ity, the seemingly accidental nature of the glance, continues to threaten
insignificance. Indeed, what my discussion also highlights is that critical
doubt doesn’t exclusively concern meaning and effect. Sometimes it is the
significance of a detail that is at stake: we remain unsure about its degree
of importance in the larger scheme of things and consequently also the
amount of interpretative weight we ought to place on it. This illuminates
178 H. L. LAW
a salient aspect of ambiguity’s meta-critical dimension, its possibility as a

doubt about our reading practice and procedure.
It is more accurate to say that my initial interest in the direct look is
fuelled by reason—especially by my prior knowledge of cinematic conven-
tions—as much as by doubt. So, any appropriate exploration of the detail
needs to observe this continual negotiation between reason and doubt.
According to this account, it is a task of the criticism of ambiguity to find
an appropriate analytical viewpoint that navigates the narrow margin
between elucidation and explaining-away, between clear-eyed insight and
reductive schematisation. Our critical aim is to consider ambiguity’s move-
ment of meaning and weave of suggestions, keeping interpretative possi-
bilities in play and in dialogue. This calls for our recognition of its
complexity or self-contradiction, its potential for conflicting directions of
understanding. Criticism assesses the relative strength and validity of a
film’s diverse pulls of suggestions. Its business is not only to appreciate the
pertinent reasons for a particular understanding but also to present any
appropriate reasons for doubting that understanding. But since there
exists no guidelines to how to reasonably exercise our doubt, it is our criti-
cal task to establish what a reasoned doubt means in relation to a specific
work. If criticism cannot suitably proceed without taking an analytical risk,
it is partly because the taking of this risk is in effect a way of taking up our
critical responsibility.
This responsibility to subject our reason to challenge, to reasonably
consult our doubt, brings to mind what Cavell calls the practice of “check-
ing one’s experience”, which he refers to as a vital part of aesthetic appre-
ciation. What it means is “the sense at the same time of consulting one’s
experience and of subjecting it to examination, and beyond these, of
momentarily stopping, turning yourself away from whatever your preoc-
cupation and turning your experience away from the habitual track, to find
itself, its own track: coming to attention. The moral of this practice is to
educate your experience sufficiently so that it is worthy of trust” (1981,
12). The practice is instructive to film criticism. It reminds us that not only
should our reading account for the movie, but it should also do justice to
our experience. That is, criticism involves an account of our aesthetic
experience of film. And such an account at once mobilises our experience
as evidence and illuminates it, placing it under scrutiny, putting it to the
test. Attending to our experience of film doesn’t mean embracing it with-
out qualification or reporting it in painstaking detail. Rather, we treat it as
our guide to critical discovery, being attuned to the “track” it opens up for
our analysis; this “track” may not resemble any preexisting approaches to
the particular film in question or to the specific type of film it belongs. In
other words, it may differ from how the film is commonly or previously
experienced and understood. And that’s precisely the point. Experience
draws upon habits. Our experience of film is shaped, and can be therefore
obscured, by our own critical assumptions and dispositions. What Cavell
stresses is that we shouldn’t permit what is habitual and familiar to deter-
mine our understanding of film, “foreseeing”, as it were, its aesthetic pos-
sibilities. We need to let the movie, especially our experience of it, to teach
us how to go about it, to “see our interpretation through”.
When studying ambiguity, “checking one’s experience” feels all the
more urgent because it is the persistence of our puzzlement that is at
stake, needing to be simultaneously consulted and clarified, addressed yet
also kept in check. Appealing to our analytical routines, in such cases,
could be of little uses; we might remain unable to satisfyingly answer or
answer to the ambiguity. The way to pursue a rewarding critical “track”,
this book has argued, is by reckoning with and reflecting on our experi-
ence of doubt, by putting it in conversation with our reason, so as to
educate ourselves to reasonably exercise uncertainty. It is by doing so that
we can lay claim to becoming a more preceptive, more responsible critic of
ambiguity. The study of the concept sheds light on the nature of film
criticism.
My account of ambiguity has focused on how it galvanises critical intro-
spection, its capacity for instigating an internal drama of doubt. But isn’t
ambiguity what divides critics? Doesn’t our engagement with it frequently
stem from an urge to express dissent and settle disputes? In other words,
isn’t ambiguity primarily an aesthetic problem pertinent to the public
arena, and its criticism mostly a forum for persuading others?
While all this isn’t exactly inaccurate, by stressing the “negative”,
“destructive” features of ambiguity, such an understanding misses one of
its most fruitful critical lessons. As the discussion makes clear, this book
draws attention to a less examined aspect of film criticism: as an ongoing
dialogue with movies; with our experience of movies. On this account,
criticism is appreciative and reflexive as much as it is argumentative and
discursive. In fact, we can say that it often involves our appreciation and
reflection prior to the advance of argument and discourse. Put another
way, we cannot fruitfully reason with others unless we sufficiently reason
with ourselves. So, it is important to inspect how our critical reasoning
works internally, as a practice integral to criticism. Moreover, our
180 H. L. LAW
persuasion of others need not be conceived as the refutation of their rea-

