catapult magazine

In his book, “Sculpting in Time”, Andre Tarkovsky bemoans the dominating influence of other art forms (literature, theatre, visual arts) on film. He is particularly concerned with the limitations of theatrical plot when it’s used in film.

He says theatrical writing “links images through the linear, rigidly logical development of the plot. That sort of fussily correct way of linking events usually involves arbitrarily forcing them into sequence in obedience to some abstract notion of order. And even when this is not so, even when the plot is governed by the characters, one finds that the links which hold it together rest on a facile interpretation of life’s complexities”(20).

Tarkovsky seems to suggest that film is better at telling stories because film is capable of speaking in the language of the human psyche. Theatre is dominated by abstract concepts of story that aren’t natural to the human (dream-like?) way of experiencing life.

He goes on to use acting as an example of the difference between theatre and film. Theatrical actors know the beginning and end of the story and this shows in their performance of each scene. Tarkovsky keeps key elements of the story from his film actors so that their performances are genuinely human: confused, unsure and not in total control.

I agree that film does different things than theatre (and that theatre also does many things better than film), but perhaps theatre could learn a few things from film. Or maybe it already has? How has film affected theatre and what should we do about it?

I haven’t read the book, but from your explanation, I can’t say I’m too excited about going to pick it up. Good theater does have an aspect of the unknown in it. For those of us who have been involved in the theater on stage, we know that there are points where we’re not even sure what we’re going to do next, regardless of knowing the ultimate outcome. The most vibrant, dynamic and living theater I can think of is comprised of actors who know the final destination but really aren’t sure of how they get there until they arrive. Jason?
One of the beauties of film that people see much more easily than the theatrical counterparts are the people behind the scenes. It’s easy to recognize a soundtrack of a movie. On occasion they’ll even show the winners of the makeup design for the oscars. One of the reasons I wanted to do lights and makeup my last couple years of college was to get that perspective. It’s removed and integral at the same time, something it seems that Tarkovsky doesn’t seem to see in theater.
Anybody else experience any of this?

Just to be fair, Tarkovsky did not write his book to put theatre down. He was really trying to elevate the greatness of film by giving film its own two feet to stand on (rather than the feet of other art forms like theatre). But I think Tarkovsky’s remarks present a great opportunity to think more concretely about theatre’s role in the telling of human stories.

Might we agree that the nature of film is closer to our psychological world than theatre? If so, then what aspect of our humanity does theatre relate best to?

I don’t feel comfortable giving one whole genre a leg up on another in any particular category. It’s too broad a spectrum to limit one or the other. I guess I don’t see a necessity to pit one against the other (not that Tarkovsky was doing that—thanks for the qualifier Grant).

Right, but doesn’t one art form do things better or differently than another? For instance, music engages different senses than graphic arts. What does film do that theatre doesn’t and vice versa?

Also,
We know that poetry used to be a really big deal in past societies, but now it has faded in popularity. Something in our cultural value system has discarded poetry as an art form relevant to general society. Perhaps poetry could not compete with the novel.

Tarkovsky seems to suggest that film may be yet another new art form that is more relevant to contemporary society than older forms. Tarkovsky says that film was invented to fulfill a human need which all the other art forms could not satisfy. If this post was in the film section, I’d ask: What is so magnetic about film for our current culture? What conditions in the late 1800’s led to the invention of film? But I wanted to turn the question around and ask: What is it in our culture that causes people to be so dissatisfied with theatre that they flock to films? Or are there other factors involved in the decline of the popularity of theatre?

I’m not sure poetry hasn’t declined. There is an interest in different types of poetry, yes. I’ve just finished teaching poetry units to my sophomores and seniors and I posed the same type of question to the sophomores. The response was fantastic. The students mentioned that rap is similar to free verse whereas Shakespeare wrote primarily in blank verse. It’s still verse. Ballads replaced sonnets during the Victorian period as a “poem of choice” and they continue to be popular, at least musically, whether they be by Jewel or power ballads by Creed or whatever the heck else those young whippersnappers listen to today.
As far as different arts envoking different responses…this I find very interesting. I guess I’ve seen art as art. Depending at what I’m looking at or what I’m listening to I can feel the same way. Listening to Copland leaves me feeling different than listening to Chopin. Likewise looking at Rubens and VanGogh, or watching Pinter or Tennessee Williams. I’m not sure that one art form has a step on another when it comes to highlighting one specific emotional response than another. I see film as just another genre following that pattern.
Now, I will admit that I know very little about many different art forms and that with more specific knowledge in a couple different platforms, I might change my opinion. Help from others who are better versed in one art or another? Kristin? JaBird? Simon? others?

