Indeterminate Film-thinking and Interpretation

Abstract

I challenge David Bordwell's distinction between the act of comprehension and the process of interpretation in the construction of meaning in narrative film, drawing on Wolfgang Iser’s concept of indeterminacy and Daniel Frampton's concept of film-thinking and the 'filmind' to demonstrate that in understanding narrative as a series of causally linked events the viewer segments and forms determinate relationships between events presented in the narrative. This activity can be facilitated by the thinking of the filmind by presenting events in their causal order, providing expositional information and by limiting possible causal combinations, such that a deviation from these practices of narrative articulation leads to an increased amount of indeterminacy between events, requiring more interpretative activity on the part of the viewer to connect them in cause and effect relationships, and in so doing 'completing' the narrative-thinking of the filmind.