sons. The aim of critical conversation is not to eradicate disagreements but
to foster helpful exchanges and debates. That is, in a crucial sense, it draws
people closer. Film criticism enables the formation of critical communities.
The criticism of ambiguity can serve as a bridge between people despite
the concept’s divisive potential.
But a successful critical community is not a community based on con-
sensus, but one committed to the sharing of readings. Ambiguity presses
us to reflect on our own uncertainty, and then—despite the threat of dis-
sent, perhaps out of the need to dispute—to share our account with oth-
ers. But sharing should be a two-way practice. It equally engages our
capacity for appreciating dissimilar and unfamiliar perspectives, seeing
other people’s reason and doubt, to a meaningful extent. Such a give-and-
take exploration of critical differences would sharpen our discernment and
refine our standard of discrimination. By doing so, it affords us a fresh
view of what is ambiguous.
Seeing criticism as an opportunity for sharing pointedly draws our
attention to the fact that the end of our account should also serve as an
invitation to further reading, as something like a beginning of another
analysis. What this suggests is an idea of criticism as a collective effort to
finesse our understanding of movies. This points to an instructive answer
to the question that begins the concluding remarks. Instead of arriving at
a “solution” or a “cure”, criticism seeks to deepen our aesthetic apprecia-
tion of ambiguity, exploring “why it is as it is”. We may temporarily close
our reading when we have, for the purposes of our analysis, satisfyingly
assessed the reasons for our experience, putting our doubt to rest after
putting it to the test. The opposite of doubt is certainty, not reason. In
fact, reflective doubt begets reasons which critical certainty knows nothing
of. Film criticism, as this book has demonstrated, can be indeed under-
stood as a productive dialogue between reason and doubt; the two can,
and should, work together in the practice of reading. Our analysis comes
to a suitable close when our uncertainty has become reasoned. That is, on
a satisfying account, ambiguity is a form of reasonable doubt.
Note
1. Not least because the inclusion of all interpretations is impossible. There is
also no guarantee that what seems “completed” now wouldn’t be dethroned
by a future understanding, an alternative way of reading.
References
Cavell, Stanley. 1981. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage.
Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2009. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe,
P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. 4th edn. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Index1
A and the internal drama of doubt,

