Stoker: Reinventing the ‘Mistake’

Fragmented images linger in the corners of frames, characters are framed with vast headroom, inserts of fractions of seconds only showing very slight seemingly irrelevant details and abruptly cutting away from a scene only to return in the middle of the next scene all add up to the uncomfortable, on-edge aesthetic of Park Chan-wook’s Stoker. But why do these elements make us squirm throughout the film?

I would suggest that they reinvent what we would usually class as an amateurish ‘mistake’ into a hugely coherent visual aesthetic. This isn’t to say that Chung Chung-hoon’s camera or Nicolas De Toth’s editing is in any way amateurish, quite the opposite, they have such a strong understanding of convention and how to produce what we would expect that they can turn that expectation on it’s head to instead produce the opposite. This creates a strong reaction from the viewer exactly because it goes against the norm of much narrative cinema (creating a non-invasive cinematic space) and thus makes you acutely aware of technique, springing you back-and-forth between the diegetic and extra-diegetic space. Understanding Stoker’s narrative, it becomes obvious that this is the perfect feeling to force upon the viewer as the world is one of seeming discontinuity and nervousness. Thus utilising a common ‘mistake’ masterfully actually imbues the film with a new layer of emotional response.

I found a similar approach in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Millennium Mambo whereby Mark Lee Ping-bing’s camera masterfully utilises one of the most fundamental cinematic elements as an emotionally relevant device—that of focus. Many of the events in Millennium Mambo unfold with a relatively shallow depth of field which permits the characters to spend a large proportion of time out of focus. But if we again put this in context of the film, which is told through the protagonist’s memory, this hazy uncertainty of image becomes both relevant and evocative of the film’s mood.

But established and reputable filmmakers make these films, what if we were to find these elements in the works of less-known filmmakers or even students? Would we treat them with the same leniency analysing these ‘mistakes’ as intentional and integrating them seamlessly into the narrative of the film? Although we would all love to answer that we are unbiased, I am relatively sure that we would class them as just that—mistakes. Yes, in this setting the likelihood of these elements being unintentional is higher, but we can never be sure if the style that emerged in Mambo or Stoker was born from simple mistakes on set which were then pondered on and woven into the fabric of the film. This is therefore exactly what I mean when I say that these films reinvent the ‘mistake’, as they turn them from being simply dismissible and place it as a fundamental aspect of the film. But what is the factor that drives this move? Is it that we respect them as established filmmakers and disregard the possibility of these things being a ‘mistake’, or is it simply that this creative decision is repeated so endlessly that it suddenly gains meaning?

I think it is likely the first, but we should try to distance ourselves from the knowledge of the filmmaking team while we watch and instead judge the sound and image alone, only later taking the names into the equation. But I suppose the next question asks whether that is possible…

1/4/0

5/13

~Leo