Narrative distance in the short story and movie adaptation
After seeing Oliver Hermanus’s film The History of Sound, a movie that holds its cards very close to its chest, a friend posed this question: [is the movie a] legitimate entertainment for an audience more interested in what happens than in what doesn't happen?
And I answered.
Admittedly, there is a smaller audience for movies like this. Still, directors such as Kelly Reichardt have been making films for years where almost nothing occurs. Chloé Zhao’s Academy Award-winning Nomadland is also in this camp. In the latter, although Francis McDormand’s character is frequently on the move, everywhere she lands nothing much happens.
These stories are told with—as us fiction types call it—narrative distance.
As an author who has been accused of writing in this manner, I have some sympathy for the approach. It is one that can be immersive for the reader/viewer, provided the world and its characters are drawn with great care and specificity.
Given the withholding, though, of feelings and thoughts the technique is difficult to pull off. Especially in film, where viewers cannot be privy to the characters’ interiority. The actors must somehow suggest it—a very heavy lift.
The question in the movie The History of Sound: did director Hermanus’s withholding go too far? Though otherwise lauding the project, most reviewers seem to think so—calling the movie bloodless and demure. As for myself, I’m not yet certain.
Its screenplay was written by Ben Shattuck, the author of the short story on which the film is based, and retains the original’s detached method.
I was let down by this during my first reading of the tale, hoping for a more conventional, if ill-fated, gay love story, like director Andrew Haigh’s poignant sophomore outing Weekend. Or a more dramatic one, like Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain and its cinematic adaptation by Ang Lee, where both of the star-crossed lovers’ POVs are explored.
On the second read of Shattuck’s story I began to be drawn in, once I appreciated the piece was about loss and missed opportunity. About an incandescent romance that freighted one man’s life in a way that spoiled all those thereafter.
Neither the short story The History of Sound nor its filmic counterpart are an unqualified success. Their opacity seems to dilute—at first blush, anyway—what is intended to be a moving and impactful conclusion. I’m tempering my disapproval, though, in order to understand why these seasoned creatives chose this particular manner of telling. I plan to reread the story and rewatch the film to understand where it works, where it doesn’t—for the next time I craft a story like this, one that similarly withholds.
NB
AI’s definition of narrative withholding is surprisingly good:
In storytelling, withholding is the deliberate act of not revealing important information to the audience or characters to build suspense, tension, and reader engagement. It's a technique for managing the rate of revelation, strategically delaying crucial details about the "who, what, where, when, and how" to keep readers invested and to ensure the story's payoff is saved for a more impactful moment, typically the climax or ending.