Abbott, Mathew, 58, 70 12, 167–168
ABC Africa, 82n14 as the movement of meaning, 39,
Aesthetic reason, 10–12, 54–56, 59, 41, 43, 45n10
62, 65–67, 165, 177 and polysemy, 2, 15
Albera, François, 82n13 and the puzzle film, 7, 8, 14
Ambiguity and realist aesthetics, 4–6
and aesthetic reason, 10–11, as rhetorical unreliability, 142–143
54–55, 62, 180 and the search for pertinent
and coherence, 62, 74–76, 79 questions, 12, 43, 80–81, 105,
and the depth of meaning, 147n32, 158, 176
105–108 and speculation, 56–60, 82n10,
as a dialogue between our reason 129, 167
and doubt, 11–13, 36, and uncertainty, 3, 11, 17, 19n11,
166–168, 176–180 52, 58, 142, 151–152,
and evaluation, 2, 16–18, 134–135 177, 179–180
and film character, 95–97 as undecidability, 38, 126–128
as a form of metacritical as the weave of suggestion,
doubt, 166–168 3, 177–178
1
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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184 INDEX
Ambivalence, 138, 142 Cheshire, Godfrey, 51

Analytical editing, 5, 118 Clayton, Alex, 19n9
Anatomy of a Murder, 147n32 “Closed film”, the, 155, 168
Andrew, Dudley, 4 Close-Up, 60
Andrew, Geoff, 69, 70 Coherence, 18n6, 62, 74, 79, 81,
Andrews, Dana, 149, 151, 153, 156, 159, 169n5
160, 165, 169n1 Comolli, Jean-Luc, 110n21
Anscombe, Elizabeth, 170n17 Complexity, of tone, 119–123
Armes, Roy, 1 Conjecture, 56–61
Art cinema, 1, 6, 7, 18n5 See also Speculation
Austin, J. L., 169n3 Convention, 5, 14, 18n2, 31, 33,
40–41, 43, 57, 58, 63–65, 72,
82n16, 84n25, 115, 123,
B 152–154, 165
Barthes, Roland, 8, 18n7, 82n15, “Cop-out” ending, 19n13, 134
144n9, 169n2 Credibility, 36, 37, 89, 138, 158
Bazin, André, 1, 4, 5, 9, 18n2, Critical viewpoint, 134, 142
18n3, 117 Cromwell, John, 110n19
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, 13, 149,
153–158, 160, 161, 166, 168,
170n14, 175, 177 D
Bíró, Yvette, 134 Daney, Serge, 157
Bordwell, David, 1, 2, 6, 16, 18n5, Davis, Colin, 171n19
31–36, 40, 42, 43, 45n11, Dead Reckoning, 110n19
46n14, 82n12, 110n14, 170n18 Découpage, 18n2
Braudy, Leo, 155 “Deep” meaning, 12, 106, 107
Britton, Andrew, 65 See also “Surface” meaning
Brody, Richard, 135 Deleuze, Gilles, 158, 160
Brown, Tom, 152, 162 Direct address, 152, 153, 162
Buckland, Warren, 7 Disaster films, 115–116, 139
Burch, Noël, 32, 33 Dispositif, 63–66, 69, 77–80, 82n13,
82n16, 84n27
Documentary, 52, 54, 56–58, 69, 72,
C 81n3, 82n8
Carax, Leos, 82n17 documentary response, the, 57, 58,
Care, 44n1, 70, 72, 124, 128, 63, 69, 75
137, 164–166 Donoghue, Denis, 167
Carroll, Noël, 8, 147n32 Doubt, internal drama of, 12,
Carruthers, Lee, 1 167, 179
Cavell, Stanley, 9, 19n10, 93, 104, See also Reasonable doubt
108, 109n4, 109n5, 109n9, Downhill, 13, 118, 128, 129, 131,
109n12, 146n31, 175, 176, 132, 145n20
178, 179 Durgnat, Raymond, 144n16, 168
INDEX 185
E Hitchcock, Alfred, 18n2, 37, 45n7,

