(Part 1 looked at screenplay from the perspective of ‘time’. Part 2 talked about how Aristotle sees the arrangement of actions. Part 3 is about the Aristotelian version of plot.)
A painting of Aristotle
In Part 2 we saw Aristotle define a ‘Tragedy’ as an ‘imitation’ of an ‘action’ that is ‘serious’ and also having a ‘magnitude’, ‘complete in itself’; in ‘language’ with ‘pleasurable accessories’, with each of them brought in separately in the different parts of the work; in a ‘dramatic’ and not a ‘narrative form’; with incidents arousing ‘pity’ and ‘fear’, with the purpose to accomplish a ‘catharsis’ of such emotions for the audience. He also identifies six parts to a Tragedy – a ‘Fable’ or ‘Plot’, ‘Characters’, ‘Thought’, ‘Spectacle’, ‘Diction’ and ‘Melody’. Let us dwell a bit into each of these and figure out what has been said about it, for doing so brings about a great clarity of understanding to the kind of work we do in present day cinema writing.
Aspects of PLOT:
Aristotle places high on pedestal the first element in a ‘Tragedy’, the ‘Plot’, as it shapes up and gives contours to the ‘Tragedy’. Much of this part and the next would be devoted to this part of ‘Tragedy’. ‘Tragedy’, he says, is essentially an ‘imitation’ not of ‘persons’ but of ‘action’ and ‘life’; therefore of emotions pertaining to ‘happiness’ and ‘misery’. Human ‘happiness’ or ‘misery’ takes the form of ‘action’ in life as well as in a ‘plot’ of an ‘imitation’; the end for which we live is a certain kind of ‘activity’, not a ‘quality’. ‘Quality’ can be defined as that distinctive attribute assigned to something or someone. We may smile or jump around when we are happy or cry in sadness. We may break things around us when in anger or bite our nail in anxiety. These actions by themselves do not betray a ‘quality’ because as per Aristotle it is ‘character’ that gives us ‘quality’. But our ‘actions’ — what we do — suggest that we are happy or otherwise, despite imbibing certain inherent ‘qualities’ of being either a pessimist or an optimist.
So, in a play as well as in a movie, personages do not ‘act’ in order to portray the ‘Characters’; on the other hand the ‘Characters’ exist for the sake of the ‘action’. The ‘action’, i.e. its ‘Fable’ or ‘Plot’, is the end and purpose of the ‘Tragedy’. The protagonist has to go through a set of circumstances and ‘actions’ before he / she reaches a culmination of the events that have to be logically undergone. In the 1928 film ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ made by Carl Dreyer it is the uncompromising resolve and fortitude in the ‘character’ of Joan of Arc that leads to all the ‘actions’ that she has to undergo in the ‘plot’ of the film that includes her interrogation, torture and finally her execution. One may string together a series of characteristic speeches with great finish with regards to ‘Diction’ and ‘Thought’ warns Aristotle, and yet fail to produce the true tragic effect as he defines it; but on the other hand one would have better success with a ‘Tragedy’ which, however inferior in these respects, has a ‘Plot’ or a combination of incidents, in it.
Whole and Complete Plot:
The Passion of Joan of Arc
A tragedy is an ‘imitation’ of an ‘action’ which is ‘complete’ in itself – as a ‘whole’ of some ‘magnitude’ (the extent of something), for a ‘whole’ may be of no ‘magnitude’ to speak of, says Aristotle. We have talked about ‘imitation’ in the previous parts and looked at its evolution. We have also looked at what is with ‘actions’ and how it is related to ‘time’. Aristotle now brings in two new concepts that the ‘actions’ should be ‘Whole’ and in ‘Magnitude’. We shall first look into what constitutes as a ‘whole’ as per Aristotle. If the ‘imitation’ of the ‘action’ should be ‘whole’ that is ‘complete’ in itself, how do we define the ‘whole’?
A ‘whole’ is that which has a ‘beginning’, a ‘middle’ and an ‘end’, Aristotle makes it simple for us. And what exactly are these three parts that constitute the ‘whole’? A ‘beginning’ is that which is not necessarily after anything else; and which has naturally something else after it. And ‘end’ is something that is naturally after something, either as its ‘necessity’ or its ‘consequent’ (as its result); and with nothing else after it. A ‘middle’ by nature is after something and that which has something after it. On an apparent level it would seem as if Aristotle is batting for a three act structure here, the one as we know of today thanks to Syd Fields and his 1979 book ‘Screenplay – The foundations of Screen writing’ or going further back through the codifications of Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus (4 CE) who set rules that a play should have a ‘protasis’ (introduction), ‘epitasis’ (main action) and a ‘catastrophe’ (conclusion).
