Text Interpretation
The first step toward developing a director’s idea is reading or interpreting the script. Every script, every story can be interpreted in many ways. A writer has fashioned the story using a mix of narrative tools: a premise, a generally goal-oriented main character who is faced with having to choose between two opposing alternatives, and two groups of secondary characters, one of which helps the main character and one that stands in opposition. In terms of structure, the narrative is organized from a critical moment to its resolution along a course of rising action—barriers, people, or events that make it increasingly more difficult for the main character to achieve his goal. The structure includes a plot layer and a character layer and is contained within a genre that implies its own dramatic arc. Finally, the voice of the writer is embedded in the tone of the narrative.
This is the narrative organization to which the director adds his interests, his character, and his specific interpretation. The goal of this chapter is to suggest that the director’s interpretation is the critical first step of the decision-making process. It is during this phase that the director’s idea is born.
Before discussing strategies that aid development of the director’s interpretation, we need to understand that in every story there exist many interpretations. I have already referred to various interpretations of the same story—the adaptations of “Lolita” (1962), of “Une Femme Infidele” (1967), and of “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962). It would be useful to hold onto these examples while reading this chapter. A useful place for us to begin our discussion is those cases in the popular literature for which numerous interpretations already exist, such as Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet.”
“Hamlet” is the story of the young adult son of a king. His father has died, and his mother has married his uncle, who becomes the king. Hamlet, motivated by an encounter with his father’s troubled ghost, learns that his father was poisoned. Driven by a desire for revenge, he puts on a play that reenacts the murder. Seeing his uncle’s troubled response, he plots revenge. Hamlet sidesteps a personal relationship with the young Ophelia, avoids his uncle’s attempt to get rid of him (Rosencrantz and Gildenstern), and fights Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, who is armed with a poisoned sword and wounds Hamlet. Hamlet kills Laertes and his uncle, Claudius, and then he himself dies. This story can be interpreted as either a revenge story or as a palace tale of power politics.
Turning to the various readings or interpretations of “Hamlet,” a famous interpretation by Lawrence Olivier views the narrative as a psychological portrait of Hamlet. Here, the neurotic Hamlet is front and center. He has an oedipal relationship with his mother, he is totally out of sync in his relationship with Ophelia (that is, he is incapable of a healthy love relationship), and he seems to have trouble with men. The ghost could represent a rekindling of his negativity or his hatred of men projected outward. Indeed, the ghost of his father is imagined. Hamlet is a troubled teenager working out growing up, but he fails (echoes of Columbine).
A more straightforward interpretation is the Zeffirelli version with Mel Gibson. Here, the injustice of regicide leads a loving son to seek revenge for his father’s death. The character of Hamlet is more stable, a worthy king-in-the-making if he survives to become king. In this version, psychology takes a back seat to the plot; Hamlet must revenge his father’s death. Plot becomes more important than character, the opposite of the case in the Olivier version.
A third version is Kenneth Branagh’s treatment (the longest of the three). In the Branagh version, the trappings of power, the court, the castle, and the kingdom of Denmark are far more important. In this reading what is at stake for Hamlet (the crown and the kingdom) is far more central. The externalities distance the reading even further from the internal issues of the Olivier version.
The issue here is not to suggest the supremacy of one version over another, but rather to suggest that one story, “Hamlet,” has yielded three very different interpretations. We could add the nostalgic Kozintsev version in which something grand was lost in the passing of the kingdom from one king, Hamlet’s father, to another, Hamlet’s uncle. Kozintsev is romanticizing the past and provides yet another interpretation.
Whether the director takes an internal or psychological reading, an intergenerational reading, an interfamilial reading, or a more externalized political reading, the critical point is that every good story is subject to numerous interpretations. If we shift from “Hamlet” to “Romeo and Juliet,” we can further explore these perspectives in this tragic love story.
