What is the importance of narrative in in creating meaning in the films you have studied? (CoG/LH)

What is the importance of narrative in in creating meaning in the films you have studied? 

City of God is a film in three acts, not unlike many others. Yet this three act structure acts more similar to an episodic structure, each act focusing more on specific characters. These are also clearly signposted through captions during the film, like episode titles, informing the audience upon which characters or groups this act will primarily follow. This is also, in effect, similar to the structure of La Haine. La Haine is divided into sixteen different parts, each corresponding to a stretch of time within twenty-four hours at different times of day. These sections are also signposted with white on black captions and a ticking clock sound effect, counting down inevitably to the death of character Vinz. Time is communicated in City of God through captions such as these, indicating the decade of each act, and also the mise-en-scene of the favela itself, growing in size and bleakness as the decades continue.

Circular narratives or narratives which effectively repeat their openings in their conclusions are also important parts of both City of God and La Haine, the latter utilising this narrative device to comment upon the cycle of violence and unending conflict between ethnicities and classes in French society. This is to say that this film is cautionary, acting as a warning that as long as this conflict persists that this narrative will continue again and again, but with different people. These are issues that are ongoing and La Haine reinforces this through the shooting of a ‘non-French’ citizen at the beginning and ending of the film, also emphasising the inevitability of such shootings, which are purported to happen on a daily basis in modern France.  The narrative time here is important for this very reason, taking place over twenty-four hours to emphasise this point as well as the boredom and tedium of the estate youths. City of God utilises this circular narrative to discuss the idea that Lil Ze’s death isn’t the end of violent crime in the favela, as ‘the runts’ of the favela quickly take on his role as crime lord. The events if the film may seem huge and important to us, but they are in reality quite small and insignificant in the context of necessary wider change. The circular narrative emphasises that Lil Ze is just another criminal, and so are these ‘runts’ who will likely follow the same path as this character.

La Haine, while unconventional in its division of scenes, is rather conventional in its linear and continuous narrative structure. City of God, on the other hand, adopts a non-linear disruptive narrative. This unconventional structure emphasises the stylised nature of the film as a more generic crime film than La Haine’s social realism. City of God does not take itself entirely seriously, relishing montages of hyper-violent situations and moments of action-movie set-pieces, and this is reinforced through the structure of the film by jumping from different moments in time to take a detour from the continuous narrative of Rocket’s story (who also narrates these detours). La Haine simply abides by its “realist framework” introduced by the film’s opening title sequence, flowing continuously from A to Z as if the events were happening in real-time.