But I am not sure of if Aristotle is referring to such a three act structure here. He simply might be observing what should be considered as a ‘whole’ and what should not. When there is nothing before and nothing after, a thing becomes a stand alone, independent and complete in itself, as you don’t have to refer to anything else for its understanding. So, being ‘whole’ and being ‘complete’ go hand in glove. To experience the catharsis in Carl Dreyer’s ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ it is not necessary to know in great detail all the heroic deeds of Joan of Arc prior to her being jailed. So, the film covers only a part of ‘actions’ that Joan of Arc has undergone – just the part of it after her capture and till her death – and yet stands ‘whole’ and ‘complete’ in itself. Showing the events of her past heroic deeds does not necessarily make ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ a ‘more’ complete film or increase its level of ‘wholeness’.
The ‘whole’ that Aristotle is defining is not to be meant as ‘all’. It is just that there is a beginning point, a middle point and an end point to the ‘actions’ involved. Consider a shot in the Indian documentary film made in 1970 called ‘Dabbawala’ made by Clement Baptista. It is a top angle long shot of a cart that is being pushed by three toiling dabbawalas – the persons delivering homemade food to office goers – on a busy city street. A random person riding a cycle appears from behind, swiftly overtakes these men who are painstakingly pushing the cart and exits frame. That is the beginning, middle and end of the ‘action’ for this shot, at least for Clement Baptista. For someone else, there would be a different beginning and a different end.
Jean Luc Godard once famously said that a ‘story’ should have a bringing, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order. Well, whatever order the ‘plot’ would have there would always be a beginning, a middle and an end. You could start off in what looks like an end in the present scheme of things, but that precisely would be your beginning. Clement Baptista could have well started his shot at the point where the ‘action’ starts from the person on the cycle overtaking the men on cart and could have ended it on his exit from the frame, but probably that would not have been a ‘complete’ or ‘whole’ shot for him. The laborious task of pushing the cart in busy street in order to deliver them to the office goers would get highlighted by contrast if a random person on a cycle could easily over take them. A shot prior to the cycle shot the dabbawalas were similarly overtaken by a speeding car missing them by an inch or two, in a shot that had a similar beginning, middle and end. A well constructed plot, Aristotle argues, therefore cannot begin or end at any point; it should be in the form that he has described – that there should seemingly be nothing before the beginning, nothing after the end and something between the end and the beginning.
Dabbawala
We also now know that every beginning and every end is absolutely relative in nature. But given the framework that a movie has, as exemplified by the events unfolding on the screen, sometimes it could seem that the beginning, middle and an end of its ‘plot’ do not actually constitute a ‘whole’. A short movie that I recently saw had a harried young man walking briskly, in an unduly lengthy shot, in the lanes of his colony before he enters his own house. By his ‘actions’ it looked as if he had committed a grave crime or had caused a serious offence just before he enters in agitation into the lane for the long walk into his home. Once inside his house, he has a tiff with his mother over trivial issues, he takes a bath, and is troubled by a mosquito that he can’t kill despite his intentions, efforts and ‘actions’ that he undertakes all through the short span of the movie. His mother in the end kills it effortlessly with a snap of her hands. It probably would not have made any difference to the movie, if it had say begun while the young man was inside the house. Either there was a beginning to the movie before the harried long walk on the lane, that was not shown in the ‘plot’ or the beginning that was shown to us ought not to be the beginning of the ‘plot’ at all. Thus the ‘plot’ in this short movie is not ‘complete’ in itself or does not have a sense of being a ‘whole’.
Magnitude of a PLOT:
Heimat
The second aspect Aristotle dwells in this regard is that the ‘imitations’ of ‘actions’ in a ‘Plot’ that is ‘whole’ and ‘complete’ should have a ‘magnitude’ to it. ‘Magnitude’ can be termed as a size or the extent of a thing. To be beautiful, a living creature, and every ‘whole made up of parts’, must not only present a certain ‘order in its arrangement’ of the parts, but also should have a certain definite ‘magnitude’. Beauty, he says, is as much a matter of ‘size’ as the ‘order’. Therefore it is impossible to be embodied in a very minute creature, since our perception of it becomes indistinct or in a creature of a vast size— say, 1,000 miles long. The object cannot be seen all at once and therefore the ‘unity’ and ‘wholeness’ of it is lost to the beholder.
