The MTV Influence on Editing II

In the last chapter we explored the characteristics of the MTV style in editing. Whereas linear narratives proceed by focusing a viewer's identification with a main character, the MTV approach proceeds using a less specific focus. Consequently, pace, subjectivity, and the close-up are not used to build an identification with the main character. In the MTV style, they are used to generate a less specific intensity. Pace and subjectivity in general are not used to move us up a dramatic arc; instead, they are used to intensify in effect a set piece that may or may not contribute to a dramatic arc. The MTV style is more clearly understood if the developmental narrative structure of the linear narrative is set aside, and if instead the narrative is seen as a series of set pieces that each embody a dramatic arc of their own. You might even consider the set pieces to be the equivalent of short films strung together by a loose shaping device. The most important point is that the editing implications of the MTV style shifts the focus from character and the structure of the narrative as a whole to the set piece itself. In a sense, the MTV style subverts the linear experience and elevates the scene over a sequence, an Act, or indeed the whole film.

Within the scene itself the MTV style focuses on feeling over the progress of the narrative. In the last chapter we looked at a single example, Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). In this chapter, we expand this exploration to look at different narrative conventions that have emerged from the influence of MTV style. In the case of Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000), the filmmaker has taken a classic melodrama, a doomed love story, and by adopting an MTV approach, he alters the specificity of the narrative to become an existential meditation on yearning and loneliness. Similarly, Ang Lee's MTV editing of the fight sequences in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) transforms a Kung Fu action film into a feminist melodrama about the clash of the “traditional” with the “modern.” Very often the MTV style self-reflexively uses the media itself as a character in the narrative. Juzo Itami in his film Tampopo (1987) uses this characteristic both to frame his narrative as well as to interrupt the main story line. By doing so he uses the MTV style to interject his own voice into the story line, thereby giving a layered, more complex experience to what is otherwise a simple story. In the case of Life Is Beautiful (1998), Roberto Benigni uses his own character in the narrative as the focus for the set pieces that together propose a philosophy at odds with the plot. Here the MTV style transgresses plot to yield a powerful but very different interpretation of the narrative.

In Chapter 31, Nonlinear Editing and Digital Technology II, we will look at the use of the set piece in the nonlinear film. In both Terence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998) and P. T. Anderson's Magnolia (1998), the filmmakers create powerful and intense set pieces. Although there are similarities between these two films and those discussed in this chapter on the MTV editing approach to the set piece, they also differ from the films discussed here in two areas. First, each of these two films uses a single character as opposed to multiple characters as a vehicle for the narrative. Second, these MTV-influenced films move to resolution whereas the nonlinear film more often has an open ending.

To begin our deliberation of the influence of MTV style we turn first to the D-Day set piece that occurs early in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1997).

   THE CASE OF SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is a traditional war film framed by a modern prologue. The former Private Ryan, with his wife, children, and grandchildren, visit the American cemetery where so many who died on D-Day and in its immediate aftermath are buried. He is there to visit the grave of Captain John Miller who died on the rescue mission that saved his life. The body of the narrative focuses on D-Day and the mission to save Ryan, after the War Department receives word that his three brothers have all been killed in action. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall issues the command: save the one remaining Ryan so that his mother will not have lost all 4 sons fighting for their country. Captain Miller and his men are given the tough assignment, and 6 of the 8 will die in carrying out the mission, including Miller himself. While he is dying, Captain Miller exhorts Ryan to live a worthy life or, put another way, to “make my sacrifice worthwhile.” In the epilogue, Ryan in deepest sorrow tells us he has lived up to Miller's invocation.

