DISTINCTIVELY VISUAL
Distinctively visual texts utilise various techniques to convey significant ideas to their audience. A text is constituted to be distinctively visual through the images created and response gained from the audience. A composers life experiences and therefore their opinion on various topics are evident in their texts and are brought to life through the characters. Techniques such as imagery, irony, symbolism, camera shots and angles aid the composer in generating a powerful response from the audience. This is evident in Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory and William Blake’s A Poison
Tree.
In his film Run Lola Run, Tykwer has communicated that time is an important player in one’s life and shapes their destiny. The opening sequence begins with a close up shot of a pendulum ticking, the audience, for the first time, understands that time is central to the film. The camera then pans up to reveal a grandfather clock with a low angle shot, placing the audience in a position that indicates that they are defenceless against time. The animation sequence then begins with Lola running towards a clock, foreshadowing that time is the reason she is constantly on the move. Tykwer then proceeds to show Lola being swallowed up by various clocks around her, conveying that she is powerless against time. Tykwer, by placing Lola and the audience in a submissive position, has suggested that time has an authoritative nature and may, in fact, have more control over one’s life than the individual themselves. The importance of time in the lives of Manni and Lola are further emphasised through the split screen. Tykwer has split the screen between an image of Lola running, Manni and a clock, personifying time as a third character in the film, highlighting its importance. Tykwer has clearly established his views on time as being significant in determining the outcome of one’s life.
Tykwer has created a distinctively visual text in Run Lola Run through the use of a non-linear narrative structure of the film.
Tykwer has challenged the traditional structure of the film in order to communicate the role of chance in one’s life. This is evident in the three separate narratives which convey the differing outcomes that exist due to one’s choices, time and location.
Each time, a slight change in the path along Lola’s run causes a significant change in the final outcome, suggesting to the audience the importance of every moment in time. The flash forwards suggest that everyone is on their own journey and yet the outcome can change due to a chance encounter. Tykwer has clearly portrayed the role that chance plays in one’s life.
Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, juxtaposes the nature of the conscious mind to that of the unconscious state. Dali depicts numerous clocks melting and stretching out and hence, has depicted the stretching and expanding of a seemingly certain constant in one’s life, time. The various melting and drooping clocks, being an oddity, draw the audience’s attention and signify that time is forever flowing and eternal. As it is placed in the darker side of the painting, the audience understands the irrelevance and absence of time during sleep. In contrast, Dali uses light to depict solid objects-placing the hard rocks in the light, suggesting the harshness of reality, the clarity of consciousness and the presence of time as a constant figure. By juxtaposing the two, Dali emphasises that events