2008-06-02 23:41:59聖女貞德
The Art of Framing in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (part 1)
I. Introdcution
In Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, the applications of framing are not only frequent but also significant. Although Lee’s unique mise en scène is not as stunning as many Asian film makers, such as Kar-Wai Wong, Hsiao-Hsien Hou and Ming-liang Tsai, Lee’s work still employ a spectacular complexity with co-operation of the framing arrangement and the main story theme.
In the film, there are many subtle plots needing to be read carefully in order to interpret them appropriately. I argue that the applications of framing have to be deeply discussed in order to have an effective reading of the film since the framing is highly relevant to the main story theme, the ambiguity between actual emotion and performing.
The story talks about how Wong Chia Chi, the heroine, struggles between her identity displacement between being a patriotic agent and a lover of a betrayer, Mr. Yee. She goes undercover to seduce Mr. Yee and is supposed to assist an operation to assassinate Mr. Yee, however, she ends up falling in love with him. It is important to notice that the assassination is originally sponsored by Kuang Yumin, leader of a patriotic drama group.
Kuang gets involved in drama since he wants to provoke audience’s nationalist awareness. He is interested in performance because of his politically pragmatic motivation. Therefore, he becomes a mastermind to kill “a real collaborator,” Mr. Yee, rather than do more drama creation.
Wong Chia Chi is different from Kuang. She enjoys performing. She enjoys having audience and finding herself on stage. Therefore, she goes back to the stage, where she has had a successful performance recently, and sticks with the backdrop of a fictional story until Kuang and his colleagues, who are in the audience seats, call her to join their meeting, and symbolically call her back to the reality, an actual assassination. Kuang’s lines in the film interestingly highlight the contrast as he says it is more valuable to kill a real collaborator than to scream in front of the audience.
Wong’s enjoyment of performing is highlighted by the director’s framing. For example, before her first sexual reversal with her comrade, she stares at her image in the mirror frame for seconds and symbolically announces that all she does are just a show.
II. Framing and play within a play
Gilles Deleuze points out that framing and on screen is a significant way to appreciate a movie. He writes as he talks notes that the “frame in frames” in movies should not be neglected:
As a general rule, the powers of Nature are not framed in the same way as crowds, and sub-elements are not framed in the same way as terms, so that there are many different frames in the frame. Doors, window, box office windows, skylights, car window, mirrors, are all frame in frames. The great directors have affinities with particular secondary, tertiary, etc. frames. (Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-Image 14)
He points out that the framing is the very significance of framing in movies. When uses the capital “N” to announce the unchangeable quality of the “Nature,” the reality world, he emphasizes the fact the framing are to be applied to put frames together to create meanings rather than to be used to cut apart the visual elements on screen. No artist can change the nature when artist represents, reinterprets and reflects the nature. Therefore, he mentions that movies directors apply “the frame of frames” as a tool of producing meanings, as he writes:
And it is by this dovetailing of frames that the parts of the set or of the closed system are separated, but also converge and are reunited. … the physical or dynamic conception of the frame produces imprecise sets which are now only divided into zones or bands. The frame is no longer the object of geometric divisions, but of physical gradations. The parts of the set are now intensive parts, and the set itself is a mixture which is transmitted through all the parts, …Here, it is by degree of mixing that the parts become distinct or confused in a continual transformation of values. The set cannot divide into parts without qualitatively changing each time; it is neither divisible nor indivisible, but ‘dividual’ [dividuel]. Admittedly, this was already the case in the geometric conception – there the dovetailing of frames indicated the qualitative changes. The cinematographic image is always dividual. This is because, in the final analysis, the screen, as the frame of frames, gives a common standard of measurement to things which do not have one – long shots of countryside and close-ups of the face, an astronomical system and a single drop of water – parts which do not have the same denominator of distance, relief or light. In all these sense the frame ensures a deterritorialisation of the image. (Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-Image 14, 15)
The ambiguity of “the frame in frames” reveals a subtlety of framing. Both functions of separating and uniting elements on screen of framing have to be comprehended spontaneously. That is to say, directors applies framing, particularly “the frame in frames” in Deleuze’s term, to remind the audience to link up somethings that are different and in distance in order to have a better understanding of the drama.
In Lee’s movie, the “the frame in frames” is applied for a lot of time. As the theme of play within a play is significant in Lust, Caution, Lee highlight the theme with his art of framing. Lee gives an excellent paradigm of how framing highlight the tension of play within a play, as Bruce Kawin notices how framing, particularly “inner frame” in his term which is the same as “the frame in frames” in Deleuze’s term, and play within a play can cooperate in movies. Kawin writes:
If the world is framed in any shot, one of the more reflexive ways of attention to this structuring process is to set a frame of the image. This might be compared with the “play within a play” device in Hamlet. At the end of Sherlock Jr. the real lovers are framed within the window of the projection booth, while the screen lovers are framed within the theater screen. This reminds the audience that each of these couples is a category of cinematic illusion, the real lovers “more real” than the others only because the latter are “really supposed to be in a film,” whereas the truth is that both are in Sherlock Jr. Much the same idea is conveyed by this still, which corresponds to a scene near the middle of the film, in which Buster looks at the theater audience(s) before entering the inner frame of the projected image. (Kawin, How Movies Work 158)
(Part Two see http://mypaper.pchome.com.tw/news/lionelyau/3/1307648151/20080602234249/)
In Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, the applications of framing are not only frequent but also significant. Although Lee’s unique mise en scène is not as stunning as many Asian film makers, such as Kar-Wai Wong, Hsiao-Hsien Hou and Ming-liang Tsai, Lee’s work still employ a spectacular complexity with co-operation of the framing arrangement and the main story theme.
