Cinematic Modalities: Beyond the Boundaries of Frame, Image and Sound in Mommy and The Lighthouse

Periods of intense technological change are always fascinating for film theory, because the films themselves tend to stage its primary question: What is cinema?¹

– D.N. Rodowick

Introduction 

The emergence of new viewing technologies and interactive media have dramatically altered traditional modes of production and exhibition, as the diverse range of screening possibilities now available have unsettled established notions of what constitutes as cinema. By cinema, this article refers to its two meanings. First, cinema as a physical and geographical site to encounter films – which traditionally was the movie theatre – and second, cinema as an industry concerned with the filmic medium as an artform. While primarily concerned with cinema as understood by the latter, this article engages in discussions that touch upon both definitions in order to develop a more robust framework of analysis to comment on the changing nature of cinema in a contemporary, digital age.

Spurred on by the rise of streaming services, cinema as it was once understood, has been rendered obsolete. Alongside the democratisation of new technologies, the cinema is no longer the chosen forum for audiences to first encounter a film, with the bespoke experience of the movie theatre a novelty rather than the norm, instituting a normative shift in the way films are consumed. This led to the creation of alternative viewing rituals, in which the role of the screening device and spectator is given increasing autonomy in the interpretation of filmic texts.² Taking two films, Mommy (Xavier Dolan, 2014) and The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019), it is demonstrated that the relationship between frame, image and sound function to instil a cinematic modality within both films to stage an inquiry into the nature of cinema. While Mommy questions the dominance of the image in the communication of a cinematic experience and utilises the technological capabilities of digital cinema to engage in new forms of expression, The Lighthouse interrogates ontological understandings of cinema by evoking the silent films of the 1890s through its formal characteristics, creating a discordant reality with its digitally produced soundscape. These “cinematic modalities” which are developed within both films function to reference the historical origins of film as an artform that have now been adapted to suit the contemporary digital ecosystem in which they are created. This understands cinema as a medium that is no longer tied to the material origins of its creation, but a constantly evolving medium that continually renews its conception in response to periods of intense technological change.

Mommy

Historically, cinema has identified itself with the medium of film to legitimise itself as an aesthetic artform, yet the increasing adoption of digital processes have supplanted film as the ontological basis for cinematic representation.³ This development, alongside the proliferation of digital cinema as the dominant form of exhibition in contemporary society, has brought cinema’s identity into question. However, the technological capabilities of digital cinema have enabled the frame to take on a diverse range of shapes and sizes, reinterpreting the artistic forms that film and other audio-visual media can now take.⁴Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, Issue 4.2a (2017).] It is in this context that Dolan’s Mommy illustrates the full range of expressive capabilities available in contemporary cinema by showing how the filmic frame remains in constant dialogue with sound to engage with notions of space and cinematic representation.

Mommy

Shot in an aspect ratio of 1:1, Mommy immediately positions itself in opposition to the conventional ratios of 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 that have become synonymous with cinema as aesthetically widescreen. This provokes audiences into a renewed understanding of the spatial connotations frame shapes evoke, as the perfect square frame in Mommy retains a simplistic composition that is reminiscent of LP covers, Instagram and portrait photography to induce feelings of intimacy and sincerity. By reducing the viewer’s field of vision, Dolan challenges popular conceptions of cinema as aesthetically rectangular, instead utilising the expressive possibilities of a varying aspect ratio to denote key narrative and emotional beats within the film. This is observed in the iconic Wonderwall sequence, where in an instance of pure elation, Steve throws out his arms and in response to his action, the screen expands from its perfect square to widescreen. Going beyond a mere stylistic choice, the significance of Mommy’s expanded aspect ratio illustrates how the frame has now taken on an expressive function within the story, as narrative meaning is attached to the spatial dimensions of the image. As the traditional space of the cinema theatre is increasingly bypassed in favour of the comfort and accessibility of portable devices, this poses to the pertinent question as to whether the sequence would have the same emotional effect when viewed outside the theatre, such as on a tablet or handheld device, where the screen’s spatial impact would arguably be diminished and lose its full range of expressive force.⁵ The answer to this lies in the ability for cinema to have a visual language that continually evolves, as the implications of technological innovation have not only expanded the range of expressive techniques films can now employ, but also reinterpreted the way existing techniques are understood within the context of each film.⁶