Eder, Jens, 109n10 83n24, 155, 171n22
Elkins, James, 3, 9 Holland, Norman N., 7, 45n6
Elsaesser, Thomas, 160, 169n6 Holy Motors, 82n17
Empson, William, 2, 3, 9, 80 Hunt, The, 14
Evaluation, 2, 16–18, 135
I
F “Ideal viewpoint”, the, 158
“False POV”, the, 33, 34 Identification, 42, 71, 78, 81, 84n28,
Falzon, Christopher, 143n4 95, 99, 130–132, 136, 138, 139
Faxon, Nat, 13, 118 Imaginativeness, 11, 59, 60, 65,
Felski, Rita, 171n20 82n10, 146n24
Film character, 95–97 In a Lonely Place, 14, 87–92, 96, 98,
Film endings, 16, 118, 133–135, 99, 156, 165, 176
145n23, 146n25, 146n26 Inception, 14
and viewpoint, 133–135, 142–143 Insdorf, Annette, 146n26
See also “Resolution” Intention, 44n2, 96, 97, 99, 154,
Five Dedicated to Ozu, 82n14 164–166, 169n3, 170n17
Force Majeure, 12, 15, 115–118, 122, See also Care
123, 125, 128, 129, 131, 132, Interpretative anarchy, 57
135, 138–143, 143n4, 144n6, Interpretative weight, 151, 166, 177
145n20, 146n31, 147n32, 163 Irony, 50, 105, 116, 118, 119, 123,
Form, 10, 33, 45n6, 50, 63, 70, 77, 130, 132, 142, 163
97, 118, 139
Fried, Michael, 170n11
J
Jannidis, Fotis, 109n10
G Jarvis, Simon, 165
Godard, Jean-Luc, 35 Joker, 14
Gombrich. E. H, 171n18
Goulding, Edmund, 59
Grant, James, 11, 59, 60, 65, 146n24 K
Grand Hotel, 59, 60 Kermode, Frank, 146n25
Gunning, Tom, 157, 161, 163, Kessler, Frank, 82n13
170n10, 170n16 Kiarostami, Abbas, 12, 49, 51, 52, 54,
56–58, 61, 62, 66–69, 71, 73,
76–78, 81n2, 81n3, 81n7, 82n11
H Kiss, Miklós, 7
Harvey, James, 94, 101 Klevan, Andrew, 37, 38, 40, 43,
Henderson, Brian, 83n22 45n10, 72, 89
Hermeneutics of suspicion, Koker Trilogy, The, 52, 60
167, 171n20 Kuleshov effect, The, 37, 38, 45n7
186 INDEX
L Oudart, Jean-Pierre, 83n21

Labarthe, André S., 5, 7 Overreading, 30, 108, 154, 166
Lady from Shanghai, The, 45n12 See also Misreading
Lang, Fritz, 13, 149–151, 154–156, Ozu, Yasujirö, 12, 25–29, 31–36, 39,
158–160, 163–165, 168, 169n4, 41, 43, 44n1, 44n4, 46n14
169n6, 170n12, 170n15, 170n16
Lash, Dominic, 44n3, 82n17
Last Year at Marienbad, 13 P
Late Spring, 25–30, 33–38, 41–43, A Page of Madness, 13
44n2, 46n12, 46n13, 62, 69, 176 Parametric narration/parameter,
Lynch, David, 14 33–34, 46n14, 59, 63, 64
Part-and-whole, 64, 78–79, 81,
83n19, 133–135, 152–156
M “Passive agency,” 94, 160
MacDowell, James, 110n20, 147n32 Perez, Gilberto, 57, 72, 74,
Martin, Adrian, 14, 19n12, 63–65 77, 82n16, 109n13,
“Maximum ambiguity,” 6, 13 130, 146n28
McElhaney, Joe, 156 Perkins, V. F., 18n8, 36, 45n9, 87,
Metalepsis, 30, 44n3 89–91, 96, 97, 104–107,
Miller, D.A., 171n19 110n16, 110n20, 147n32,
Misreading, 154, 156 152, 153
See also Overreading Phillips, Adam, 171n20, 171n21
Motivation, the neoformalist Phillips, Todd, 14
understanding of, 32 Philosophical skepticism, 90, 93, 108
Mulholland Drive, 14 Pillow-shot, the, 32
Mulvey, Laura, 52, 58 Pippin, Robert B., 92–95, 101, 107,
108n1, 109–110n13, 110n15,
143n1, 160
N PlayTime, 35
Narboni, Paul, 110n21 Point-of-view shot, 5, 14, 32, 39–41,
Nehamas, Alexander, 107 51, 61, 62, 65, 69–72, 78–80,
Neupert, Richard, 147n32 84n27, 136, 146n28
Nolan, Christopher, 14 Polysemy, 2, 15
Non-aesthetic reason, 12, 55 polysemic, 2
Nornes, Abé Mark, 28 Preminger, Otto, 147n32, 160
Pudovkin, V. I., 37, 45n8
Puzzle film, the assumptions behind,
O 7, 8, 11, 14, 175
Offscreen, the, 31, 56, 64, 66, 68, 70, Puzzlement, 2, 3, 10, 19n11, 42, 62,
83n18, 83n19 79, 177, 179
Östlund, Ruben, 12, 115, 120, 124, Pye, Douglas, 155, 157,
127, 133, 140, 144n8 158, 170n9
INDEX 187
Q Schrader, Paul, 29–31, 34, 36,