Baz Luhrmann, the latest director to retell the “Romeo and Juliet” story, moved the location and time from 16th-century Italy to 20th-century Mexico. Leonard Bernstein and company set “Romeo and Juliet” to music in modern New York in “West Side Story.” In that version, the rival families of the Capulets and the Montagues become rival ethnic gangs, the Sharks and the Jets. The basics of the tragic story, two young lovers from two opposing sides, remain intact.
Other Shakespearean plays have been reimagined for modern times. Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, set in the modern Midwest, is a retelling of King Lear. The Merchant of Venice has been shifted from 16th-century Italy to Fascist Italy in the 1930s. Julius Caesar has also been imagined in Fascist Italy. Modern versions of Othello have been set in South Africa and in the West Indies. Each of these versions is making a Shakespearean plot or character relevant to today and today’s audiences. What is critical is that stories about power and the quest for power, such as Macbeth, can be set in the Middles Ages in Scotland, for example, but they have just as much relevance to today. The themes of racism (Othello, The Merchant of Venice), aging (King Lear), revenge, love, hate, and envy are as vivid today as they were 400 years ago. This is one of the reasons why Shakespeare’s stories lend themselves so well to varying interpretations.
Turning to other authors, the work of Jane Austen has been reconsidered for modern treatment. Emma became the basis for Amy Heckerling’s “Clueless.” Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables was the basis for the television series “The Fugitive” and later for the Andrew Davis feature film of the same name. Dickens’ Great Expectations received a modern treatment from Alfonso Cuaron in a film of the same name.
The story of a popular historical character of the West, Wyatt Earp, sheriff of Tombstone and Dodge City, has been given at least five different screen treatments. Perhaps the most literal was John Sturges’ “Hour of the Gun” (1969). That version focused on the gunfight at the OK Corral and its aftermath. In Sturges’ version, Earp was not mythologized, and the focus on his relationship with Doc Holliday was not deep. This version had a documentary-like feeling that differs powerfully from John Ford’s version, “My Darling Clementine” (1947). This version depicts Earp as a Western hero fighting for justice and a way of life different from the evil family, the Clantons, who killed his young brother and stole the family cattle. Here, events have a ritualistic feeling that is both romantic and elegiac with regard to the West and its values. A third version, Lawrence Kasdan’s “Wyatt Earp” (1995), is revisionist and modern. In this iteration of the story, Earp is too human and flawed to be worthy of any mythical stature. Earp, the myth, is attacked and replaced by Earp, the man. A fourth version, George Cosmatos’ “Tombstone” (1993), focuses on the power struggle between the Earps, who represent businessmen trying to get ahead, and the cowboys, under Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo, an outlaw group who rob, intimidate, and kill for power. This struggle is not ritualized; it is brutal, and it is about killing—nothing redemptive or romantic here. Finally, a fifth version, again by John Sturges, “The Gunfight at the OK Corral” (1955), focuses on friendship, in this case the relationship of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The Clantons and Curly Bill become mere backdrops, although the film culminates with the famous gunfight. Each of these versions views the main character, Wyatt Earp, differently, and each interprets the core struggle differently. One might say that each of these readings approaches the historical narrative with a different text interpretation.
The Case of Steinbeck’s East of Eden
Good stories emanate from strong characterization and compelling plots. They also resonate with the ambitions of the writer. John Steinbeck, the author of East of Eden, earlier in his career wrote The Grapes of Wrath. In both of these novels, Steinbeck told family sagas set at particular points in U.S. history. He was also trying to say something about America. In The Grapes of Wrath, he linked the land and its future to the fate of its farmers, in this case the Joad family. Because of the Midwest drought and the Great Depression, the Joads were forced to abandon their family home in Oklahoma and head to California to begin a new life. Are the Joads victims of history or simply lumpen proletariats to be used up by capitalism’s endless appetite for cheap labor? This question is core to The Grapes of Wrath, as is the centrality of the Joads as the salt of the earth, America’s real strength.