This brief description can't capture the powerful emotions created by the experience of the film. Saving Private Ryan is a classic war film, and the goal for Miller, the main character, is to try to survive. His conscious selfsacrifice to save Ryan elevates the premise of the narrative to a meditation on the question of what is worth dying for, and the film implies that there are issues and events in life that are worth dying for. Whether this notion is romantic or realistic is not the point we're concerned with here. What is our concern is how Spielberg elevates the narrative beyond a conventional war story. An important if not vital contributor to this shift is the MTV style Spielberg employs in the D-Day landing sequence. This 24-minute sequence is the subject to which we now turn. The place is Omaha Beach, Dog Green Sector. off) are noted:

The sequence proceeds under the following subheadings. Lengths (rounded

Before we turn to the individual sequences, here are a number of general observations that drive the overall sequence. The first observation is that although mastery of a sort is achieved by the characters by the end of the sequence, the emphasis is on the casualties, their extensive number, the pervasiveness of death on the beach, the chaos of trying to survive on the beach, and the horror of how mutilating death can be when it occurs in war. Second, Spielberg has adopted a cinema verité style involving handheld shots, a lot of telephoto images where context is flattened to emphasize crowding, and the creation of the effect that there is nowhere to hide from the steady machine gun and mortar fire. Spielberg also uses close-ups to a far higher proportion than he usually does when presenting an action sequence. Finally, as expected, pace plays a very important part in the experience of the sequence as a whole.

Now we turn to the individual sequences.

To sum up, the 24-minute sequence uses the MTV style to create a feeling: What it was like to be on Omaha Beach as an American combatant. The experience is quite unlike any created by a previous war film. This is due to the power of the MTV style.

   THE CASE OF ANG LEE'S CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON

The set piece as a challenge for filmmakers is as old as Griffith's Intolerance (1916). The set piece has ranged from sensational to more purposeful intentions. The attack on the train in Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) is spectacle attuned to mythmaking. The cornfield sequence in Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), on the other hand, is almost academic in its confident approach to the chase. Ranging in between we have the final shootout in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) and the car chase in Friedkin's The French Connection (1971). Filmmakers have even begun to parody those set pieces. Witness the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and the homages of Brian de Palma. The kung fu films of Hong Kong have used such set pieces to make a superhero of its main character.

Ang Lee has overtly made a kung fu film in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), but his primary intent is not to create superheroes. He is far more ambitious in his intentions for the set piece. To explore those intentions, we now turn to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Ostensibly the plot revolves around the theft of a famous sword called Green Destiny. Its owner, the great warrior Li Mu Bai, has grown weary of battle; as if in a mood of existential doubt, he decides to give the sword to Sir Te, a trustworthy custodian. He asks Shu Lein, a woman he has long admired, to take the sword to Sir Te. Although Li Mu Bai is trained at Wudan Mountain, a center known for creating the greatest fighters, Shu Lein is also a very capable warrior. From their conversation, we understand that only one who is worthy of carrying it can possess the Green Destiny sword. Two more narrative notations are made in this sequence—that Shu Lein and Li Mu Bai yearn to be together, but something holds them back. The second point is that Li Mu Bai has one adversary, Jade Fox, a woman who killed his master.

The sword is delivered to Peking, and its custodian shows it to Governor Yu, but in short order the sword is stolen. Shu Lein suspects the thief is the Governor's daughter Jen. Jen, who is much younger and very willful, indeed is the thief, but much to our surprise her housekeeper is Jade Fox. Jen is unhappily scheduled to marry, a politically opportune marriage. She is disinterested, as we discover, because she loves the bandit Lo, known as Dark Cloud. In a flashback into the past, Dark Cloud stole Jen's comb, she pursued him into his home territory. There on the desert steppes of China they fought and fell in love.

The story line then follows the Green Destiny sword. First it is recovered by Li Mu Bai, who attempts to encourage Jen to become his student. (He admires her skills.) Jen in turn steals the sword again after Dark Cloud breaks up her wedding party. She runs off but soon encounters Shu Lein and then Li Mu Bai. She is captured by Jade Fox, drugged, and has to be rescued by

