Ru
EnA. Komarova
Audiovisual representation of the mortality in cinema (on the example of the film «Death and the Maiden» by R. Polanski)
By means of cinematic language cinematography is able to translate various models of perception of tragedy and death: if painting represents them statically, literature describes them, the art of cinema is able to show death in the process, to capture the very moment of transition from life to death. Signs of mortality are included in a multi-level film text – from the iconic and auditory levels to the symbolic. Death in the cinema presupposes a certain set of plot-symbolic codes. The chronotope of death (thanatochronotope), the reconstruction of the afterlife, the process of screen death, the personification of death, its symbols are involved in the representation of mortal discourse in cinema. The methodology of film thanatology is being developed by Russian researchers (O. Kirillova, M. Yampolsky, N. Khrenov, N. Savchenkova). On the example of the «Death and the Maiden» (1994) directed by R. Polanski, the article shows that the mortality in the film is represented by quoting the String Quartet No. 14 in D minor by F. Schubert. Quotes from the quartet affect all levels of the film. The dramatic conflict of it is related to the characters listening to this music and the traumatic experience associated with the memories of it. Quotations from «Death and the Maiden» compositionally and dramaturgically organize the film text (the function of the introduction, marking the culminating zones, the finale). The music of the quartet has a semantic function with an ambivalent, lasting affect – the theme of death-violence. Using audiovisual means, R. Polanski creates a special mortal time and space of cinematic reality, reconstructing the myth of the abduction of a maiden by a chthonic monster, the dance macabre, the dialogue of death and the maiden, addresses the issue of the ambivalence of Eros and Thanatos, the opposition of the masculine and feminine.
Key words
film text, musical quotation, F. Schubert, R. Polanski, «Death and the Maiden».
For citation
Komarova A. Audiovisual representation of the mortality in cinema (on the example of the film «Death and the Maiden» by R. Polanski) // South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2023. No. 2. Pp. 57-62.
