Last week focused on understanding the story curve and narrative structure, so this week it’s time to take a closer look at how the story, and the characters, move forward in a film. I will discuss three main points below by analysing three films.

• How the character develops throughout the story.

• An analysis of how the main characters evolve.

•An analysis of how the characters drive the story.

No.1 Reservoir Dogs

This is a debut film by Quentin, recognised by Chinese audiences, and is called ‘Reservoir Dogs’. At the bottom of its poster is the phrase: Every dog has his day. I interpret this phrase as “destiny” also, it reminds me of what we know as ‘Rashomon’.

At the beginning of the film, Quentin brings all of the film’s protagonists on stage for a scene about “running away from the bill”, in which we see a glimpse into the lives of the six robbers and get a first glimpse of each character’s personality and way of speaking and behaving, and by mastering these details, we are able to analyse these characters in greater depth.

In this long situational conversation, Mr. Pink should arguably be the first person whose character can be confirmed: cunning, deceitful and self-serving. And in the subsequent episodes it just goes to show that I was right in my analysis.

After the story of “who wants to run away from the bill”, a road show ensues.

The most impressive thing about this road scene is not the blood-covered Mr. Orange, but the fast panning that characterises the hand-cranked camera. What is most impressive is not the blood-covered Mr. Orange, but rather the quick panning of the hand-cranked camera – using the instability of the camera to create an equally unstable atmosphere, which has the great advantage of being emotionally charged.

Similar to this kind of emotionally charged shot are the quick push and pull used in the homage to Shaw’s kung fu films in ‘Kill Bill 2‘ and the parallel montage of hallucinatory images intersecting with real images that occurs in the film ‘Natural Born Killers’.

In the subsequent episodes, the story is also not told flatly as it is told, but rather the whole story is stitched together through the characters’ perspectives and backgrounds. A total of three more complete sub-chapters appear in the story: Mr. White, Mr. Blond and Mr. Orange, and the story is fleshed out by bringing the historical background of these three people to the audience.

This is very much like the narrative structure of ‘Rashomon’ that I mentioned at the beginning of the article, where ‘Rashomon’ is organised and stitched together into a complete story through the multiple perspectives of the woodcutter, the husband, the wife and the robber. In the same way, Falling Dogs builds its story in the same way, with the slight difference that the multi-perspective narrative in Reservoir Dogs’ is based on the language of the camera, which is objective and easy to comprehensible. The multiple perspectives in ‘Rashomon’, on the other hand, are based on the subjective narratives of the characters and are relatively subjective and complex.

This structure makes the film complex and interesting, not only in terms of banter and violence, but also in terms of the complex structure that accompanies it, which naturally makes the film more tense.

In this film, Mr. Orange is arguably the most inconspicuous person in the film, and he is not given much to do. Before the six men clash, Mr. Orange is already seriously wounded and dying, so the others do not suspect him as an undercover cop in a failed jewellery heist.

As the film continues to move forward, the story develops to the point where Mr. Orange shoots and kills Mr. Blonde to save a kidnapped police officer, and we are able to learn that Mr. Orange is the undercover agent who was never found in any way.

And it is only afterwards, when the film introduces us to the story of Mr. Orange, that we really begin to understand the true identity and purpose of Mr. Orange. The background and identity of each person’s historical experience affects personal behaviour and thought, while current behaviour and thought is a subjective resolution to the dramatic conflict created in the past.

In the film, Mr. White and Mr. Blond’s story is the one we know, and here the film offers us the equivalent of a God’s-eye view where we know the historical background of the three men in a way that the other characters in the play don’t, and the film shows us just the story of what happens in the context of such conflict.

In the first half of the film, we can basically rule out three people first: one is Joe, one is Eddie, and one is Kim, and these three, as the leading jewellery robbers, would not have called the police.

So, who else is there? Mr. Pink and Mr. Orange, and Mr. White. Mr. Brown and Mr. Blue are dead and will not join the discussion.

Given Mr White’s deep friendship with Joe, Mr White is very little suspect, and likewise, Mr Pink is selfish and wouldn’t make such a stupid move as calling the police, even if he wanted to keep the money to himself.

So, if there is an undercover agent, Mr. Pink is the most suspicious. The film also gives this answer at the end, except that all the Dogs have fallen into the water.

Who is the protagonist?

Flashbacks present characters, but hardly inspire them. Indeed too many flashbacks cause a ‘problem’ with the film, the characters are so compressed that they lack a transformative arc and none of them change qualitatively as a result of the incident. The story keeps moving forward, but the characters seem to be standing still. Just when someone is having intense self-doubt about what they are doing, the story ends there. Fortunately, Quentin does a pretty good job of portraying a cast of characters, and he doesn’t need to convey his themes through a complete and total character transformation. The opening table scene might scare a lot of people, with eight people coming on at once, and probably not being able to count them. But in reality there are only six of the main characters, three of whom are major and three of whom are minor.

Quentin as Mr. Brown and the older Mr. Blue are pure walk-on, leaving just four people involved in the action. Mr. White and Mr. Orange become the hardened brothers. It seems that Mr. Orange looks like a rash man who has lost his mind from being shot and is afraid that he will die as a result. Mr. White is inspired by a strong sense of righteousness and he believes that he is responsible for Mr. Orange’s injury, so he vows to keep him alive. Mr. Pink is very scene-stealing, as he is a maverick in the restaurant scene by refusing to pay the tip, and his presence after the accident drives the plot. He’s a bit selfish, but there’s no denying that he’s incredibly perceptive, able to count the number of cops in the nick of time and reasonably analyse that there’s a mole.