Li Mu Bai. There Jade Fox is finally killed but not before she has poisoned Li Mu Bai with a poison dart. Jen attempts to make the antidote for the poison but returns too late. Shu Lein sends her to her love, Dark Cloud, who waits for her on Wudan mountain. The young lovers are reunited, and Jen, asking Lo to make a wish, leaps into the air, to descend to the desert where they can once again be alone and together. The older would-be lovers, Li Mu Bai and Shu Lein, have earlier sworn loyalty and love to one another and express the wish to be reunited together in heaven.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, ostensibly an action-adventure film, is actually also a melodrama about two capable women, Shu Lein and Jen. They struggle with traditional values and modern values, the society and the individual. Jen represents modern values, and she alone achieves a union with her lover Lo (Dark Cloud). Shu Lein, on the other hand, represents the forces of tradition; because years before her fiancé died before they married, she could not accept Li Mu Bai's attentions, nor could he offer them as he wished. Both were bound by tradition, and consequently their love was always platonic rather than physically manifest. Together, these two women represent the deep struggle for so many women in the world today: should I make my own way above all, or should the family and tradition take precedence? This is the context for the set pieces in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

THE SET PIECES

The set pieces are approached with an MTV style. They are, in effect, self-contained, stand-alone experiences. They may or may not add to the progress of the narrative. They may or may not help the narrative build. It's my contention that the set pieces in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon bend the narration away from the traditional exciting impact of a superhero saving society from a supervillain. To understand where Ang Lee takes us instead, we need to begin by examining the set pieces in a more general manner. First, of the 6 set pieces in Crouching Tiger, a woman participates in each of them. In 2 of the 6, the combatants are both women. A second observation is that a clear death occurs in only one of the set pieces. This is important because kung fu set pieces are conventionally marked by multiple deaths in every set piece. A third observation is that 3 of the set pieces take place at night, and of the 3 that take place in daylight, the environment is unusual and open: one of these takes place in the desert, the other up in the trees.

A final observation is that at least 3 of the participants—Li Mu Bai, Shu Lein, and Jen—are trained in Wudan; they can move up buildings, fly, and stop, by hand, a poison dart so small it's barely visible to the human eye. Their skills, in other words, go far beyond weaponry and introduce a kinesis not generally associated with skilled warriors. Whether this is supernatural or mind over body, it allows a woman to be strong beyond the weight and muscle of her male opponent, and it also narrows the field of worthy opposition. Only the best, only the most worthy, can fight as these 3 can.

If the set pieces are not about primacy through killing, then, what are they about? If I had to articulate the purpose of the set pieces in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I would say they have much to do with the four characters who dominate the narrative: the two main characters, Shu Lein and Jen, and their two love choices, Li Mu Bai and Lo. All four are skilled in matters of war, whether from the point of view of self-defense or of attack. But Li Mu Bai in particular is looking for much more. In his restless search he has chosen to understand and experience the meaning of life first through the sword and later to move beyond the sword. If Li Mu Bai looks for meaning in the sword, Lo sees the sword or combat as a means to an end—to get what you want, whether it is material gain or social status, and be associated with freedom, ferocity, and banditry. Jen seems to want to prove that she is as good as any man. And Shu Lein seems to accept the responsibility and limits of combat—she seems to be the most mature in her articulation of what combat can and does mean.

Each of these characters exhibits skill beyond the ordinary. Their identity issues, confusions, and aspirations imbue the set pieces with an emotion that the fighting in and of itself cannot yield. The dignity each deports in the fight implies grace, and it is this sense of grace that resonates from the majority of set pieces. Only the fight at the Inn between Jen and a multitude of men does not display such grace; it's the only set piece that is almost comical in a slight woman's primacy over many large, heavily armed men. Thus grace is Ang Lee's goal in the remaining set pieces.

In a practical sense, that sense of grace is achieved through a series of visual strategies. The range of shots moves between medium shots and extreme long shots. Movement is a distinct feature of the shots—movement of the camera as well as movement within the frame. Cutting on movement makes the movement seem more dynamic. Rather than focusing on the immediate danger, Lee is anxious to see the mechanics of the fight-thrust and counter-thrust. More distance allows that skill to be foregrounded as opposed to an anxiety as to who will survive. Overall there is a formal quality to the set pieces, a quality that makes them ethereal, as if we were watching the combat of two gods rather than a thief and a protector of private property. To get a more detailed sense of this I turn to the first set piece—the robbery of the Green Destiny sword.