East of Eden is equally vested in an east–west family saga and a religion versus materialism struggle. This time, the family migration is voluntary rather than a necessity. Adam Trask leaves the family farm in Connecticut, while his brother, Charles, whom he has never gotten along with, stays east. Charles has achieved material success, but in terms of personal happiness he remains unfulfilled. Adam takes his wife with him to California, but she deserts him and their twin infant sons. He raises them on a farm and becomes more interested in religious than material values. His sons, Cal and Aron, are opposites. Cal is pragmatic, and Aron, the father’s favorite, is idealistic, trying to echo his father’s values. Cal discovers that his mother is not dead but lives in Salinas, just over the mountain ridge. She is the leading madam in the town. In an attempt to hurt his brother, Cal introduces their mother to his saintly brother. The story ends with the disillusioned Aron being killed in Europe during World War I and Cal taking care of his father, now felled by a stroke. The goal of this three-generation family narrative was to capture the post-Civil War eagerness for material recovery as well as the deep conflict between material and spiritual values in the American character. The biblical overlay of Cain and Abel echoes through two generations—Charles and Adam, Cal and Aron. This pitting of two brothers against one another is the central conflict. The fact that in each case one brother is materialistic and the other taken with religious or spiritual values gives that conflict a deeper layer and allows the novel to explore the national, irreconcilable paradox. The story takes place near Eden (paradise), but remains outside of it, thus the title of the novel.
The film version of this story was written by playwright Paul Osborne for director Elia Kazan. That version focused on the second generation, Cal and Aron, and the events of the last 100 pages of the book. In this version, Cal is the main character and the antagonist is his father rather than Aron. The story begins when Cal finds Kate, his mother, in Salinas. The dramatic arc is Cal’s struggle to secure his father’s affection. To do so, he earns money in bean futures to pay for losses his father incurred when experimenting with various refrigeration processes. Cal also tries to hurt his brother by taking him to learn the truth about their mother.
By focusing on a single generation, Kazan interpreted the story as a search for the acceptance of one generation by the previous generation. This interpretation frames the story as a clash of values, not between brothers but between generations. The message is that just because Cal is different from others (Aron, Adam) does not mean he is evil. He is just different. The antagonist, Adam, equates being different with bad. Just as he had never understood his wife, Kate, he cannot seem to understand his son Cal. This is the tragedy of this version of East of Eden. Viewing those who are different as evil is narrow minded, and Adam’s lack of openness leads to tragic consequences for him and his son Aron.
The second version of East of Eden was a four-hour TV movie directed by Harvey Hart. In this version, the details of the generational family saga have become the plot. The subtext of East of Eden as a struggle of values was set aside, and the story of Charles and Adam, Cal and Aron, and the linchpin that joins these two stories, Kate, becomes central. In fact, Kate’s story is the strongest element. Biblical references are made, but the movie gives no sense that the struggle of good (Adam) versus evil (Kate) is effectively embedded in the Cal–Aron story. These brothers have become the victims of their narcissistic mother, Kate, and confused father, Adam. Their respective fates do not seem to be the result of any unresolved familial issues.
Recently, production of a third version of East of Eden was announced, with Ron Howard as its director. Will Howard go back to the Steinbeck notion of biblical archetypes, Cain and Abel, representing the two sides of the American character? Will the story be an intergenerational struggle? Will it be a female–male (Kate–Adam) struggle? Whether it represents east–west, intergenerational, or female–male conflict, what is clear is that the East of Eden novel lends itself to varied interpretations. To understand how to access a variety of interpretations, we must take a look at what directors consider when making their text interpretations.
