Cut and Uncut: Ruizian Way of Editing

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“Six Functions”

5 “Six Functions”

6 Barbash, Ilisa, and Lucien Taylor. Cross-cultural filmmaking: a handbook for making documentary and ethnographic films and videos. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2004.

I would not be able to going detail of each one of theses functions, but two of them seem to me to be the primary functions: centrifugal and centripetal due to the fact that all shots have to be one of them. Nevertheless, based on my studying on Ruiz’s film, I can completely see it’s possible that a single shot can be both centrifugal and centripetal. So my objective here is to provide a description of both functions while supporting my claim with evidence from films. In Ruiz’s approach, the difference between these two functions, as he describes, is that centrifugal shot has the tendencies to seek to exhaust itself, to assert and spread to the latter shots, while centripetal shot seeks to compress the energy to its central core, thus forming a independent and autonomous dimension. As Ruiz describe in one of his interview, long takes in contemporary film often signals the use of centripetal shot, as the result of “narrative rules that created by the maximum activation of the centrifugal function – predominate, are not very different to those of a nineteenth century novel or play. This is the so-called ‘three act structure’ . “. 7From my perspective, Ruiz’s analogy with literature can be further expand to all films, which I would sort films into three categories – Poetry, Drama, and Novel. Incidentally, I think Ruiz’s films are most close to poetry than anything else. His long take is cinematic equivalent of long sentences and just look at how he places every objects in the frame feels like piling metaphors upon metaphors with more and more adjectival clauses. I would describe his film as narrative poetry, which coincidentally, concludes a similar interpretation, “Indeed, one of the major results of the choice of a narrative mode of expression is to stress the particularity of certain events, experiences, and emotions, and to preserve them in a particular context rather than free them

7 Goddard, Michael. The cinema of Raúl Ruiz: impossible cartographies. London: Wallflower Press, 2013.

from it”.8 By observing how narrative poetry functions, it further confirms my understanding of centrifugal and centripetal duo. In my briefly shown sequence of shots from Ruiz’s Time Regained, they are placed in a linear order. However, we see young Marcel smiles as he facing towards the right side of the camera, following by older Marcel walks towards the group who are taking photos. And right before he takes the photo, Marcel waves his hands as if he is a bird. Suddenly, the next shot we see young Marcel closed his eyes, raising his hands to his shoulder while waving in circle. These shots are organized in such a manner so that instead of simply supporting the narrative presented to in the surface, they put us into a reminiscing mode that attract us to certain aspects of the viewing experience. Indeed, Ruiz’s film is poetic narrative film.

8 Levy, Dore J. Chinese narrative poetry: the late Han through T’ang dynasties. Durham: Duke Univ. Pr., 1988.

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