[Coursework Essay 2018]: A Narrative Analysis of Three Films (Written) by Charlie Kaufman

The following is a slightly edited version of one of my pieces of written coursework from my undergraduate university studies. I have posted it here with a slightly altered title alongside my later works for the purpose of showing the development of my academic research and writing skills.

I wrote and submitted the original version of this essay for university coursework in 2018.

Introduction

The screenplays of Charlie Kaufman typically impart a structural variation of the classical narrative form; some prime examples of this are Being John Malkovich (Jonze, 1999), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004), and Synecdoche, New York (Kaufman, 2008). In his essay ‘“Frustrated Time” Narration: The Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman’, Chris Dzialo writes that “Kaufman’s films always have one foot comfortably within the Hollywood studio system, ensuring that major plot elements are always comprehensible” (Dzialo, 2009, p. 107). While Kaufman’s writing involves many non-classical techniques, Dzialo’s observation accounts for the fact that the crucial aspects of his storytelling are nonetheless identifiable according to conventional models of narrative structure. Folklorist Vladimir Propp’s model of narrative functions and “spheres of action” (Propp, 1968, p. 79) is one such framework that is easily applicable to Hollywood cinema.

To use Propp in an analysis of Kaufman’s work, however, should accommodate for the authorial idiosyncrasies as well as the traditional functions present in his storytelling. Kaufman’s script for Eternal Sunshine has both traditional and idiosyncratic traits, which become clearer when factoring in the differences and similarities of its narrative with those of Malkovich and Synecdoche. The purpose of this analysis is to explore the ways in which the narrative structures of these three films differ from Propp’s original model. This analysis will consider the similarities and distinctions between the three films in terms of their narrative functions, and what these attributes convey about the films in terms of their unique approaches to story structure. Using such factors to find the common denominators between the narrative structures of these three films, the following analysis will detail how they build a story model unique to Kaufman himself, the kind of relationship that model has with the original Proppian archetype, and what Kaufman’s structure says about him as a storyteller.

Characters and Their Functions

In Propp’s model, a sphere of action describes a character whose role fulfils a specific narrative function; a character can occupy exactly one role or many simultaneous roles, and several characters can occupy the same role at once (Propp, 1968, pp. 80-82). Also, Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine, and Synecdoche are examples of what Peter Wollen describes as a “corruption of the archetype” whereby the story reorders or outright omits certain functions present in Propp’s original model (Wollen, 1976, p. 22). The archetypal corruption that Wollen describes and the fluidity of Propp’s spheres of action are both highly informative of Kaufman’s unique story structure.

Early on in Eternal Sunshine, the memory erasure firm Lacuna Inc. occupies Propp’s donor function, providing Joel with a “magical agent”: the procedure that will erase the painful memories of his relationship with Clementine. Halfway through the film, however, Joel changes his mind whereupon the story becomes his struggle to keep his memories of their relationship. Lacuna henceforth fulfils the villain function, acting against Joel’s wishes instead of providing for him as they had done before. Likewise, Joel shifts from the status of a victim-hero, who merely responds to the actions of the donor, to a seeker-hero on a quest to save the image of Clementine – in his mind, the princess – from destruction by the villains. This transformation of the story – Joel’s escape from his agonising past into him saving Clementine from the memory wipe – bears resemblance to the transformation of the detective story: from the flight of the hero to the rescue of the princess (Wollen, 1982, p. 35). The difference with Kaufman’s script is the level of corruption since the shift of Lacuna’s role from donor to villain stems from Joel’s sudden decision to defy the magical agent.

Synecdoche distributes the hero, villain, and princess functions similarly to Eternal Sunshine, but not without distinction. Like Joel, Caden sets off on a quest; here, to fulfil his lack of self-worth as an artist by producing an “uncompromising, honest” theatre piece. He too reacts to the function of the donor, using the grant from the MacArthur Fellowship to fund his magnum opus. But unlike Joel, he is a seeker-hero from the start, producing smaller plays in search of artistic fulfilment early in the film. After the absentation of his wife Adele and their daughter Olive, Caden faces a side quest to rescue Olive from Adele’s friend Maria who acts as the villain by keeping the princess, Olive, from her father. Caden’s role thus experiences some fluidity as both hero and father of the princess. More crucially, however, Maria simultaneously acts as a villain struggling against Caden – even physically when they meet in a German cafe – and a false hero who replaces Caden as a parental figure to Olive, one whose obsession with using the latter as her own muse ends up killing her. Lacuna transforms from a donor to a villain while Maria is constantly both a false hero and a villain – one who, similarly to Lacuna, permanently removes the possibility of rescuing the princess, signifying the hero’s failure.