Question 42, 45n11
appropriateness of, 12, 43, 80–81, Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 171n20
92, 105, 139, 147n32, 158, 176 Self, Robert, 1, 7
difficulty of, 8, 12, 43–44, 51, Self-opacity, 12, 95
80–81, 95, 107, 129, 139, 176 Seven Types of Ambiguity, 80
Question-and-answer See also Emspon, William
in relation to film criticism, 8–10, Shirin, 64, 66, 82n14, 82n15
14, 19n9, 42–44, 54–55, 63 Shot/reverse-shot, 5, 39, 40,
63, 65, 131
Sibley, Frank, 54, 55
R Significance, 36–38, 144n10,
Rash, Jim, 118 151, 157–158, 166–167,
Ray, Nicholas, 12, 87, 89, 98, 176, 177
100–104, 106 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein,
Ray, Robert B., 59, 60 134, 171n18
Rear Window, 83n24 Smith, Murray, 84n28
Reasonable doubt, 36, Smith, Susan, 109n11
166–168, 177–180 Sontag, Susan, 116, 139
Resnais, Alain, 13 Speculation, 56–60, 81n5, 84n27,
“Resolution,” 57, 125, 126, 131–132, 108, 129, 167
135, 138, 139, 142, See also Conjecture
145n23, 147n32 Stella Dallas, 72
Revelation, 30, 67–69, 71, 77, 89, “Surface” meaning, 8, 12, 29,
95, 143n5 106, 107
Rhetorical unreliability, 142–143 See also “Deep” meaning
Richards, Wadia Rashna, 82n10 Sutcliffe, Thomas, 134
Richie, Donald, 29–31, 34, 36, 40,
42, 44n4, 45n11
Rils, Johannes, 109n10 T
Rivette, Jacques, 155, 156 “Tacked-on” ending, 19n13, 134,
Roeg, Nicolas, 13 135, 139
Rohdie, Sam, 84n27 Taste of Cherry, 81n3
Romney, Jonathan, 135 Tati, Jacques, 35
Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 52 Taylor, Aaron, 109n10
Rothman, William, 39–43, Ten, 12, 14, 49–59, 61–63, 65–69,
46n15, 83n21 72–76, 78, 79, 82n7, 82n14,
83n19, 129, 139
10 on Ten, 54, 82n14
S Thompson, Kristin, 31–36, 42, 46n14
Schneider, Ralf, 109n10 Thomson, David, 160
188 INDEX
Tokyo Story, 35 “Why is it as it is”, 9–11, 14, 18,