Interior/Exterior
The first decision directors must make is whether to approach a story as an interior, psychological story or as an exterior story relying on a series of events out in the world. Interior stories are preoccupied by psychological aspects of their characters, such as their inner life, spiritual values, or search for deeper values or meaning. When Somerset Maugham wrote The Razor’s Edge in 1935, he really wanted to explore the loss of meaning resulting from World War I. The main character, Larry Darrell, has survived the war but finds that he is not able to settle down, get married, and lead the good life in Chicago. He is eager to regain a sense of purpose in his life. This state leads him to Europe and then to India and back to Europe. In Paris, he encounters some of his Chicago friends, including his fiancée, now married, who has never stopped loving him. His friends do not understand him, but he now has a better understanding of himself and his friends. Without bitterness, he tries to help them. Larry survives as a deeper person and moves on in life. His friends, each in different ways, become casualties of a material life. His spiritual depth and strength help Larry to go on. The Razor’s Edge exemplifies what I would call an internal story. Other writers whose books or plays lend themselves to interior treatments include Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Nabokov’s Lolita, Marber’s “Closer,” and Shepard’s “Fool for Love.” Directors who like to deal more with the inner life include Roberto Rossellini (“Voyage to Italy”), Luchino Visconti (“The Leopard”), and Darren Aronofsky (“Requiem for a Dream”).
An alternative approach to a text reading is to focus on the exterior, the outside of things, and imply the interior. When one thinks of the exterior of things, Frederick Forsythe’s The Day of the Jackal and Mario Puzo’s The Godfather come to mind. Exterior readings or interpretations do not make every film look like “Jaws” or “Lawrence of Arabia,” but this approach does put a premium on action with regard to characterizations and story arcs. A good example of this kind of novel is Yann Martell’s The Life of Pi, the story of a shipwreck that leaves a boy, the main character, and a Bengal tiger together in a lifeboat. Will the boy survive, given that he is a potential source of food for the tiger? Another novel that spills over with external events is Phillip Roth’s The Human Stain, about a black man pretending to be a Jew who is fired from a college for a racist remark to a black student.
Other works that focus on external events include Shakespeare’s Henry V, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Mel Brooks’ “The Producers.” Each of these works, from “The Godfather” to “The Producers,” could focus primarily on the psychology of the characters or on the actions that shape the characters’ behavior, or the focus could be on both. Directors who seem to have a strong sense of external events and a sense that those events push, pull, bend, and break character include Michael Mann’s “The Insider,” Robert Aldrich’s “Attack,” David Lean’s “The Bridge Over the River Kwai,” and Henry Hathaway’s “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.” Some directors are able to emphasize external action without sacrificing interior action. John Boorman’s “Point Blank” is an example of a powerful external–interior nexus. The film was remade by Brian Helgeland as “Payback,” a version that strictly opts for a more exterior reading of the story and suffers accordingly when compared to the original.
Young/Old
Age has often been used to set a tone for a reading. Conventionally, youth implies enthusiasm or optimism, and old age represents regret or reflection. This is the expected reading, but using the expected in unexpected ways has long yielded fresh results. Su Friedrich uses an adolescent narrator to communicate how arrested her character is in the autobiographical film “Sink or Swim.” This experimental narrative examination of a daughter/father relationship challenges the convention of expecting optimism from a “young” reading of the narrative. Similarly, numerous films, such as Martin Brest’s “Going in Style,” challenge the conventions of old age. This film focuses on senior citizens taking action to recapture youthful adventures and ambitions rather than being depressed about their age.
Where the issue of text reading becomes interesting is when the story is told from a different perspective. Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, based on King Lear but set in the modern Midwest, tells the story from the point of view of the daughter rather than the aging father, the point of view of the original. One can imagine Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird told from the point of view of the father, Atticus, rather than that of his preteen daughter. Or, consider Günter Grass’ novel, The Tin Drum, told from the points of view of both of Oscar’s fathers rather than from the point of view of Oscar.
Whether one changes the perspective from young to old or from old to young, there is clear opportunity to make a melancholic narrative more dynamic or a youthfully exuberant narrative more contained and reflective. In either case, the opportunity to surprise the audience makes a clear case for exploring this option.
Male/Female
I have already mentioned Jane Smiley–Jocelyn Moorhouse’s “A Thousand Acres” as an example of a shift in perspective; in this case, the daughters of the Lear character are the point of view rather than the father, as in the original presentation of King Lear. Because the male/female struggle for power is one of the most significant social/psychological/ political issues of the day (at least since the sexual revolution of the 1960s), the issue of a male or female reading of a text has taken on a far greater weight.
