Narrative Analysis Blog

Narrative Analysis

For my Narrative Analysis I have chosen the film Reservoir Dogs.
It was one of the first films written and directed by Quinton Tarantino, itis a very interesting film in terms of Narrative storytelling.

It has several main things that make it very unique to all other films out there.

Firstly, it has a none linear storyline, meaning all the sequences are muddled up. So at one moment it might show the present. Then it will go off to the past, then back to normal, then ever further into the past. Despite how confusing this sounds, it works really effectively.

It begins with an opening sequence at a café. It is only one of two scenes that shows all of the characters together. This is mainly used to familiarise people with the characters and all their different personalities. It has no meaning to the story, no connection with the plot itself, it is used primarily to put everything in place and to get us to know the characters better.

This is very interesting because in film, we learn everything there is to know about a character throughout. This has put most of everything into one scene so it doesn't have to try and explain 8 characters individually. So it can spend the rest of the film telling what is important without having to have anything get in the way.

Within the film it has a short backstory of three of the main characters shown at different times. These are the dominant characters so it makes sense for them to have some back story. If it had to tell all there is about every character there would be eight back stories. This is why it simplified it by telling the story of the three main cast and keeping the rest at the beginning.

The second things about this movie is that, even though it is a heist movie, it doesn't show the actually heist, just the events around it. How they met, the planning, and the aftermath. The scene itself is told through dialogue by the characters, and how they are explaining their interpretations of how it happened.

To iterate another way. It has the opening sequence to familiarise with the characters. Then the story starts with the aftermath of the heist. From after the title sequence to the end this is the primary story it tries to tell. It just interjects with key information from the past. Like how people got away from the cops. The back story of several characters, and the planning of the job. It could have shown the planning before, but it would give too much away, and having seen the characters back story we get to see it from a different light. So showing the back stories, then showing the preparation makes more sense because the story is telling more. But showing the back stories from the beginning wouldn't make sense either. Because it gives too much away of the original story. This is why the story shifts around too much. Because we only make sense of every situation after it happens and it doesn't give too much away.

The mechanics of the film don't seem hard to watch either, it is presented in a way that makes it easy to watch. It flows information smoothly so you know what piece goes where and it doesn't become a cluster of random information.

These are a few tools used to tell the story and an overview of how it is structured. I think that is extremely effective is telling the story and how people come to understand the purpose behind it.