So a beautiful ‘whole made up of parts’, or a beautiful living creature, must be of some size that one can comprehend. Similarly ‘Plot’ must be of some length and magnitude that can be grasped and registered by the memory of its audience. Aristotle suggests that ‘Tragedies’ that were performed during its times were timed by water clocks. And the limit to the ‘plot time’ would be set by the actual nature of things – the longer the ‘plot’, consistently with its being comprehensible as a ‘whole’, the finer it is by reason of its ‘magnitude’ (the extent of something). If one cannot comprehend the ‘whole’ of the ‘imitation’ then it could simply mean that the ‘imitation’ has no effective ‘magnitude’ or proportion.
German writer, director Edgar Reitz wanted to make a feature film based on the documentary that he had made on his home town, which at best would have been about 100 minutes in length. But as he began writing the screenplay, the scale grew and the ‘plot’ encompassed the ‘actions’ of three generations of a family staying in a remote German village engulfing a time span from 1890 to 1982. It finally took a length of about 15 and a half hours of ‘screen time’ to be called as ‘whole’ and ‘complete’. The ‘magnitude’ was needed not only because the film was dealing with three generations of a family, but was also talking about the history of Germany itself. The film is called ‘Heimat’ and was released in 1984.
On the other hand, Indian film maker Pramod Pati made a one and a half minute film in 1966 called ‘Perspectives’. The ‘action’ within the film is thus – The camera shows the sky where we see an airplane roaring above. As the plane exists the frame the camera tilts down, we hear two voices learning and repeating some basic Hindi language alphabets – voices of an elderly lady and a young child. The camera stops at a slate where we see a girl’s hands guiding an old wrinkled hand to write the alphabets. We initially think that this is a film on child education, but it actually is on adult education. The ‘plot’ of the film had a beginning, a middle and an end that was ‘complete’ and the ‘magnitude’ enough of us to comprehend what was being communicated. Avant-garde film maker Andy Warhol’s made films like Sleep (1964), where he showed a man sleeping for about five hours. His another film ‘Empire’ lasted eight hours. He had shot the Empire state building for about six hours and slowed it to have a running length to eight hours.’Magnitude’ too can be relative.
But for ‘Tragedies’ Aristotle suggests a rough general formula to determine the ‘magnitude’ of the ‘plot’ – The right ‘magnitude’ or ‘length’ would be ‘a length that allows a hero to pass by a series of ‘probable’ (likely to happen) or ‘necessary’ (essential) stages from ‘misfortune’ to ‘happiness’ or visa verse.’ So, once the ‘misfortunes’ are established of an ‘agent’ there exists certain set of mandatory ‘actions’ which could ‘most likely’ or ‘inevitably’ make the personage bask in ‘happiness’, if at all he has to move to that stage from ‘misfortune’ – or visa verse. Once this ’cause and effect’ chain is established and the result achieved – the ‘plot’ could not only be considered ‘complete’ and ‘whole’ but also of a correct proportion or ‘magnitude’. We do need to dwell a bit on the ’cause and effect’ chain, but that will be at a later stage.
Unity of PLOT:
Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol
15th and 16th century European poets evolved a theory of unities in drama, claiming certain interpretations from Aristotle’s work. Drama they said should have three forms of unities – unities of action, unity of place and unity of time. In his work ‘Poetics’ Aristotle talks only about one particular factor that unites a work of the ‘imitation’ and that is ‘Unity of Action’. He in fact goes ahead and clearly explains as to what does not unify the work of ‘imitation’ – Unity of plot does not mean that it is a ‘plot’ of just one person – an ‘infinity’ of things might befall the person, some of which is impossible to reduce to a ‘whole’. They might be many ‘actions’ of the person that might not be made to form one ‘action’.
‘Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol’, a spy thriller made in 2011 by director Brad Bird, starts off in Budapest in Hungary where a certain Russian nuclear launch codes gets stolen. When protagonist Ethan Hunt comes to Kremlin in Russia to figure out the theft, a mayhem is created by a distractive bomb blast and a safely guarded Russian launch control device gets stolen. Hunt and his team follow their leads and land up in Dubai where the person who stole the nuclear device at Kremlin would buy the nuclear codes from the person who stole them at Budapest. Hunt and his team fail to crack the case in Dubai but follow another lead to head to Mumbai in India to stop the man who stole the nuclear device and who now has its access codes, in his efforts to gain control over a second hand Russian satellite through which he could launch the nuclear device and start a war. The villains are killed and the world is saved.