THE FIRST SET PIECE

This set piece, detailing the robbery of the Green Destiny sword and the consequent escape of its thief, is 6 minutes long. The theft itself is quick, and the thief quickly overcomes the guard. Once the thief escapes, Shu Lein is alerted and she becomes the primary pursuer. The guard at Sir Te's house also continues the pursuit and is puzzled by the fact that he is led to the house of Governor Yu. The thief will eventually get away when Jade Fox fires a poison dart at Shu Lein. Although she catches the dart, the shift of focus allows the thief to evade capture or harm. Additionally, although we have not been shown the identity of the thief, we note that the thief is slight, that Jen was shown the Green Destiny sword, as was her father. We also note that Jen's governess is dismissive of people like Shu Lein, although this is not the case for Jen. Consequently we believe the thief to be Jen. The only surprise is the level of her skill, which is considerable.

The major portion of the set piece is Shu Lein's pursuit of the thief. They seem equally skilled and inventive in the combat. They also alone have the capacity to climb buildings and to leap or fly in pursuit. The height of the buildings, or their number, don't seem to be a barrier. Both master space in a fashion unavailable to any of the other pursuers. In this sense, until Jade Fox tries to kill Shu Lein, they are in effect alone. Hands, feet, movement, artifacts, all become weapons in the combat. Jen even uses her whole body against Shu Lein.

The feeling that the set piece creates is that these two women are special warriors; they have a knowledge and skills available to few. Shu Lein also does not kill. She only wants the return of the stolen sword. This implies her values. She doesn't exploit her powers to show her power. She uses her power in service of something worthwhile, the retrieval of the sword. Jen, on the other hand, is less mature. She wants to get away with the theft. Since the subtext of the story is teaching Jen higher values that are in accord with her talent, this exchange with Shu Lein will be her first lesson.

Whereas the narrative has proceeded in a kind of stillness and serenity until now, the tone shifts in the set piece. First, the theft is exciting. Camera movement and cutting on movement makes the scene dynamic. The flight, particularly of Shu Lein pursuing Jen across rooftops and up the sides of buildings, is utterly graceful. The values of power or violence are nowhere to be seen in the set piece. The camera moves a good deal; it is often close to the action or, when an extreme long shot is used, the action moves away from the camera position. Again, there is a formal beauty to what we are watching. Once the fighting gets in close, Lee resorts to medium closeups rather than extreme close-ups. This is not a fight to the death as in the combat between El Cid and his would-be father-in-law, the King's Champion, in Anthony Mann's El Cid (1961), a scene in which extreme close-ups were integral to the scene. Movement, pattern, move, and countermove are more important in Lee's combat than the exercise of power. What more powerful notion can he apply to these two women? Who will be his two main characters? The fight scene is not about primacy, it's about character. This is the subtext to this set piece as well as to the final one—between Jen and Shu Lein and then Jen and Li Mu Bai.

The 6 minutes of this set piece create the feeling that will become the real theme of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In a world of violence, deceit, and power, grace and inner beauty are offsetting critical values that must prevail, as they certainly do in this narrative.

   THE CASE OF IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love is ostensibly a very simple love story set in 1962 Hong Kong. Overcrowding leads 2 young couples to rent rooms with other families. The man, Chow Mo Wan, works in a newspaper office. The woman, Su Li Zhen, works as a secretary for the head of a business. We never see his wife or her husband, but eventually we understand that his wife and her husband have been carrying on an affair. The marriages dissolve, and Chow Mo Wan and Su Li Zhen begin their own affair. The body of the film follows the course of their relationship. The relationship ends when he goes to Singapore. A few years later he returns and revisits the apartment where she used to live. He discovers that she had a son, and it is implied that the son is his. The film ends with his trip to Cambodia, where he deposits a note in a prayer box.

What is important to say about this film is that Wong Kar-wai is an unusual filmmaker who prefers to work in the experimental narrative form. Like Tom Tykwer in Run Lola Run (1999) and Peter Greenaway in The Draughtsman's Contract (1982), style is more important than the actual content. The struggle between style and content creates a powerful forum for the voice of the director. The experimental narrative is thus very much about voice. So what is it that Wong Kar-wai wants to say in this simple romantic melodrama? Before we examine how the MTV style helps create his voice, a number of observations need to be put forward.