In addition to the increased possibilities of the frame, Dolan relies upon music to structure the heart of the film, often writing various scenes around certain songs.⁷ Comprised of 18 songs that amount to 35 minutes of film’s total running time of 138 minutes, Dolan orchestrates multiple sequences in Mommy to suit the duration of a song in the fashion of a music video.⁸ As previously mentioned, Oasis’s Wonderwall is but one example of Dolan’s liberal use of popular music to incite feelings of the cinematic. This is illustrated in various sequences throughout the film such as Dido’s White Flag, Céline Dion’s On ne change pas and Counting Crows’ Colourblind to transform moments of mundane domesticity into scenes of artistic spectacle. This practice is most poignantly demonstrated in the final scene of the film, which follows Steve’s attempt to escape the government institution that he has been committed into. Although the opening flourish of strings from Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die are only played for a few seconds over the scene before it cuts to black, it leaves an undeniable impact upon the viewer before the first lines “Feet don’t fail me now” are uttered. Infused with a melancholic beauty, the ambiguity of the final shot as Steve is about to reach the window continues to haunt the screen long after the image disappears. It is here that the traditional dominance of image over sound is overturned, as music becomes a conduit for Steve’s emotions and inner psyche to communicate elements of cinema beyond mere visuals. As Michel Chion pointed out, “Sound shows us the image differently than what the image shows alone, and the image likewise makes us hear sound differently.”⁹ This highlights that sound in film is not a by-product, but an integral part of the filmic image. By aligning several sequences with a particular song to give voice to the wide emotional range of his characters, Dolan imbues these scenes with a particular narrative resonance that extends beyond the film’s closeted 1:1 ratio and elevates these moments to ones of transcendent cinematic expression. 

Mommy

Furthermore, the interaction between frame, screen space and sound are exemplified in Die’s dream sequence that occurs near the end of the film. Lasting for 4-and-a-half-minutes, the sequence seems to pulse with an invisible current as images come in and out of focus, with Steve’s facial features often blurry and indistinct, as if being viewed through a smudged camera lens or through the unreliable crutch of memory tinged with sentimentality. Dolan employs various formal techniques in a masterful illustration of the expressive capabilities enabled by technology in cinema. Arranged to Ludovico Einaudi’s Experience, the sequence is edited according to the rhythm of the accompanying score and features a montage of Steve graduating and eventually getting married. Claudia Kotte observed that “when the tempo accelerates the editing becomes almost syncopated; when the music slows down, the length of the scenes also appears to expand.”¹⁰ Here, the interaction between screen and sound become coalescent to show the symbiotic relationship between the movie’s soundtrack and image to engineer a full-bodied experience. In doing so, image and sound become one. Thus, Dolan’s Mommy stages an inquiry into the art of cinema, as the film’s reduced frame is in turn supplemented by the use of sound – especially music – to expand the physical borders of the image to create a tangible, sonic landscape that evoke notions of the cinematic. 

The Lighthouse

In contrast to the expressive techniques used in Mommy that display the expanded capacities of cinema as an artform, Eggers’ nightmarish maritime folktale The Lighthouse engages with ontological understandings of cinema by staging the artificial reality that occurs between image and sound. This discrepancy between the image and the soundscape of a film is based upon the foundational concept that sound is not produced or experienced as an autonomous or unified unit, which is increasingly the case in contemporary cinema. Rather, part of the audio-visual contract is that the “audio-spectator considers the elements of sound and image to be participating in one and the same entity or world.”¹¹ This paradox is illustrated in the way dialogue, sound effects and music is rendered in The Lighthouse to create a disconcerting aural landscape. Further contributing to the audience’s immersion within the film’s distinct period setting and supernatural elements, while simultaneously displacing its historicity due to its contemporary technical production.

Set in 1890s New England, The Lighthouse is shot in a 1.19:1 aspect ratio called Movietone that was used in the early sound era briefly in the transition between the silent film and talkies.¹² Narrower than the boxy Academy ratio (1.33:1), Movietone has a vertically contracted rectangle that accentuates the height of the lighthouse featured in the film while simultaneously highlighting its cramped interior spaces. This was done to evoke the era in which the film takes place and can also be seen in the decision to shoot in 35mm orthochromatic film stock that renders its subjects in high-contrast black and white.¹³ The period specifications of the film’s textured details and materiality is illustrative of an aesthetic style that further authenticates the historicity of the narrative. However, it is how the distinct visual style of The Lighthouse is interpreted alongside its digitally rendered soundscape that reflects the thesis of Rodowick’s statement. This can be traced back to the introduction of Dolby within cinema, which fundamentally influenced the quality of sounds that could be animated in films, in what Chion terms as the “superfield.”¹⁴  Referring to the increased clarity and dimension of the types of sounds that could now be rendered in film, the advent of technologically superior sound systems were increasingly found not only in cinema theatres, but also within the home. This subsequently altered the way scenes are constructed and edited in contemporary films, with one example being the establishing shot of The Lighthouse. In the opening credits of the film, the sound of lapping waves can be faintly discerned and is closely followed by the low frequency bellow of a foghorn before an image has even been materialised on screen. This is followed by a polyphony soundscape of seagull cries, brass horns, string instruments and the mechanical cranking of a ship’s engine that emanates from the screen to create a three-dimensional acoustic space before the first shot of an approaching ship is shown. This elevates the function of sound to become determinative of establishing the film’s narrative space in spite of the alluring presence of the image.¹⁵