In the film, there are many subtle plots needing to be read carefully in order to interpret them appropriately. I argue that the applications of framing have to be deeply discussed in order to have an effective reading of the film since the framing is highly relevant to the main story theme, the ambiguity between actual emotion and performing.
The story talks about how Wong Chia Chi, the heroine, struggles between her identity displacement between being a patriotic agent and a lover of a betrayer, Mr. Yee. She goes undercover to seduce Mr. Yee and is supposed to assist an operation to assassinate Mr. Yee, however, she ends up falling in love with him. It is important to notice that the assassination is originally sponsored by Kuang Yumin, leader of a patriotic drama group.
Kuang gets involved in drama since he wants to provoke audience’s nationalist awareness. He is interested in performance because of his politically pragmatic motivation. Therefore, he becomes a mastermind to kill “a real collaborator,” Mr. Yee, rather than do more drama creation.
Wong Chia Chi is different from Kuang. She enjoys performing. She enjoys having audience and finding herself on stage. Therefore, she goes back to the stage, where she has had a successful performance recently, and sticks with the backdrop of a fictional story until Kuang and his colleagues, who are in the audience seats, call her to join their meeting, and symbolically call her back to the reality, an actual assassination. Kuang’s lines in the film interestingly highlight the contrast as he says it is more valuable to kill a real collaborator than to scream in front of the audience.
Wong’s enjoyment of performing is highlighted by the director’s framing. For example, before her first sexual reversal with her comrade, she stares at her image in the mirror frame for seconds and symbolically announces that all she does are just a show.
II. Framing and play within a play
Gilles Deleuze points out that framing and on screen is a significant way to appreciate a movie. He writes as he talks notes that the “frame in frames” in movies should not be neglected:
As a general rule, the powers of Nature are not framed in the same way as crowds, and sub-elements are not framed in the same way as terms, so that there are many different frames in the frame. Doors, window, box office windows, skylights, car window, mirrors, are all frame in frames. The great directors have affinities with particular secondary, tertiary, etc. frames. (Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-Image 14)
He points out that the framing is the very significance of framing in movies. When uses the capital “N” to announce the unchangeable quality of the “Nature,” the reality world, he emphasizes the fact the framing are to be applied to put frames together to create meanings rather than to be used to cut apart the visual elements on screen. No artist can change the nature when artist represents, reinterprets and reflects the nature. Therefore, he mentions that movies directors apply “the frame of frames” as a tool of producing meanings, as he writes:
And it is by this dovetailing of frames that the parts of the set or of the closed system are separated, but also converge and are reunited. … the physical or dynamic conception of the frame produces imprecise sets which are now only divided into zones or bands. The frame is no longer the object of geometric divisions, but of physical gradations. The parts of the set are now intensive parts, and the set itself is a mixture which is transmitted through all the parts, …Here, it is by degree of mixing that the parts become distinct or confused in a continual transformation of values. The set cannot divide into parts without qualitatively changing each time; it is neither divisible nor indivisible, but ‘dividual’ [dividuel]. Admittedly, this was already the case in the geometric conception – there the dovetailing of frames indicated the qualitative changes. The cinematographic image is always dividual. This is because, in the final analysis, the screen, as the frame of frames, gives a common standard of measurement to things which do not have one – long shots of countryside and close-ups of the face, an astronomical system and a single drop of water – parts which do not have the same denominator of distance, relief or light. In all these sense the frame ensures a deterritorialisation of the image. (Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-Image 14, 15)
The ambiguity of “the frame in frames” reveals a subtlety of framing. Both functions of separating and uniting elements on screen of framing have to be comprehended spontaneously. That is to say, directors applies framing, particularly “the frame in frames” in Deleuze’s term, to remind the audience to link up somethings that are different and in distance in order to have a better understanding of the drama.
In Lee’s movie, the “the frame in frames” is applied for a lot of time. As the theme of play within a play is significant in Lust, Caution, Lee highlight the theme with his art of framing. Lee gives an excellent paradigm of how framing highlight the tension of play within a play, as Bruce Kawin notices how framing, particularly “inner frame” in his term which is the same as “the frame in frames” in Deleuze’s term, and play within a play can cooperate in movies. Kawin writes:
If the world is framed in any shot, one of the more reflexive ways of attention to this structuring process is to set a frame of the image. This might be compared with the “play within a play” device in Hamlet. At the end of Sherlock Jr. the real lovers are framed within the window of the projection booth, while the screen lovers are framed within the theater screen. This reminds the audience that each of these couples is a category of cinematic illusion, the real lovers “more real” than the others only because the latter are “really supposed to be in a film,” whereas the truth is that both are in Sherlock Jr. Much the same idea is conveyed by this still, which corresponds to a scene near the middle of the film, in which Buster looks at the theater audience(s) before entering the inner frame of the projected image. (Kawin, How Movies Work 158)
(Part Two see http://mypaper.pchome.com.tw/news/lionelyau/3/1307648151/20080602234249/)