The first observation is that a story of a romantic relationship between a man and a woman conventionally has a particular progression. They meet, he or she pursues the other, they reach a hurdle, somehow that hurdle is overcome, another crisis develops, and finally the relationship is a success or not. The story is structured with a beginning, middle, and end, and it is approached through character. Status, background, shared goals, and other elements all factor in to the success or failure of the romance, with all versions of Romeo and Juliet at the tragic end of the spectrum, and Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle (1993) at the successful end of the spectrum. Wong Kar-wai's narrative follows the expected progression, but he constructs his key scenes out of minute details without actually showing the expected scenes. Consequently, the relationship is alluded to in its progression rather than treated conventionally.

A second observation is that the place, Hong Kong in 1962, is implied rather than actually seen. No cinema verité here. Hong Kong is represented by a dark street, a crowded hallway, a restaurant table, 2 workstations. There is no sense of crowding beyond the fact that the two couples are renting rooms in the apartments of others. The time, 1962, is implied through the cut of clothing, the hairstyles, and the look of a clock or a restaurant. Time and place are implied rather than pronounced, as was the case with the narrative progression.

A third is that the visual focus is on Chow Mo Wan and Su Li Zhen. His wife and her husband are never seen, and aside from his landlady, his colleague at work, and her boss, there are few other characters on view. This is a Hong Kong that is implied without its mass of people. Perhaps Wong Kar-wai means for it to be a dreamt Hong Kong.

Which brings us to the director's intention. The narrative is austere, the dialogue is austere, and the pace and camera movement are an austere equivalent. But the color, the lingering close-ups of the 2 characters, and the stylized movements are not austere; they are rich and create the mood appropriate for passion. So too is the music. Wong Kar-wai, through the dissonance between style and content, is trying to create the mood of a doomed love story. Whether he is trying to say loneliness is the human condition or whether his Hong Kong is a unique barrier to “being together,” is for you to decide. What can be said is that Wong Kar-wai employs an MTV style to show how passion can only be sustained for a short time in a relationship.

THE MTV STYLE OF IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

Wong Kar-wai uses two pieces of music a number of times in In the Mood for Love. One is a Spanish number sung by Nat King Cole, the other a romantic lament without lyrics. These pieces of music provide the shape for the set pieces. Within the set piece the music creates an aura of tremendous anticipation and romanticism. Visually, Wong Kar-wai presents movement. Chow Mo Wan smokes a cigarette under a street light. The smoke focuses our attention on his sense of anticipation. Su Li Zhen walks by. The visuals focus on the rhythm of her movement. It's as if she glides. She is swinging a pot of soup, and it too has a rhythm that Wong Kar-wai notes. His stillness, the movement of the smoke, her movement, the soup pot—all project an erotic possibility of their meeting. The movement is slowed down, the smoke is slowed down, and both together with the music builds a sense of anticipation. What the sequence leaves us with is a mood, a feeling of desire, of his desire for her.

Wong Kar-wai puts forward similar sequences as Chow Mo Wan and Su Li Zhen joust early in their relationship, bicker later in the relationship, as one feels disappointed in the other. All the while Wong Kar-wai shows us duplicity in other male-female relationships. Nevertheless, the prevailing focus is the moods that mark the phases of the main characters’ relationship. The short movements, the extreme close-ups, the clarity of composition, together with the romantic lighting, all support the overall romantic feeling, the longing that pervades the set pieces. This longing in turn becomes the overall feeling accentuated by the dominance of style over content in In the Mood for Love.

   THE CASE OF LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (1997) is unusual in that its set pieces are concept-driven and their pace has almost no role in their effectiveness. They are, nevertheless, an example of the MTV style. Rather than looking to the historical examples mentioned earlier in this chapter, it's more meaningful to look at Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936) and Woody Allen's Sleeper (1975).

