I have a lot of issues with the idea of narrative excess. What does excess exactly mean? Isn't the point of cinema to see "excess"? Anyways, this paper was written in my seminar on contemporary film theory last semester. It's too sprawling to really have it published somewhere, but it does get to some of my core beliefs about the possibilities of cinema, cinephilia, post-60s film theory, digital indexicality, and more. Please note this is not for casual readers.
I. Wind in the Trees
A
man climbs a ladder on the side of a building. He and another cop follow a
criminal across the rooftops of San Francisco. The criminal aptly jumps from
one building to the next. The cop follows and barely balances himself. The man
attempts to do the same but slips, grabbing onto the ledge. The cop comes to
help him back up, telling him, “Give me your hand!” but falls himself. The man can only look down in horror.
Any
person who knows the scene I have described from the opening to Alfred
Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) will
immediately recognize this description as insufficient. What about the mood of
the scene, with its stunning dark hues? How about the tense score created by
Bernard Hermann? What about the presence given to Scottie by Jimmy Stewart, and
all that seems indescribable in his piercing eyes? This all leads to the real
question: is this a failure of my description or a case of narrative excess?
The
concept of narrative excess—films that create something that exceeds the
necessity of the story they are attempting to tell—has been frustratingly
limited in recent discussions in contemporary film theory. It is often
relegated to certain films and filmmakers: it exists in action films and
musicals during their elongated sequences that “do nothing to push the
narrative forward.” Art-house films, with their long tracking shots and
characters without affect, are declared to have narrative excess. And one
cannot forget experimental cinema, which has no narrative and must only be excess.
