Pucle se psem: Fragmentace ve filmu Amores perros

Bc. Lucie Čihánková

Bachelor's thesis

The Dog Puzzle: Fragmentation in Amores Perros

Abstract:

Moje diplomová práce je neoformalistiskou analýzou mexického filmu Amores perros. Práce má dvě hlavní části: Teoreticko metodologický a kulturně historický úvod a samotnou neoformalistickou analýzu. První část definuje mnou použitý neoformalistický přístup Davida Bordwella a Kristin Thompson, kteří při jeho vytváření vycházeli z ruských literárních formalistů. Kulturně historická část se zabývá okolnostmi produkce a distribuce filmu a jeho tvůrci. V samotné analýze se snažím především poukázat na fragmentaci, která je dominantou filmu a sjednocuje ho na rovině naratologické, tématické a stylové.

Abstract:

English resume My bachelor thesis titled The Dog Puzzle: Fragmentation in Amores Perros is a neoformalist analysis of the Mexican movie Amores Perros by Alejandro González Iñárritu. My work is divided into two main parts: the economic and cultural and historical introduction and the neoformalist analysis itself. At the beginning I introduce my neoformalism approach, which was developed by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson and is based in Russian literary formalism. I outline the new nonlinear narrative tendencies gaining popularity since 1990´s, mainly the hyperlink film. Amores perros belongs to this newly established progressive genre. Its narrative is typically for hyperlink cinema split in more stories, thematizes connection, crisis of the relationships and social complexities of a city. These types of narratives require higher audience participation, but provide more satisfaction not only from the story itself but from the architecture of its plot as well. The first part of the thesis deals with economic, production and historic circumstances of the analyzed movie. I introduce the authors of the film mainly creative duo of director González Iñárritu and the scriptwriter Guillermo Arriaga. I outline their rich experiences in writing, music and the media, which helped to shape the style of Amores perros. I also mention other significant crew like the actors, composer of the music and the director of photography. I describe further cooperation of the creative duo on 21 grams and Babel and subsequent dispute, which ended their fruitful collaboration. I also mention other previous and later independent projects of both authors. I discuss the cultural and national circumstances of the movie as an important prodigy of New Mexican Cinema. Iñárritu is its leading figure together with Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro. Lot of other crew members were catapulted to international fame and success by participating on Amores perros, for example the cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto or actor Gael García Bernal. I compare many different reviews of the film some dealing with the controversy over the naturalistic scenes of dog fighting. The film was remarkable critical success, its biggest accolades came from Cannes and Edinburgh festival, it also received a Golden Globe and Academy Awards nomination for Best Foreign Film. In the analytic part I argue, that fragmentation is the dominant principle of the film, uniting it on stylistic, thematic and structural level. The plot is divided into three stories which are unfolding simultaneously, but always with one of them being the main one at the time. The time of the narrative is fragmented, we enter the movie in the middle, in the moment of a car crash, which is uniting the stories and we jump in time many frequently. The hero of the first part, Octavio is the culprit of the crash, model Valeria from the second story is the victim and old vagrant and hit man El Chivo is the witness. I analyze the narrative structure of the story and the way the lines intertwine. Second story is more independent as it deals with a higher social class then the first and third one, but the permeability of the classes is one of the themes. Also Mexico city, the stories locale, plays an important part, it is shown as a place of contrasts, where old ruins and shabby houses stand next to fancy office buildings. The third story connects the world of poor street people and rich upper classes by a hired murder. The story is inhabited with a large amount of dogs, which create a separate level of story, mirroring the fates of their masters. There is many dogs at the dogfights, where Octavio´s dog Cofi also participated, there is a couch dog Richie, who gets trapped under the floorboards just like his mummy Valeria gets stuck in the apartment with severe injury. And last but not least there is whole pack of stray dogs, who accompany Chivo while he is combing the streets in pursuit of his next victim or his es

Abstract:

tranged daughter. Cofi gets to belong to this pack after he is nursed back to health by Chivo, only to kill all the other dogs soon after. On the stylistic level, I discuss various forms of fragmentation in the style and mise-en-scene in detail. Iñárritu uses vectors of constant movement in the takes, should it be movement of the characters or cars passing by. He is creating a network of directions. The fragmentation of the screen is also achieved by physical lines like when takes are filtered through open blinds, segmented windows or doors. The spaces used are very complex and labyrinth-like. There is a lot of fragmented, broken object in the narrative for example the floor, glasses and symbolically there is a lot of broken relationships. Also mirrors and other reflective surfaces are used frequently as well as parallel, and divided composition of the takes. The described stylistic complexities are illustrated by some stills from the movie in the appendix. I argue that the director is using fragmentation for innovative artistic effect, breaking the screen, the narrative and the themes into a jigsaw puzzle of parts, which are still put together. Only at times especially in the narrative they are slightly mixed together to keep the audience engaged. They have to decipher the connections between the stories and construct causal connections retrospectively

Keywords

Amores perros, hyperlink film, nelinearní narativ, mexický film, fragmentace, neoformalistická analyza, povídkový film, vignettes, network naratives

Language used: Czech

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 23. 8. 2012

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 4. 9. 2012
• Supervisor: Mgr. Lukáš Skupa, Ph.D.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Bachelor programme / field:
Humanities / Film and Audio-Visual Culture Studies