Although the screwball comedy (comedy of male/female role reversal) is no longer a staple of contemporary genre films, the examination of male/female roles is central to important films from all over the world. In the British film “The Full Monty,” unemployed men adopt the long-standing female economic strategy of stripping to make a living. In the Japanese “Shall We Dance” (remade in the United States under the same title), an unsatisfied man takes dance lessons to awaken himself; such a strategy in the Japanese male-dominated macho culture is downright feminine. In France’s “French Twist,” a beautiful woman takes a lesbian lover to punish her serially unfaithful husband, who eventually returns to her. Coline Serreau, famous for her gender-bending film “Three Men and a Baby,” rejoined the gender war with renewed passion in France’s “Chaos.” All of these films are situation comedies. “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Tootsie” are two Hollywood examples of films that explore the gender wars.
Because power is a core issue for society and because it is fluid and impermanent, at least in terms of gender, the notion of applying a gender interpretation to a text is simply smart. Men and women do not see events and character the same way, but all want to be on the side of the angels and believe they are empathetic to the other sex. Consequently, telling a male story from a woman’s point of view or a female story from a male point of view or, better yet, revealing the male and female dimensions of a main character is compelling.
Contemporary examples abound, including the Wachowski brothers’ film noir “Bound,” where the classic film noir, a woman’s betrayal of the main character, is altered to considered whether a female character will be betrayed by her lesbian lover. The answer of course is “no”; women do not betray other women. Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” examines the male and female dimensions of the great warrior king, and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Ang Lee’s exploration of the male-dominated action–adventure genre, is utterly altered by focusing on two female main characters, one traditional and the other modern. These characters alter our experience of the superhero narrative. They also make Lee’s exploration the core of the narrative (i.e., modern versus traditional) and depict a more universal struggle; consequently, the text speaks to a wider and older audience whereas the traditional action–adventure film tends to appeal to (young) males.
Political/Sociological/Psychological
Every story has political, sociological, and psychological overtones, but the filter the director uses determines whether the audience views the narrative as an international, national, local, or personal story. It all depends on the director’s choice of emphasis. We have already discussed the various ways in which “Hamlet” has been interpreted. The same choices face each storyteller. Few storytellers have been able to incorporate all three of the political, sociological, and psychological elements. Stanley Kubrick, in “Paths of Glory” and “Full Metal Jacket,” comes to mind as one who has done so. More often the director must choose to focus on only one or two of the elements. Costa-Gavras chose a political perspective in “Z” and “State of Siege.” Nicholas Ray chose a sociological perspective in “Rebel Without a Cause,” as did Todd Haynes in “Far From Heaven.” Alfred Hitchcock, on the other hand, is far more interested in a psychological perspective in “Vertigo” and “Marnie.”
To illustrate the degree of change possible by adopting a different filter we need only consider how different our experience of three films would be if the director had chosen an alternative interpretation. The first example we turn to is Fernando Meirelles’ “City of God” (2002). “City of God” is a classic gangster film, but the gangsters are all 10 to 16 years old. Because the story arc follows the tradition of the gangster film, we watch the rise and fall of a gangster to his death. I suggest that “City of God” is an utterly political reading of the narrative. The fact that a child has to become a gangster to survive in his poverty-drenched environment implies a damning critique of the society the child has grown up within. To change the prism for “City of God” we would need a broader community perspective that would include members of the adult population, parents as well as policemen. In order to interpret “City of God” from a psychological perspective we would need to delve deeper into the fears of the main character, the boy who becomes a photographer. We would also have to delve deeper into the psyche of the leader of the gang, the gangster who is finally killed to make room for the next boy gangster. This might mean exploring their relationships in far greater depth.
