Truth and Filmmaking

We talked in our small groups this week about how "truth" is represented in the film "Adaptation." The film appears to begin as a "true story", that of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman struggling to adapt Susan Orlean's book "The Orchid Thief" into a film. As the film progresses, however, events appear to distance themselves further and further from this "true" story, becoming completely sensationalist in its sex and violence-filled conclusion. Yet this progression also demonstrates that the notion of "truth" in filmmaking is ultimately chimeric. All films, narrative films in particular, are complete constructions. The narrative cinema of Hollywood has a highly developed series of cinematic techniques that are used to convey a sense of reality in film. Nothing in a narrative film is supposed to draw attention to the fact that what the viewer is watching is a film; transitions are smooth, dialogue is "natural", etc. However, these aesthetic efforts bely the fact that a film is extremely constructed. "Adaptation" draws the viewer's attention to the fact that even when a film appears to be "true", it is in fact this sort of construction. One needs only to see the scene where Charlie visits the set of "Being John Malkovich" to understand this. This scene takes place during the "true" part of the film, yet what the viewer is actually seeing is a movie (Adaptation) in which an actor (Nicholas Cage) playing a screenwriter (Charlie Kaufman) visits the set of a movie (Being John Malkovich) in which actors (John Cusack and Catherine Keener) play regular people who can become an actor (John Malkovich). This sort of metafilmic mise-en-abîme demonstratse that even the most realistic film is entirely constructed.