FLIGHT

I've noticed an interesting thing in all the Ghibli films I've watched. Although I can trace the western model of the 3 act structure through most of the films, to me, what really distinguishes these films is the inclusion of negative space in the pacing.

This is sort of an abstract concept, but let me see if I can describe it.

With American movies, our negative space comes before the movie starts, and after the movie ends. We contemplate what we are about to see in the negative space that comes before, and we contemplate what we just saw in the negative space that comes after the movie. And the positive space is the content, where, in American movies, each scene is jam packed with content and action.

But in the Japanese films I've been watching, the storytellers will usually include a little bit of negative space within the movie, where suddenly the storyline drops away, the musical track comes into our ears and we take a couple minutes to look at a piece of landscape. It's almost as if the storytelller says, "Well, this is what has happened, but let's stop and think about that shall we?"

A movie which seems to have more negative space in the storyline than any other movie I've seen is Totoro.

When I first watched Totoro, I was just amazed, because although the plotline comes to a definite conclusion at the end, it felt like nothing really happened. This is because, as a consumer of western media, I'm conditioned to expect things to happen immediately in the beginning. I'm not used to having negative space in my stories. With Totoro, it's as if Miyazaki was saying, "Let's not worry about anything in the story, let's just enjoy whatever happens."

It is just a very interesting concept to me when nothing happens. I recently watched a Japanese tv series, and although the ending was satisfying, the characters did not change at all. I remember in school, teachers discouraged us from using static characters. But it appears that certain rules which we thought were absolute can be successfully broken.

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Absolutely! Japanese comics and novels have the same tendency and I love it. When I write I find myself relying more and more on the Western model (three acts, building steadily to a climax and then easing off, every event key to character or plot development) if only because it's a method I understand well enough to have an inkling of whether I'm doing it right or not. But I also really enjoy reading (or watching) stories that break that mold and are more about being somewhere than getting somewhere.

I'm sure that there are as many standard conventions for Asian storytelling as there are for us. I just don't know them well enough to be able to recognize them with any reliability.

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Jonathon Dalton

I've noticed a similar thing in Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick films. The pacing occasionally just pauses or drifts - think of the floating-through-space moments in 2001: A Space Odyssey or the beautifully composed slower environmental shots in Blade Runner. I don't know if this is quite the same thing you're referring to in Ghibli films, but I find it interesting as a narrative device. It's as if the writers/directors are allowing these quiet moments to be filled with the viewer's thoughts rather than hitting them with a constant stream of action and information. It somehow makes the film more of a personal experience.

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http://www.imbroulier.ca

Kubrick and Kurosawa were really good at this. They rarely adhered to the three act structure and injected a lot of dynamic pauses that you don't see very often. It's very difficult to do with without killing the pacing, so it often only shows up among the greatest directors and writers. It does seem to appear more often in Eastern cinema.

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Yeah, definitely! Those are good observations.

It makes it erally hard to get anyone I know to watch and enjoy Kurosawa films with me though. Most people get bored ad lose interest because of the slow/spacious pacing.

I just recently watched The Bothersome Man, and this topic reminded me of it. It had a lot of interesting storytelling techniques, and it's presentation overall was rather good, and very different from what I'm used to.