A second example is Peter Weir’s “Master and Commander” (2002), which has a powerful sociological dimension. In this narrative we explore the culture of a British man o’ war at sea, focusing on the roles of the officers and their men. The primary focus of the story is on Captain Jack Aubrey and the ship doctor, Stephen Maturin. Their friendship and their differences—the doctor, a reflective man of science, and the captain, a man of action and war—underpin the larger study of the community of the ship. The experience of the Weir narrative is that the film is a study of the importance of leadership in ensuring that the community, the ship, can effectively carry out its responsibility, to execute the war against the French navy. One can easily introduce the political by fleshing out what the French enemy represents; the British values are well represented. A psychological perspective, on the other hand, would require a more specific examination of the issues of death, sexuality, and relationships than is present in Weir’s version. Because Aubrey and Maturin are already the prominent characters, they would be the focus of deeper development.
Finally, Wolfgang Becker’s “Goodbye Lenin” (2002) deals principally with a boy’s love for his mother. What is he willing to do to demonstrate that love and preserve her life? The answer is to pretend that the Berlin Wall of 1988 still exists. The film takes place in 1990, and the Berlin Wall has fallen; however, stricken by a heart attack, the boy’s mother has been in a coma during the regime change. Although there is a political patina here, Becker has chosen to focus on the personal, psychological son–mother story. To make the political layer more prominent, a greater east–west perspective could be added, such as in Billy Wilder’s “One Two Three” and Margarethe Von Trotta’s “The Promise.” To add more of a community or sociological perspective, a wider character population could be explored by factoring in elements of age, gender, and class. In “Goodbye Lenin,” Becker comically blends all the characters into a similar level of adjustment after the fall of the Wall. This overall acceptance of change could be replaced by a broader scope of reactions to the changes going on in the community.
The political, sociological, and psychological perspectives are powerful interpretive filters, and each yields a different experience of the narrative.
Tone
Although tone tends to be genre specific, it is possible to reinterpret the tone for a particular purpose. What I mean by this is that Eugene O’Neill’s work may be classic tragic melodrama, but that has not prevented particular directors from expanding the humor in Act I to give the tragedy of the last act more impact. Writers and directors can and do use humor and irony to shift or intensify our experience. A useful example here is the work of the Coen brothers. In most cases, the Coens use a straightforward genre approach with the expected tone. “Miller’s Crossing” is as emotionally realistic as we can expect a gangster film to be. “The Man Who Wasn’t There” is as expressionistic and stylized as we expect film noir to be. “Fargo” and “Raising Arizona,” on the other hand, present interesting examples where humor and irony alter the genre expectation. In “Raising Arizona,” a serial convict falls in love with a policewoman. All they need is a child. Failing natural means, they decide to kidnap a baby, and they do so from a business tycoon who has quintuplets. The romance, the theft, and the efforts of the tycoon to retake the baby are often cartoonish, more action–adventure than crime story. The consequences of the absurdist humor make the commoditization of the child all the more horrifying. The result is an unsettling experience as opposed to a realistic experience.
The same is true for “Fargo,” which focuses on a kidnapping plot generated by a son-in-law in order to get money out of his father-in-law. His wife and son are the kidnap victims. Everything goes wrong, and the kidnap victims and the father-in-law are killed. None of this sounds very humorous as I write it, but it is. The Coen brothers approach this film as a police crime story and an investigation of family values. The police chief (a pregnant woman), her deputies, and one of the kidnappers are treated with humor. The son-in-law, the father-in-law, and one of the kidnappers are treated in a more serious, realistic manner. The dissonance between humor and seriousness, intention and outcome, is shocking and makes the experience of “Fargo” a powerful indictment of those who seem to espouse family values but whose actions undermine, indeed shred, those values operating in their lives. Altering the tone through the use of humor and irony reinterprets the narrative experience of “Raising Arizona” and “Fargo,” making the films far more powerful experiences than they would have been as straight crime or police stories.
The Coen brothers used a mixed-genre approach to change the audience’s experience and strengthen their voice with regard to the narrative. Directors can also use other genres that enhance, or allow writers and directors to alter, the voice. Those other genres include satire, moral fables, docudramas, experimental narratives, and nonlinear films. Each of these story forms provides the director with a larger palette to strengthen their telling of the story or expand the tonal possibilities of the story. Now we will turn to the visual options available to the director.