Jane Campion: Authorship and Personal Cinema

Conclusion: Theorizing the Personal Component of Authorship

215 1Thisbookhasshownhowthecontentsandrepresentationalstrategies of each of Jane Campion’s films are determined largely by the nature of the filmmaker’s personal investment in her creations. That personal investment, in turn, arises out of and is informed by familial situations that the filmmaker seeks to address through a complex process of condensationanddisplacementinvolvingmetaphorandmetonymy .Underlying the superficial appearance of disparateness that has troubled some critics, the personal preoccupations I have revealed in Campion’s films attest to a striking continuity that imparts a remarkable degree of unity toheroeuvre,despiteshiftsinstyle,genre,andmode.Alloftheseaspects of her cinematic practice have implications for a theory of authorship. 2ThemostsignificantattributeofauthorshipthatCampion’sexample illustratesistheabilityofanauteur-directortoimplantametonymical system in a film that works, in conjunction with other elements in the representation (metaphor, plot, character, setting), to establish a subtext of latent signification that the viewer perceives as having meaning for the author.1 Whether the scenario is an original script written by the director, or is based on a script written by someone else, or constitutes an adaptation of a work by another author, the implantation of this metaphorical and metonymical system will convert the material to the personal purposes of the auteur-director. Moreover, the symbolic suggestiveness generated by such a system will not only embody the meaning that the material has for the director, but also condition the way in which attentive “readers” will respond to the material, whether or Conclusion: Theorizing the Personal Component of Authorship 216 Jane Campion not they are aware of its personal relevance for the filmmaker. The filmic texture that is operating with this level of investment will be conveyed through an impression registering in viewers that the image or sequence is overdetermined, that is, that there is a degree of condensation at work in the representation that carries more than one latent signification.2 The means by which this overdetermination is communicated can be nuancedandsubtle.AsKajaSilvermanhasaptlysuggested:“Insofarasa filmmaker can be said to function as one of the enunciators of the works that bear his or her name, those works will contain sounds, images, patterns ,and/orformalconfigurationswhichprovidethecinematicequivalent of the linguistic markers through which subjectivity is achieved.”3 Indeed, stylistic devices are one of the main ways in which the presence of overdetermination is revealed: the positioning of an object in the frame; the duration of the shot and what it lingers on; striking camera movements; unusual angles; the selection of the type of shot in relation to its content; and so on. Such devices alert the reader to the presence of a latent meaningfulness which may not be explicitly articulated but which is felt nevertheless, being registered in the unconscious of both the author and the responsive viewer. Campion’s practices exemplify many of the strategies that are available to an auteur-director who wishes to invest material with metonymical significance. These include the use of symbolism to provide the equivalent of an unspoken meta-commentary on the significance of what is being depicted at a given moment. Her settings, for example, are invested with an archetypal signification that has psychological relevance . One thinks of Campion’s use of dark subterranean places, such as the catacombs in The Portrait of a Lady and the cellar in In the Cut, which symbolize both the sinister nature of the unknown and also the strange mixture of attraction and dread that Campion’s heroines feel when they confront an eroticism that is forbidden yet exciting. Similar use is made of settings involving the symbolism inherent in heat or cold, as in the desert of Holy Smoke (associated with sexual desire and spiritual thirst) and the snow at the conclusion ofThe Portrait of a Lady (symbolizing the emotional chill that has settled into Isabel as a result of her experience of a dysfunctional marriage). AnotherdeviceCampionfrequentlyusesisanondiegeticinsertthat provides a hint as to the symbolic significance of the diegetic material Conclusion 217 that surrounds it. One striking instance occurs in The Piano when Flora is offering her fanciful explanation of how her mother came to be mute. As she is describing how a great storm blew up as her parents’ voices rose for the final bars of their duet, with “a great bolt of lightning” coming out of the sky, striking her father so that he “lit up like a torch,” the image of a child’s animated drawing of a father going up in flames is inserted for a brief second or so. The effect is to intimate the homicidal resentment...