There is no continuity of space and time here, as the movie travels from Budapest to Russia to Dubai and then to India, in different sets of times. But what brings unity and holds the movie together is unity of ‘action’ or the ‘unity of plot’. The central ‘action’ of the movie is that a stolen nuclear device has to be restored back and the world be saved. The ‘actions’ that Ethan Hunt and his associates undergo in the ‘plot’ of the movie are all consistent with this central ‘action’, giving the movie a certain unity. Although ‘Mission Impossible -Ghost Protocol’ is not exactly a ‘tragedy’ of the Aristotelian kind, it is a perfect example of what is called the ‘unity of plot’ in a work of ‘imitation’.
Aristotle defines this unity thus, the ‘imitation’ is always of one thing – an ‘action’ – which is a ‘complete whole’, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or the withdrawal of any one of them will disjoint or dislocate the whole. That which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no part of the whole. In ‘Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ if the theft at Budapest or the one at Kremlin had not happen or if Hunt and his team’s plan had succeed in Dubai, the movie would not have been shaped in the way it is now. So, the inter connection of the parts is an absolute essential for this ‘unity of action’.
Coming back to ‘Sholay’, in the ‘plot’ we see no background of the two petty criminals that the retired police officer has hired to save his village from the evil dacoits. It is obvious that the two of them must have had their own separate individual lives and therefore a separate set of ‘actions’ assigned to them before they forged together an alliance in crime. But all those ‘actions’ are not a part of the ‘plot’ of ‘Sholay’, for if they were, the ‘plot’ would not have the unity of a single action of a retired police officer being successful in hiring the two crooks to save his village from the evil dacoits. There would be more actions in the ‘plot’ or all of them, but the ‘unity of action’ would still be missing.
Aristotle further adds that plays which fail to exhibit the sequence of ’cause and effect’ are condemned not only because they lack the unity of ‘plot’ which befits a ‘Tragedy’ but also because they miss that supreme effect of ‘fear’ or ‘pity’ that are produced by incidents which, though unexpected, are seen to be no mere accident but the inevitable result of what has gone before. In other words, ’cause and effect’ in the set of events in the ‘plot’ is what causes it’s unity; that an event has to ‘probably’ or ‘necessarily’ occur in the prior for the next to occur.
The nature of ‘action’ (Plot) – Probable and Inevitable
Mohenjo Daro
The key to understand the ’cause and effect’ in a ‘plot’ lies in Aristotle statement that a poet’s function is not to describe things that have happened, but that which is ‘possible’ by being ‘probable’ (likely to happen) or what is ‘necessary’ (essential). What has happened is in the realm of the past and therefore it belongs to the historian. The distinction between historian and poet is not that one is writing prose and the other verse. It is this – the historian describes the thing that ‘has’ been, and the poet the thing that ‘might’ be. Therefore poetry is something more philosophic (probably meant as in its fundamental or general nature) and of graver nature than history, since its statements are of ‘universal nature’, whereas those of history are ‘singulars’ (specific facts).
By a ‘universal statement’ Aristotle means what such or such a kind of personage will ‘probably’ or ‘necessarily’ say or do. This is true even if the personages are real people who have lived their lives or as he puts it, have ‘real names’. By a ‘singular statement’ Aristotle means specific facts in history. Poets who write comedies – Aristotle seems to suggest – should do so with fictitious personages and strongly have ‘plots’ that are made up of ‘probable incidents’ (the quality of seeming reasonable or probable is called plausibility). In the ‘Tragic’ plays of its times, Aristotle acknowledges that ‘real names’ were given to personages. In other words, the ‘agents’ of the ‘plot’ were or historical real personages. The advantages with real personages is that ‘what is possible’ is already known and therefore carries a strong conviction. For example we know that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was killed by Nathuram Godse, it is etched in history. If a thing has not happened, we do not believe in its possibility, unless the possibility is created in the ‘plot’. But what has happened in real has happened, then it is obviously possible that it will also happen in the ‘plot’ of the ‘imitation’. If it was impossible to happen, it would not have happened in real at all.
Aristotle concedes that even in ‘Tragedies’ that are based on real personages there could be plays that have one or two names that are real names (historical personages) in them, the rest could be inventions. In the film ‘Gandhi’, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi the ‘agent’ with a real name in this work of ‘imitation’ goes into an indefinite fast so that people stop fighting amongst each other on communal lines. A personage belonging to one community played by actor Om Puri, to everyone’s anxiety, threateningly breaks the security cordon and comes near Gandhi but only to plead to him to end his fast. Was he based on a real character or was the character ‘imagined’ into the plot in its varied degrees? Aristotle also concedes that there would be plays that would have no known names or real characters at all. One would all the more need ‘probable incidents’ in the ‘plot’, here.
