Complicating Articulation in Art Cinema

Complicating Articulation in Art Cinema challenges the assumption that the solution to art cinema's puzzles lies in interpreting each film as the expression of a focalizing character's internal disturbance. It suggests that the politics of art cinema's eccentric form are limited by character-centred readings and offers an ethics of criticism that acknowledges the resistance to interpretation.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 224 pages
\n Publication date: 14 December 2021
\n Publisher: Oxford University Press
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Complicating Articulation in Art Cinema delves into the intricate and fragmented nature of art cinema, highlighting its deliberate disjointedness. While criticism has often sought to explain this complexity by stitching the various parts together in totalizing readings, this approach often reduces the formal achievements and enigmatic characters to inadequate approximations of one another. This book challenges this assumption by proposing that character-centric interpretations fail to fully account for the intricate and unpredictable combinations of levels of narration, conflicting styles, discontinuously edited shots, jarring allusions, dislocated genre signifiers, and intermedial elements that characterize art cinema.

Through close analyses of films by renowned directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Robert Bresson, Luis Buñuel, Terence Davies, Peter Greenaway, and Kelly Reichardt, Complicating Articulation in Art Cinema offers an ethics of criticism that suggests the politics of art cinema's eccentric form are limited by character-centred readings. These films present inarticulate characters whose emotional and intellectual lives remain unknowable, further complicating the relationship between character and form. By acknowledging this resistance to interpretation, critics are encouraged to think in new and innovative ways about art cinema's interrogation of the possibilities of knowledge.

In conclusion, Complicating Articulation in Art Cinema provides a valuable contribution to the study of art cinema by challenging the prevailing character-centric approach and advocating for a more nuanced and complex understanding of its formal and narrative complexities. Through its close analyses of a selection of influential films, the book offers an ethics of criticism that encourages critics to think in new and innovative ways about art cinema's interrogation of the possibilities of knowledge.

\n Weight: 524g\n
Dimension: 164 x 241 x 23 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780192894069\n \n