I’m not sure i’d buy the contention that it is easier to capture the human psyche on film than on stage. I think you can see far more inside a person by watching “Death of a Salesman”, “King Lear,” or “Oedipus” than you can by watching a movie like “Fargo” (which I love) or Amile (which I also love). I think the movies certainly present a story in a different way, but i am not sure that i would agree that either medium is better at getting at a particular thing. They are certainly different, but just as you couldn’t say that rap is better suited to describe love than country music is (or vice versa) I don’t think either handles certain things better. It depends on what the writers and actors can do with them.

Ok, I’ll try to explain what Tarkovsky is getting at better this time. Tarkovsky loves film because it enables him to display a character’s inner world. The constant movement of the image in film can bring us into the character’s own experience. If you’ve ever seen a Tarkovsky film (Andre Rublev, Solaris, Nostalghia), you’ll know what he means. Tarkovsky uses space, color and light to express the character’s innermost moods and feelings. The entire image conveys the psyche of the character.

So, in film, an actor does not need to exaggerate his actions to express his emotional state. With theatre, however, the only way we can know the psychological mood of the actor is through her/his outward actions and/or the plot movement of the entire play. Of course theatre set design can make us feel a certain way, but the set does not bring us into the emotional landscape of a character moment by moment like film does.

I get it. But I am saying that theater can do the exact same thing, only with different tools. “Death of a Salesman” uses words, actions of Willie, words and actions of the other characters, and the set design to bring you into Willie’s head and into his experience. “King Lear” and “Hamlet” do the same. Theater uses different tools, but can achieve the same result. I suppose music and poetry, and novels could do that too, though maybe in a slightly different way) but I would argue that the results with theater and film are very similar (though the tools are not).

I agree with BBC. I don’t know if you’re playing devil’s advocate or not Grant, but your position seems a bit short sighted. Maybe space could lend a hand in explaining his work as a sound designer for theater (I think that’s what he’s still doing). Theater seems to have enough other aspects than acting to supplement character development than simply the people on stage. The beauty of theater, is that the sound, light, makeup and set designer and techies do it in a more instantaneous light, getting closer to the heart of human decision making and emotional response.

While I am a fan of film, and while I see that it surely has a unique role for a Christian (or anybody else for that matter) to get their point across, the superiority of film over theater in expressing a characters emotional state seems rather silly. I’ll borrow a quote from Simon (I’m not sure where he got it) from a few years ago that isn’t completely unrelated: “Theater is Life; Television is Furniture”.

Here’s my take on it:

What does theatre have that film doesn’t? It has the present moment, irreplaceable and inexplicable. Nothing film can do can simulate being in a space where there’s an actor doing his thing LIVE.

What does film have—everything else. You name it—effects, graphics, time, money . . . the limitations on film are constantly being pushed and what can now be crafted and replayed on a screen is truly amazing. In this sense I’d agree that film is a very relevant art form to our society. I think the problem is that creativity in theatre has been slowed compared with what has happened in film, and thus there’s an innate conception that theatre ought to be AS GOOD AS film—which is ludicrous. The spectacle of Broadway, for example, is mainly in the cool shit they can do with their expensive toys to make the experience as multimedia as possible. But this is fighting a losing battle against film. What theatre artists should be pouring their energies into is continuing to plumb the depths of the present moment.

Improvisational comedy, for example, has the potential to be the funniest art form, in my humble opinion, because it is so essentially human, so immediate. Before film, playwrights created characters that changed before your very eyes and narratives that were pure streams of emotion. If that’s not psychologically pertinent, I don’t know what is. Nowadays, with the invasion of multimedia, we want it big, loud, and vivid. Even subtleties in film acting are vivid: they can be analyzed, replayed, slowed down, and pointed out. Not that there’s anything wrong with big, loud, and vivid, but with so much of it around, who needs theatre, right? There seems to me to be a subversive assumption that showing something is better than leaving it to the imagination.

I think that Tarkovsky certainly CAN show a lot of things about a character through his cinematography, but to say that those things are impossible in theatre is to strip the imagination of the credit it deserves. I find it hard to believe that someone could watch a piece by Robert Wilson or Robert LePage and still think theatre is limited psychologically. It’s like saying that visual art is inherently superior to poetry because the latter gets caught up in words while the other has an entire palette of colors to play with.

And I firmly believe that, while they (the Roberts and others like them) have made magic things happen with tons of money, the same things can be accomplished with very little money. It’s just that more of the money and talent is leading towards film, and too many of the leftovers find themselves trying to be “as good as” film.

I think the author is pointing out weaknesses that perhaps ought to be accredited to contemporary theatre artists, certainly not the art form itself.