Moments in a film must be connected, linked into an overall
pattern that carries a semantic field across the text. A critic
can solve interpretive problems in terms of the text's variety,
the unity of form and content, and the viewer's experience of the
film. A critic obtains diachronic coherence by the practice of
motif analysis.
Motif-tracing is a basic skill of every critic. The motif is
central to a films unifying strategies. Motifs allow one to trace
changes in semantic fields. Motifs thus carry meaning. Motifs that
are situated within a temporal schema of textual form result in
the film as trajectory.
Trajectory. Source-path-goal pattern. The text will reveal a
progression which organizes semantic fields as well as time and
space. Since trajectory forms a "template" schema, motif-analysis
becomes placing concrete items into an overall pattern.
A critics goal is to treat a film's pattern as a series of
segments which can be compared or connected. A critic can thus
employ two heuristics.1. Beginnings, endings, and turning points
are pivotal to interpretation. 2. No part is less privileged than
other parts.
The opening of a film is very important to the overall
interpretation. Because it sets the agenda of a film, the
beginning is a summary of interpretation. The film's major
semantic field is normally locked into place during the beginning
of the film.
From the beginning, the film's path must be schematized at
points and stages. Two subschemata are available. 1. Stages are
parallel replacements or 2. Stages are seen to be a struggle, a
conflict between or within characters.
A film's ending plays just as important of a role as the
beginning. There are four possibilities. 1. The simplest routine
is to assume that the film resolves its meaning. 2. The plot
leaves some events unresolved so there is an "open" meaning or
meanings. 3.If confronted with an open ending, a critic can assert
thematic closure. And 4. A critic may find a diegetically "closed"
film semantically "open".
Doctrines Into Diachronies
Broadly speaking, all criticism is allegorical in looking for
another meaning than the one presented.
Classical allegories channel the reader toward the desired
sense by attaching a running commentary or summarizing a moral.
The allegorical-film theory aspires to the richness of implicit
meanings.
Synchronic and diachronic schemata and their heuristics aim to
convey both the variety and the conventionality of text-base
schemata. Along with semantic fields and the category and person
based schemata, the text schemata offers a critic many ways of
interpreting a work.
A critic is a person who can conceive the possibility of
giving implicit or repressed meanings to films. A critic also
invokes acceptable semantic fields, maps them onto texts, and
produces a "model film" that embodies the interpretation.
