Buckland-Warren-Puzzle-Films-Complex-Storytelling-Contemporary-Cinema

214 Marshall Deutelbaumher, she might just as easily conclude after the momentary resistance thatwe see that she might as well give in to her husband because she was nolonger has any reason to resist his sexual advances.)This oscillation between a restricted and less knowledgeable, less communicative,less self-conscious narration on the one hand, and an omniscientand more knowledgeable, more communicative, more self-consciousnarration on the other, suggests a much more complicated diegetic worldthat is considerably more difficult to interpret correctly than the worlddepicted in Crash. At certain points, Hong heightens the difficulty even furtherfor viewers by ending the depiction of an action before it reaches itsconclusion. For example, after Bokyung leaves the bus station and beginsher day of wandering through Seoul, a shift from restricted to omniscientnarration shows her from the inside of a convenience shop as a man noticesher walking by. He leaves the shop and follows her to where she isstanding, waiting for a taxi. He stands behind her with his hands in hiscoat pockets and looks to his right and left. A cut to a taxi slowing as itapproaches the curb turns out not to be a continuation of the omniscientlynarrated sequence, but a return to restricted narration some time later, asa cab in which Bokyung is a passenger stops to let her out. As she goesto find money in her purse with which to pay the driver, she discoversthat her wallet is not in her bag and wonders where she may have left it.How is a viewer to interpret what has happened? Has Bokyung lost herwallet or forgotten it somewhere, as she wonders? Or was the man whofollowed her a pickpocket who stole her wallet in the moment we didnot see because of the abrupt cut that reestablished restricted narration?The man’s glances suggest he may be scanning the area to see whetheranyone might observe him pickpocketing her wallet, but we cannot besure that this is what he is doing because the sudden cut prevents us fromseeing what happens in the moment after his sidelong glances.All together then, rather than deconstruct the traditional concept of realityas Min, Joo, and Kwak assert, the structure of The Day a Pig Fell intoa Well presents viewers with a narrative whose uncertainties of meaningand motivation mirror the limits of understanding that viewers encounterin everyday reality. By refusing to allow viewers to escape briefly into thehighly interconnected alternative to reality presented in a classical narrativelike Crash, Hong redirects viewers to an alternate cognitive model applicableto their everyday experiences. Rather than an escape from reality,the film offers viewers a method of escape from the perils of jumping toconclusions based upon insufficient evidence.