The Lighthouse

Just as the materiality of the film evokes a particular time period, the film’s soundscape highlights the discrepancies between image and sound. The fallacy of The Lighthouse – like most contemporary films – is that cinematic sounds are always designed, no matter how realistic they may seem. Ranging from the organic noises (flatulence, a seagull getting beaten to death, digging of a grave) to the mechanical (clocks, machinery) and supernatural (the screaming mermaid, ethereal tinkling of the Lighthouse) the film blends its historic setting with a thoroughly modern soundscape. Practical effects such as the mermaids scream for example was created by two people making sea creature sounds in a recording studio and the supernatural ambience of the Lighthouse was a combination of the crank of machinery sampled from a real-life lighthouse and the film’s eery score composed by Mark Korven. 

Yet, the way in which dialogue was recorded for the film exemplifies the notion of sound within a film being divorced from the reality of the on-screen image. Due to the majority of the film being shot on location at Cape Forchu, audio digital rendering or ADR for short, was used to record bits of dialogue in post-production to replace excerpts of speech that were lost in the 40-50 knot winds that blasted along the coast. The blend of ADR with the visual reality of the image shows how in film, the voice becomes radically “other” from the body from which it originates from.¹⁶ The uncanny implications of this speaks to the post-production processes embedded in cinema practices, and the blurring of reality and fiction. This is experienced through the haunting effect of Thomas Wake’s echoing refrain “Why’d you spill your beans?” that occurs at the film’s dramatic climax. The only instance of voice-over within the film, Eggers’ use of voice-over in The Lighthouse demonstrates how sound remains intertwined with the filmic image despite it being produced in a completely separate environment. So, akin to how the line between what is real and what is fake begins to blur thematically in the narrative as both men descend into madness, the distinction between image, space and sound also become indistinct. 

Nevertheless, the vague boundaries of sound become indeterminate without the guiding presence of the image, which localises and focuses elements of the acoustic field.¹⁷ It is this inseparable relationship between the image, sound and notions of space that make cinema a unique audio-visual medium that engineers a psychological experience like no other. The blend of historical detail, sonic immersion and modern sound-mixing techniques within The Lighthouse present a fascinating case study for Rodowick’s claim. This engages with cinema’s historical origins not just aesthetically, but through a highly technical mode of production to replicate an aesthetic milieu indebted to 1890s New England. However, this experiential fiction is upended by the reality of the film’s immersive sonic landscape that although succeeding in transporting the viewer to a windy, desolate and mythological island, can only be achieved through contemporary methods of production. The Lighthouse illustrates the ontological evocations of the materiality of film and sound to interrogate the paradox of the cinematic experience, thus engineering a fictional world that is at odds with the disparate reality of its production.

The Lighthouse

Conclusion

Returning to the central question that was first introduced in this article, it can be seen that both Mommy and The Lighthouse constructively engage with Rodowick’s claim that periods of intense technological change prompt films to stage the question: What is cinema? 

While the boundaries of cinema have been traditionally confined to the physicality of the filmic medium, whether that be the physical borders of the screen itself or the aesthetic and audio possibilities, this has now been expanded by the availability of new digital technologies. In response, filmmakers have developed cinematic modalities to communicate notions of the cinema by engaging with contemporary modes of production. These cinematic modalities are developed in Mommy through the aesthetic intimacy and emotional resonance of the film’s soundtrack, while The Lighthouse simulates a false reality through its adherence and reproduction of a period specific materiality, belying its contemporary digital soundscape.

Therefore, rather than rejecting the possibilities digital innovation can offer, the full range of expressive and artistic capabilities of these new technologies are employed within both films in a desire to evoke notions of cinema. A consideration of the changing face of the industry and the manner in which films can now be exhibited has prompted contemporary filmmakers to approach cinema in exciting and innovative ways. This creates exciting possibilities for the future of film as an artform that seek to tease, push and expand upon the expressive limits of the tripart of image, screen space and sound that understand cinema not as a static medium, but a constantly evolving one.

Endnotes