In 2016 there came a Hindi movie called ‘Mohenjo Daro’, the ‘plot’ of which ended when an ancient city dating 4000 years back gets drowned due to a dam burst and it’s people migrate elsewhere. Now history tells us that the area that is called ‘Mohenjo Daro’ (or the place of the dead) by the locals when it was first discovered and excavated at about 1922 was once a thriving city thousands of years ago which probably got abandoned and buried over the centuries. Scientific methodology of the archaeological activities in the area infers so, but the causes for such abandonment is still unclear. But is it ‘probable’ or ‘possible’ that one single burst of an over ambitious dam could have been the cause for the historical abandonment of the township as it is probably inferred in the ‘plot’ of ‘Mohenjo Daro’? Was that the real ‘probable incident’ that ‘necessarily’ led to the abandonment of the ‘real’ city that was later named as ‘Mohenjo Daro’? If the innuendo in the ‘plot’ is that a single dam burst was the cause, how fair is it?
Yes, abandonment of advanced townships in ancient India could have happened in the ‘real’ realm of history and therefore such an ending would appear to be ‘possible’ in the ‘plot’ of ‘Mohenjo Daro’. We know that Aristotle’s theory says that if it has ‘really’ happened, it could ‘probably’ and ‘necessarily’ happen in the ‘plot’. Or can it be so that ‘Mohenjo Daro’ is stretching this theory too far? Isn’t it taking for granted the ‘events’ in history and giving seemingly real ‘actions’ that might or might not have happened, an improbable ’cause and effect’ connection? How can a single burst of dam be the cause for the annihilation of any civilization, if such is the innuendo in the ‘plot’? Is ‘Mohenjo Daro’ trying to write the ‘singularity’ of history or is it trying to create a work of ‘imitation’ in the area of the ‘probable and necessary’? Moreover scientifically, we still do not know with precision if these townships were flooded or not, in real history. In contrast, another ‘epic’ Indian move ‘Bahubali’ does not hide the fact that it is a ‘cock and bull’ story, in fact it wears such qualities proudly up its sleeves. ‘Mohenjo Daro’ seems to take its own ‘cock and bull’ quality quite seriously and equate it with history. And I am not even talking about the horses, headgears or the dresses that were not proved to really exist some 4000 years ago.
The poet, Aristotle says, must be more the poet of his ‘Plots’ than of his verses, inasmuch as he is a poet by virtue of the ‘imitative actions’ in his work. And if he has to take a subject from actual history, he is none the less a poet for that; since some historic occurrences may very well be in the ‘probable and possible’ order of things that has been created; and it is in that aspect of them that he is their poet and not a historian.
Element of Chance in a plot:
Aristotle further adds, ‘actions’ would have great impact on the mind if they happen ‘unexpectedly’ (Discovery) and at the same time in ‘consequence to one another’ (Possible, probably or inevitable). There is less marvel if they occur by themselves or by ‘chance’. Even in matters of ‘chance’ what would seem the most marvelous is if there is an appearance of design in them. One fails to see any sort of design in the dam burst in ‘Mohenjo Daro’ that has been caused by a chance storm, except perhaps the poet’s anxiety to prove that the city was historically annihilated by the dam burst. It was not ‘probable’ that there be a storm that would break the dam, nor was it a necessary action of something that preceded it. The ‘necessity’ in ‘Mohenjo Daro’ was that of it ‘poet’ who at any cost wanted to flood the city by a dam burst so that it gets annihilated. Aristotle calls ‘Plots’ as episodic when there is neither ‘probability’ nor ‘necessity’ in the sequence of episodes. It is apparent that he does not take a liking for such ‘plots’. ‘Actions’ of this sort are constructed by bad poets by their own fault, he summarizes.
So, ‘Tragedy’ is an imitation not only of a ‘complete action’, but also of ‘incidents’ arousing ‘pity’ and ‘fear’; and such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur ‘unexpectedly’ and at the same time in ‘consequence’ of one another; there is more of the marvelous in them then than if they happened of themselves or by mere chance. A ‘Plot’, therefore, of this sort is necessarily finer than others, Aristotle puts the cherry on the cake.
To be continued…
By Ramchandra PN, 13/10/2020
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