Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- I Vertigo: Towards a Neurofilmology
- II Acrobatics: On the wires of empathy
- III Fall: Descent to equilibrium
- IV Impact: Experiencing the unrepresentable
- V Overturning: Upside-down dissimulations
- VI Drift: Ungraspable environments
- VII Flight: Towards an Ecofilmology
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
V - Overturning: Upside-down dissimulations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- I Vertigo: Towards a Neurofilmology
- II Acrobatics: On the wires of empathy
- III Fall: Descent to equilibrium
- IV Impact: Experiencing the unrepresentable
- V Overturning: Upside-down dissimulations
- VI Drift: Ungraspable environments
- VII Flight: Towards an Ecofilmology
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
The chapter ‘Overturning. Upside-down dissimulations’ deals with the motif of the overturned representations of the human face and body in contemporary films and its effect on the spectator's vestibular system. The argument builds off of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's reflections on the phenomenology of the perception of space and Rudolf Arnheim's discussion of the artistic potential a film can derive from the relativity of point of view and movement. The analysis (in particular of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight) leads to the identification of a dynamic that moves from the disorientation produced by the representation of overturned faces to an ‘un-overturning’.
Keywords: Upside-down image, Equilibrioception, Phenomenology of Perception, The Dark Knight
‘This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. […] You see, madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push!’
—The Joker, The Dark Knight (Nolan 2008)In Wonderland
Alice falls downward. Wonderland is waiting for her, at the bottom of the infinite tunnel of her frustration and curiosity. As the girl reaches the bottom, she breaks through the ceiling of a room. When she recovers from the tumble, a point-of-view shot shows a chandelier oriented strangely upwards. A moment later, a close-up shows a strange expression on the girl's face; the shot enlarges to show her long blond hair dangling upwards, against the force of gravity. Suddenly, a quick rotating camera motion tilts the perceptual plane 180°. The spectator realizes then that the ceiling is actually the floor, and that the world into which Alice has plunged is organized according to a new, completely inverted orientation. This overturning, this ‘revolutionary’ camera movement in the opening scene of Alice in Wonderland's (Burton 2010), is something that goes beyond a mere change of the inner spatial organization of the fantastic world into which the character has dropped. This filmic ‘gesture’ tells us something about our own status as film spectators, and therefore about the nature of the film experience.
The most interesting, albeit almost undetectable, aspect of the scene is precisely that brief moment of time during which Alice remains attached to what at first seemed to be the room's floor and what is soon to to turn into its ceiling.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Neurofilmology of the Moving ImageGravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema, pp. 143 - 164Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021