The image of the "unreliable narrator" has emerged in large numbers in the literature of the 18th century, but the concept was formally proposed in Booth's 1961 book "The Rhetoric of Fiction", Booth believes: "When the narrator I call a narrator a reliable narrator when his narration or actions are consistent with the norm of the work (that is, the norm of the implied author), and vice versa.”
"Unreliable narrator" mainly refers to narrators with special identities such as lunatics, children, and mentally ill. Compared with literary narration, the comprehensiveness of film narrative methods determines that the image of unreliable narrators in films is more important. "Suspense" is the core of suspense movies, and what the unreliable narrator conveys is a kind of deformed information that guides the audience's constant reasoning. It can be seen that the unreliable narrator in suspense movies plays an important role in the development of the plot. effect.
As a film that explores social ethics, confrontation between men and women, and weird fables at the same time, "Secret Girl" does not appear to be profound in the feature of "suspense". It is the narrative line of the story, and the second is the logic line, that is, the truth of the story.
According to the above definition and explanation of "unreliable narrator", we know that the narration (words and deeds) of unreliable narrator is inconsistent with the logic line of the story, and suspense movies prefer to use this type of marginal characters to mislead information. In the film, the maid also took the opportunity to seduce Dong-sik after seeing Kyung-hee expressing love to Dong-sik, and had a relationship with him. Dong-sik's wife pushed the maid down the stairs after knowing the truth, causing her to miscarry. Since then, the maid's temperament has changed greatly... Unreliable narrators are created, and constant inversions and suspicions in an artificial "ethical hell" unfold.
In addition to the unreliable narration of the abnormal characters, the "lies" of the characters are also an excellent means to deceive the audience. There is an impressive clip in the film: when the maid called Dongzhi to her room again, the hostess of the house could not bear the situation. After some psychological struggle, she took out the rat poison from the cabinet and put it in the In the maid's bowl of rice, she didn't know that the maid had already replaced the rat poison with sugar, and the real rat poison was hidden. At the end of this part, the maid tasted that sugar was added to her meal, and angrily revealed the truth. The maid has a secret purpose to hide the truth of the incident, deceiving the other characters in the film and misleading the audience at the same time.
Taking advantage of the language behavior disorder caused by the cognitive bias of the maid of the unreliable narrator, she chooses her perspective to promote the development of the story, and constantly inserts the relatively objective perspectives of the two children in the middle, creating a relationship in which the story line and the logic line are constantly intertwined and dislocated. Make the audience constantly drift between different roles. The audience is guided and misled by the abnormal protagonist in the film, so they constantly generate spontaneous reasoning about the ending.
The behavior and language of the unreliable narrator not only misleads the audience, but also plays a strong predictive role in the message conveyed by the film, making the audience unconsciously beware of what the characters do. For example, the maid brought him a glass of water under the scolding of the little boy. Since a lot of shots of rat poison had been given before, the audience had a strong hunch about "drugs in the water", but the maid picked up the cup and drank it herself After a sip, the audience's dangling hearts were relieved a little. When the little boy drank the water from the cup with suspicion, the maid took the water cup and spit out the water in his mouth.
Although the director has turned a small corner here, the final result is still in line with the audience's conjecture, so when the audience knows the purpose of the character, the psychological focus on events can still be used as the main suspense.
To sum up, whether it is the unreliable narrator itself, or the lies used to deceive other characters and the audience, suspense can be built by misleading and foreshadowing. The interaction between the unreliable narrator itself and the audience's reaction determines that the possibility of this concept in suspense films is endless. The interpretation of the unreliable narrator in other angles and the development in other dimensions are still very interesting. Great practice space.
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