The Narrative of Stutterer

Part 1- Narrative Aspects

Closure: The ‘ending’ or resolution of the narrative. The sense of closure comes in different
degrees: mainstream Hollywood films often have a high degree while more world cinema and
arthouse films tend to be more open-ended.

1. To what extent does Stutterer have a high degree of closure?

Ellipsis: The compression of time within a film or programme- films need to conform to an
industry standard length. Therefore, most mainstream texts employ a high degree of ellipsis.

2. Over what time period (approximately) does Stutterer take place? What impact does
this have?

Restricted and Unrestricted Narration: The amount of information that you release to the
audience. At the macro level of narrative, this would focus on aspects such as flashbacks that
you provide for the audience.

3. Did you feel that there was any information in Stutterer that was withheld?

Multi-stranded Narration: As opposed to looking at one character and storyline, this refers
to films with multiple stories.

4. What were the different ways Greenwood was presented to us?

This part is trickier- give it your best go!

 Part 2- Plot & Story

Bordwell and Thompson define the plot as ‘everything visibly and audibly present in the film
before us’ and the story as ‘the set of all events in a narrative, both the ones explicitly
presented and those the viewer infers’

Plot Story

Now answer the following questions:

1. How are the events in the story that are not included in the plot communicated to the
audience?

2. Why do you think they have been left out of the plot?