Like those comedies, which were built up around the persona of the actordirector, Life Is Beautiful is a fable whose moral is that love can sustain us through terrible life experiences. Guido Orefice is a young man who comes to the city of Arezzo to follow his dream: to set up a bookstore. But the time is 1939 and Guido, as we discover 40 minutes into the story, is a Jew. The narrative is organized in two distinct sections. The first half is 1939 Arezzo, and the focus is Guido's pursuit of his dreams, particularly to catch his princess, Dora. He achieves his goal, snatching Dora from the arms of a local bureaucrat, the very evening of her engagement party. This part of the narrative focuses on the barriers to Guido's dreams: he needs a permit to open a bookstore—a permit that has to be signed by the very same bureaucrat who is to marry Dora; he is a Jew, an already persecuted minority; and he takes work of low status when he becomes a waiter. Nevertheless, his persistence and his inventiveness win over his princess, who is not a Jew.

The second half of the film takes place in 1944. He is now married to Dora, and they have a young son, Joshua. He also has a bookstore, albeit not commercially successful. But he does have a wonderful, playful relationship with his son. In short order he and his son are picked up and shipped off to a concentration camp in Northern Italy. Dora chooses to go as well. At the camp the issue is survival, since the old and the young are quickly gassed and their bodies burned. Guido makes up a game to help his son: if you earn 1000 points you will win a real tank. But to do so Joshua must listen, pretend he doesn't want snacks with jam, and generally follow his father's enthusiastic lead. Guido also finds various ways to communicate with the women's barracks that he and Joshua are alive. In this sense, he keeps both his wife and his son alive. The game continues to the last night in the concentration camp when the Germans kill all the prisoners they can before they abandon the camp due to the arrival of the Americans. Guido dies, but not before he has saved his son. Even at this last stage he has made a game of survival.

Before we look at the 3 set pieces composing the body of the narrative, let me make a few points. First, the tone, as one would expect in a fable, is not realistic. It is formal and rather fantastic, as one finds in hyperdramas¹ such as Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum (1979) and Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump (1994).

Second, the concept that shapes the set pieces arises out of the fable's moral. The narrative as a whole, as well as the set pieces, follows the same progression: a character is hopeful, even enthusiastic; a misfortune befalls him and then, arising out of the misfortune, he finds good fortune. In other words, goodness and love prevail in spite of personal loss of economic status, freedom, even life itself. It's as if the Holocaust itself cannot dim the will of a father that his child be a child, that games, playfulness, and creativity can actually crowd out deprivation, pain, loss, and tragedy. To understand how Benigni conveys the moral we turn to three set pieces in different phases of the narrative.

THE SET PIECE IN LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

The first set piece we examine occurs in the early part of the film. Guido has come to the city office where he will apply for a permit to establish a bookstore. He has only recently arrived in the city. The first phase of the set piece is Guido's enthusiasm to get on with his dream. He is told that it's lunchtime and the person who needs to sign will now go for lunch. When he complains, he is told that the next person who can sign will arrive in one hour. Guido quickly gets into an argument with the bureaucrat who now leaves. Upset, Guido looks out the window, accidentally pushing a flowerpot off the window ledge. The pot shatters on the head of the bureaucrat. Guido rushes out to apologize. He places his hat, which has raw eggs in it, on an adjacent car. The bureaucrat tells Guido he will never get the needed signature, mistakenly picks up the hat with the eggs, and puts it on his head. The eggs crack and the bureaucrat, humiliated again, is infuriated. He begins to pursue Guido, who borrows a bicycle. As he flees he crashes into the woman of his dreams, Dora, whom he refers to as princess. This is their second accidental meeting. The misfortune of losing the chance to apply for the bookstore and of being pursued by an angry bureaucrat turns into the good fortune of finding Dora again. Throughout the set piece Guido has maintained a high level of energy, first as enthusiasm, then as indignation, and finally as passion. The feeling created by the set piece is that his career will persevere in spite of setbacks.

