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

“Twist Blindness” 75At the end, the camera cuts back briefly for a reestablishing three-shot:Lynn exits the scene to make some pancakes for Cole with the ambiguousphrase, “You’ve got one hour” aimed in the vague direction of Malcolm.By using a combination of establishing and cutaway shots, Shyamalancreates a spatial and formal relationship between Malcolm and Lynn,while allowing the two characters to operate in their own physical and psychologicalspace. For the entire duration of the film (excluding the flashback),Malcolm and Lynn only occupy the same frame for approximately15 seconds, a surprisingly short length of time given that this is a relativelyimportant relationship and the film lasts for over 100 minutes. If a firsttimeviewer was given a questionnaire and asked to estimate Malcolm andLynn’s shared screen-time, then it is plausible that they would approximateminutes rather than seconds. Such an over-estimation would be a consequenceof reconstructive memory, a phenomenon that I will go on to describeshortly.(c) Establishing the apparent relationship betweenMalcolm and AnnaThe next objective is to establish the apparent relationship betweenMalcolm and his wife Anna. After Malcolm’s first meeting with Cole, wewitness a brief scene in which Malcolm arrives home, sees the kitchen tablewith a single place setting, and goes to the bedroom where Anna is sleeping.This scene, however, establishes little more than the spatial proximityof the two characters. Given the complexity and profundity of thehusband–wife relationship, Shyamalan needs a bigger and suitably ambiguousscene: the scene in question (5) is set in an Italian restaurant and isthe subject of the third flashback at the end of the film (Figure 3.9). Ananalysis of this scene can be used to illustrate the possible interplaybetween primacy, priming, schemas, and reconstructive memory.The first key question is: How do we attend to – and comprehend – thescene in question? How do we construct the fabula from the syuzhet? Thefirst element of the scene is Malcolm’s apology to Anna: “I thought youmeant the other Italian restaurant I asked you to marry me in.” In accordancewith the primacy effect, the opening dialogue creates an unambiguousfirst impression which primes us to label the scene as a certain typeof social situation: namely, a wedding anniversary dinner for which oneof the two parties is late. This labeling brings certain schemas into play:for example, we possess schemas for wedding anniversaries, lateness for