Then there are the three secondary characters. Joe “Baldy” Cabot is the man behind the scenes, who initiated the whole heist. His son Eddie “The Good Guy” coordinates the operation and looks like a bad-ass black kid, but he’s actually not a bad guy at all. Mr. King is an old acquaintance of Joe and his son, having stood in for Joe in prison and acting in a very tough way. He is supposed to have killed more people than any other character in the story, he just doesn’t kill anyone in front of the camera.

Different from a crime film with a clear protagonist like ‘Kill Bill‘, ‘Reservoir Dogs’ makes it difficult to define who the real protagonist is. Even if you exclude the three secondary characters, White, Orange and Pink all have a reason to be the protagonist. One of the main reasons for this is that the film has several different points of view. The different flashbacks are told from the perspective of different characters, which reduces the audience’s sense of identification with the characters and has the advantage of focusing more on the story. As the points of view are somewhat ‘objective’, it is difficult for the audience to identify with one person in a uniform way. Some find Mr. White righteous and admire him; some find Mr. Orange sad and pitiful and sympathise with him; some find Mr. Pink reasonable and support him. Quentin does not favour one person over another, and every audience can have their own Hamlet. If we had to choose one person, it would have to be Mr. White. Firstly, in the cast and crew list, Mr. White is the first to be introduced and the ending focuses on him; secondly, in the opening restaurant scene, Mr. White summarises the fragmented dialogue on both sides and he is sitting in the middle, perhaps signifying that he is the central character; thirdly, his transformative arc (self-doubt) is a strong hint of the theme.

Development of the story

The main story of the film is that of Freddy – aka Mr. Orange – who goes undercover. The story develops linearly in five stages.

I. Freddy goes undercover.
II. Freddy is involved in a diamond robbery and is accidentally shot and kills innocent people by reflex.
III. Mr. White – also known as Larry – and Mr. Pink and others work out who the police undercover agent is.
IV. Freddy shoots Mr. Blonde – aka Vic Vega, the brother of Vincent Vega, played by John Travolta in Lowlife – to stop him from killing police officer Marvin. The final melee is triggered by the killing of policeman Marvin.
V. Melee.

The important points in these five paragraphs that affect the order of the narrative are
The shock of Freddy shooting people in the second paragraph.
The suspense of “who is the undercover” in the third paragraph.
The reversal of Freddy’s shooting of Mr. Blond in the fourth paragraph.

Obviously, the suspense in the third paragraph and the reversal in the fourth paragraph would both be ineffective if the story were arranged in a normal timeline. Quentin has arranged them as ‘three, four, one, two, five’ to maximise the dramatic effect of each section.

But aren’t there many other ways of arranging these five sections?

Yes, theoretically there are many ways of arranging them, but after studying them you will find that Quentin’s arrangement is the most scientific. Firstly, there is the suspense. The robbers escape the crime scene to an abandoned warehouse and start discussing who is undercover with the police. I was thinking this was going to be a Twelve Angry Men style film. The suspense is so brilliantly set up that the mini-climax that a good script is scientifically supposed to present around the 30th minute is not needed. The first hour is held together almost entirely by this suspense – and of course the ‘what filthy, disgusting cunt has shit all over the toilet’, and the great performances of the actors.

Of the five stories, it is the second and third paragraphs that retain this suspense. To create suspense, only the third paragraph can be used in the opening. Because the second paragraph requires the audience to know that Freddy is undercover, otherwise they would not be able to experience the shock, pain, anguish and helplessness of being shot by the people and then killed. If Freddy’s identity had been revealed after the second paragraph, the audience would not have felt the emotions as strongly – for the same reason that many of them did not even realise what a hero policeman Marvin was. Marvin knows from the beginning that the undercover officer is lying next to him, but he never reveals the truth even after being tortured. But when they see him being tortured, when they see him being terrified, they don’t know that he knows the truth, so they don’t realise his spirit of sacrifice for his life. Unfortunately, the reversal effect posed by the need for Freddy to come forward later prevents the fact that ‘Marvin knows’ from being revealed in advance. Having decided to use the third paragraph in the opening, the fourth paragraph must be used, because it is the most dramatic in revealing Freddy’s identity as a policeman. That leaves paragraphs one, two and five. Can the fifth paragraph, which is the ending, really only be placed at the end? There is no such hard and fast rule anywhere. Look at the ending of Fragments of Memory, which is not a linear ending, and isn’t it great too? So why did Quentin have to put the fifth paragraph at the end? Firstly, because the end of the fourth paragraph leaves a cliffhanger. The audience now knows that as soon as Joe Cabot enters the warehouse, the police will immediately strike. If the fifth paragraph had appeared immediately, the suspense would have lost time to build up. On the other hand, the fifth paragraph needs the build-up from the first and second paragraphs to familiarise the audience with the emotional connection between Mr. White and Freddy. So, how could the first and second paragraphs be arranged between the fourth and fifth paragraphs? Is it better to have ‘one, two’ or ‘two, one’? Obviously, ‘one, two’ would allow the first paragraph to warm up the second, while ‘two, one’ would not have a similar effect. So, the most scientific choice is already before us. Three, four, one, two, five.