The next set piece I will refer to as the engagement party. The set piece occurs in the restaurant where Guido works as a waiter. Tonight the bureaucrat will announce his engagement to the reluctant Dora. She is clearly being prompted by her mother to be enthusiastic about this relationship. The set piece begins with the reluctant Dora hiding in her dress under her bed covers, and ends with her riding off on a horse with Guido. The scene is filled with signs of misfortune for Guido: his uncle's white horse has been painted green to designate it as a Jewish horse. A stuffed ostrich sits atop the celebratory “Ethiopian” engagement cake (a reference to Italy's territorial ambitions), and a live poodle ends up decorating Guido's serving tray. The scene has a serious intention but absurdity abounds. Finally, to get away from the absurdity, Dora sees Guido hiding under her table and decides to join him in order to declare her love. He is clearly her type of man. He takes her home and, within the same shot, 5 years have passed. We understand because a child emerges from the door Guido and Dora just entered. The feeling created in this set piece is that society is becoming absurd and that Guido's imaginative nonconformity seems sane in comparison.

The third set piece takes place late in the film. I will call it “A good lunch in the concentration camp.” Guido now works as a waiter in the mess hall. A German doctor he knew in Arezzo is now the camp doctor. That day a group of officer's children are brought to the camp. They play on the grounds and Guido encourages Joshua to play as well. When the children are called to lunch, a matron mistakes Joshua for a German child. Guido tells him to be silent, for any speech would give away that he is Italian. And so Joshua goes to lunch where his father will be one of the waiters, but he is playing the “be quiet game” according to his father. As he is offered food and being polite, he says “grazzi” to the German waiter. The waiter rushes for the matron—an Italian boy is among the Aryan youngsters. Guido hastily organizes a game among the German children. By the time the matron and waiter appear all the children are saying “grazzi.” Playing a children's game has saved Joshua. Satiated with food the boy goes to sleep at the table. Guido then puts Offenbach on the gramophone and points it out of the windows. His wife hears and goes to the window. Guido is saving her as well, in this case by keeping her spirits up—he and their son are alive, and seemingly well. Once again Guido's attitude and his active imagination have saved his family. The feeling in this set piece is that play, in essence, children's games, are curative.

None of these set pieces are fast-paced, in fact, each is very deliberate, even slow. But each has a concept at its core, and each confirms the moral of the fable—love can help you overcome any adversity.

   THE CASE OF TAMPOPO

The MTV style was used to create a chaotic context for the main character in Saving Private Ryan. The result is to pose the question—How will he survive?—rather than the traditional question about the main character in a war film—Will he survive? In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the MTV style realigns our expectations of the kung fu adventure film. And in Life Is Beautiful, the MTV style reiterates the central theme of the narrative. In each case, the MTV style has had a relation to the narrative, either deepening or altering that narrative. The MTV style is deployed for an altogether different purpose in Juzo Itami's Tampopo (1987). In Tampopo, the MTV style is altogether distinct from the narrative. What it does add is the powerful statement of mood; a mood that acts against the narrative content. The ironic tone created is the vehicle for Itami's voice.

The main narrative follows how a stranger helps a young widow transform her ordinary noodle shop into the “best noodle shop in Tokyo.” This seems like a modest enough tale, but Itami approaches the story by borrowing heavily from Kurosawa and his epic “Western” Seven Samurai (1954), which was later remade by John Sturges as The Magnificent Seven (1960). This epic treatment means that the mentor character, here called Goro, has to assemble a group that can help Tampopo “save” her shop. They include an impudent young man, a “fallen” older doctor, a rich man's valet, and a rough and tumble builder. Tampopo's young son is also a member of these unlikely helpers. Goro, by the way, always appears in the film wearing a cowboy hat. The opposition to Tampopo is composed of other noodle shop owners, and, appropriately, each acts as if he is a cattle baron whose wealth is under threat from the suspicious Goro and the modest Tampopo. Soup preparation, noodle composition, pork fat—each is treated like the weaponry in a Western.

