This week’s reading discussed narrative and how important it is in telling a story. Narratives have three main components: causality, time, and space. I never paid too much attention to any of these aspects while watching movies, but they are anll extremely crucial in building a narrative.

First, narratives need something to cause an event to happen and to react to the effects of the event, which in most cases are the characters. In other cases, causality can be from other things. The example given in the book was disaster movies that show the end of the world through earthquakes, or the shark that ate everyone in Jaws. The intriguing aspect comes in for me in a filmmaker’s ability to withhold cause or effect. As a huge Jordan Peele fan, my examples will source from his movies. An example of a movie that lacks a cause is Nope. The audience understands that there are aliens terrorizing the city and killing those who dare to look, but there is no portion of the movie dedicated to explaining why the aliens are doing so, where they came from, or any other questions. Peele left the movie completely up to the audience’s interpretation. In Peele’s movie, Us, the cause is delayed because Red explained what really happened in the end, but the movie ended there. The audience never found out what happened once they realized that Adelaide is the real clone. This movie shows an example of withholding the effects of an event. Choosing to withhold causes and effects allows the filmmaker to create suspense and curiosity.

Utilizing time in building a narrative gives the filmmaker to choose the order in which the story is presented and the duration of the story. For example, Jordan Peele’s production of Candyman is displayed over a timeline of over several decades to describe the legend of the Candyman and to show the creation of the present day Candyman. Therefore, the duration of the film is over several decades. In Candyman, Peele also utilizes flashbacks to show what happened in the past to show how it relates to what is going on today and to explain why the events are happening, so the story is not told in a more traditional chronological order.

Finally, the last component of a narrative: space. The reading explained that space and setting is important to the narrative because it can serve as a way for the plot to develop. There are several patterns to which space can follow, but I think it is interesting that one of them is linked with time. For example, flashbacks can explain the importance of the present setting the characters are in. This can be seen in Us, where Adelaide’s constant flashbacks of her night at the pier explain the ending, where she fights her clone on the same pier they met.

Understanding narratives and how they are used is needed to have a basic understanding of a film’s plot, and I enjoyed reading about the details of it and applying my own interests in movies to connect the dots between different narratives.