Tone, 13, 68, 88, 120, 147n33 19n10, 27, 36, 43, 51, 54, 60,
Too-close-reading, 166 63, 107, 168, 177, 180
Tortajada, Maria, 82n13 Willemsen, Steven, 7
24 Frames, 82n14 Wilson, George M., 18n6, 46n12,
110n20, 118, 158, 169n4
Withholding, 5, 54–56, 58, 59,
V 66–68, 83n18, 84n26, 84n27
Vase in Late Spring, The, 12, Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 10, 11,
14, 29, 69 83n23, 105
Vaughan, Dai, 57, 63 Wood, Robin, 18n7, 155, 156
Vertigo, 83n24, 171n22 Wyler, William, 5
Vidor, King, 72
Vivre sa vie, 35
Y
Yoshida, Kijū, 45n6
W You Only Live Once, 169n4
Walker, Michael, 145n23
Warren, Charles, 82n8
Welles, Orson, 5, 45n12 Z
Where the Sidewalk Ends, 160 Zobel, Craig, 14

Ambiguity and Film Criticism - Reasonable Doubt

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PALGRAVE CLOSE READINGS

IN FILM AND TELEVISION

More information about this series at

Ambiguity and Film

ISSN 2634-6133 ISSN 2634-6141 (electronic)

Cover illustration: PictureLux / The Hollywood Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

Whenever I talk to James MacDowell, not least about ambiguity, I profit

1 Introduction: Why Is It as It Is? 1

Part I Pursuits of Reasons 23

Part II Drama of Doubt 113

7 Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt175

Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) 26

Introduction: Why Is It as It Is?

In spite of its wide currency in film scholarship, criticism, and everyday

What Makes Ambiguity Ambiguous?

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

covering a variety of instances and situations. It particularly speaks to a

contradiction (the seventh type). He likens these diverse relationships

Two Senses of Ambiguity

criticism, worthy of highlighting or rediscovering, even though they may

(2009, 101). Note that by “editing”, Bazin means specifically analytical

Traditional cinema had managed to do away with any possibility of ambigu-

The remark complements Bazin’s claim about analytical editing, though

Ambiguous Image: Narrative Style in Modern European Cinema and

Whenever confronted with a problem in causation, temporality, or spatiality,

In Bordwell’s account, ambiguity seems to mean the uncertainty between

unhelpful way to construe an analytical approach to ambiguity. In particu-

Question and Answer

They need to be interpreted. In other words, the erotetic dynamic is a

useful in criticism; it may be employed to eloquently communicate the

Reason and Doubt

Here, some of the film’s ambiguous choices will be illuminated by a com-

Purview and Practice

films” (e.g., Inception [Christopher Nolan, 2010] and Mulholland Drive

In any case, my omission of the two families of “highly ambiguous”

Value and Evaluation

Reasonable, perhaps, such justifications of ambiguity are nevertheless

ambiguities. Instead, artistic assessment becomes a matter of exploring

One of the most intriguing moments in the history of cinema can be

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

The intrigue of the moment is marked by the amount of critical atten-

Fig. 2.2 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

Fig. 2.3 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

Explanation and Function

The vase is here taken as an illustration of the transcendental aesthetics.

Richie is interested in what the moment signifies. As a moment of realisa-

It Looks Like Point-of-View Editing, But…

nevertheless left the narrative situation unaddressed, as if it is self-evident.

Fig. 2.4 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

as a “hypersituated object” that “works against, brakes the narrative flow

Between Continuity and Discontinuity

continuity and discontinuity. Like Bordwell and Thompson, Burch

Play and Parameters

subjectivity”. His allusion to interpretive possibilities, however, invites us

Given the film’s consistent use of cutaways in a non-narrative way, it seems

disambiguation. From this perspective, it is understandable to find the

denies the possibility of this type of editing to summon definite sugges-

Movement and Stasis

catching up with her thoughts, seized by the whirlwind of thinking. The

As in the preceding edits, a renewal of perception has taken place across

like a shot/reverse-shot pattern”. While reading the scene in terms of the

The implication of the point-of-view-shot/reaction-shot pattern changes

1 Introduction: Why Is It as It Is? 1

Part I Pursuits of Reasons 23

Part II Drama of Doubt 113

7 Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt175

Fig. 2.1 Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949) 26