The tone Itami uses is ironic and filled with allusion to the Western genre. Occasionally Itami will also reference the gangster film. Itami effectively establishes the tone by framing the narrative, first as a film and then as a pulp novel. In the opening, a gangster, dressed like a dandy, enters a cinema with his retinue. He sets up in the first row, complete with champagne. He acknowledges that a film will be seen, then he issues a warning to a viewer: no loud eating during the film; it's rude and will lead to the viewer's violent end at the gangster's hand. Then he allows the film to proceed. In the next scene, a young man is instructed on how to eat good noodle soup. This extended introduction to soup is then acknowledged as the visualization of a book being read by a truck driver. The truck drivers are hungry and decide to stop at a noodle shop. One of them is Goro, and what follows is his introduction to Tampopo. Later in the narrative, whenever Itami feels the need (there is no logic to these set pieces), he wanders away from the narrative into an MTV set piece. Each set piece has something to do with eating. A number of set pieces have to do with the gangster from the opening. Others simply stand alone.

Before we proceed to look at two of these set pieces it would be useful to summarize their context:

THE SET PIECE IN TAMPOPO

The first set piece, which occurs in the first third of the film, focuses on dining. A group of Japanese businessmen eats in the exclusive dining room of a high-class hotel. The cuisine is French. The group is principally elderly with the exception of one young man. As the waiter requests everyone's order one of the elderly gentlemen places his—a simple fish dish, beer and soup, and no salad. As the waiter moves around the table, others replicate the order of the “leader” of the group. As the waiter comes to the young man clearly the pressure is on—conform. But he doesn't. He recognizes the menu as a replication of the number one restaurant in Paris. He then proceeds to order snails and a special champagne, much to the consternation of his colleagues. Clearly he is an individual among corporate conformists.

The scene shifts to another dining room in the hotel. A “group leader” is teaching young Japanese women the etiquette of eating spaghetti. The procedure is formal, slow, and silent. The young women are very attentive. Close by, an American is served spaghetti. He proceeds to eat it vigorously and messily. The young women are taken with his zeal, and they proceed to noisily eat their spaghetti. Finally the group leader succumbs. She too begins to eat her spaghetti noisily.

This set piece is all about conformity among the upper class. What Itami is saying is enjoy yourself, conventions be damned. What is important is to be yourself and to enjoy yourself. The set piece is ironic and humorous. It's difficult to remember but he reminds us—it's only lunch.

The second set piece takes place early in the second half of the film. All efforts to learn the secret of making exceptional broth for the noodle soup have failed, and so Goro takes Tampopo to see “the doctor.” He is an old man and a homeless person, living among other vagrants—in effect a community of the homeless. The “doctor” left his practice and family for this new life. Goro enlists the doctor in Tampopo's cause. As Tampopo's son is hungry, one of the doctor's colleagues, a “chef,” takes the boy to the local hotel. There he breaks into the kitchen and proceeds to make him a rice omelet. The cooking is precise, and the effort yields perfection. They steal away as the hotel security guard inspects the kitchen where a light suggests mischief. They get away and the boy has a great meal.

The notion that cooking genius resides in a group of homeless people offers the opposite end of the social spectrum from the first set piece. Indeed, the sense of togetherness, respect, and aesthetic cooking sensibility, all suggest the opposite of the earlier scene where conformity and class were the order in approaching the what and how of eating.

Again, irony abounds in this set piece, but what is also critical at its core is the sense of an aesthetic about food, its creation, and its consumption. As in the first set piece, there is considerable surprise here—surprise at individual behavior and surprise about individual values. Finally, as in the first set piece, there is enormous humor. The creation of an omelet is treated with a reverence deserving of the creation of something far greater. Or perhaps Itami is saying that it all stops here, at the eye, the mouth, and the stomach. In the end, we are what we eat and how we eat it. The feeling state Itami is working with is to elevate originality in all its aspects.

   CONCLUSION

Whether the purpose of the set piece is to highlight the voice of the author, as in the case of Itami, or to subvert the genre expectation, as in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the MTV set piece is a powerful tool in the filmmaker's tool box. Its use often alters conventional narrative. Used strategically that alteration can add meaning to the narrative, as in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, or it can tilt our experience toward feeling and mood rather than narrative, as in Wong Kar-wai's In The Mood for Love. In either case, the MTV style has a powerful impact

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