The character roles in Malkovich are in the sharpest contrast to Eternal Sunshine. At first, Craig occupies the hero function much like Joel, albeit a seeker-hero from the start like Caden. But when Craig imprisons his wife Lotte in Elijah the chimp’s cage and aims to completely dominate the mind of John Malkovich for his own gain, he fulfils the exact opposite function and becomes a villain. Likewise, Maxine is a villain early in the story when she starts a business to exploit the portal to Malkovich’s brain for a profit – similarly to Lacuna’s mind alteration business or Maria’s self-serving exploitation of Olive – but later becomes a princess when Dr Lester and his entourage kidnap her and holds her hostage. Lotte is the most fluid of all: at first, a dispatcher who suggests Craig get a new job, then a princess when Craig traps her in Elijah’s cage, then a villain when she aids Lester in kidnapping Maxine, and finally a helper when Lester – whom she aided – wins Malkovich from Craig, thus defeating the villain. The film concludes with the punishment for Craig’s villainy, trapped forever in the mind of Lotte and Maxine’s daughter Emily. The endings of Eternal Sunshine and Synecdoche are more hero-focussed: Caden dying unmarried despite his hero role, and Joel reuniting with Clementine – a wedding function that contrasts with Craig’s punishment as a villain.

 

The Ordering of Functions

In Propp’s model, there are thirty-one narrative functions that occur one after another according to a cause-and-effect logic which forms them collectively into a story. As mentioned above, the tendency of Kaufman’s films to remove or reorder several functions is an example of what Wollen calls a “corruption of the archetype” (Wollen, 1976, p. 22). Kaufman’s scripts do so according to their own individual narrative logic, each film reworking Propp’s structure in its own unique way and to varying degrees from each other.

A noticeable way in which Kaufman’s films corrupt Propp’s archetype is the actual order in which the functions occur. As Geoff King writes, Eternal Sunshine “has a non-linear structure, beginning at a point that turns out to be much later in the diegesis than is first implied” (King, 2009, p. 71). What King refers to is the part of the story in which Joel meets Clementine in Montauk. When first this happens in the film, it is under the guise of acting as the first function of absentation: Joel leaves home and gets the train leading him to Montauk. When we see this repeated towards the end of the film, though, it reveals itself as the twenty-sixth function of a solution: Joel achieves the challenging task of subconsciously remembering Clementine and reuniting with her after the memory wipe. An example of the film reordering functions, rather than transforming them, is when Patrick uses Joel’s romantic words to seduce Clementine. While at this point Lacuna has collectively adopted the villain role, Patrick individually takes on the role of a false hero presenting an unfounded claim (Propp, 1968, p. 60), i.e. that the words he stole from Joel are Patrick’s own. In the original structure, this would be the twenty-fourth function closer to the end of the second act of the film. Eternal Sunshine deviates from this when Patrick instead makes his unfounded claim around halfway through the story.

Malkovich corrupts Propp’s archetype to a lesser extent: by placing linearly connected functions at an unconventional part of the story according to its individual narrative logic. Acting as the dispatcher, Maxine sends – and joins – Craig on his journey to make a business from the portal to John Malkovich’s brain; the eleventh function of departure occurs as it does in Propp’s structure (Propp, 1968, p. 39), bridging the end of Act One with the start Act Two. Later in the film, however, Craig’s sphere of action changes to that of a villain when he holds Lotte at gunpoint, imprisons her, and coaxes Malkovich to meet Maxine in Lotte’s place. This fulfils the eighth function of villainy which would occur much earlier in a story following Propp’s structure (Propp, 1968, p. 30). While the order of the functions differs from the original model, the events themselves follow the film’s individual narrative logic since Craig’s quest for profit eventually leads him down the path of violence, abduction, and deceit that turns him into a villain. Derek Hill describes the film’s use of verisimilitude as a basis for its unique reality, a recognisable link to the real world that allows the audience to connect with the story’s fantasy logic (Hill, 2008, p. 114). On a similar principle, the film offers identifiable character functions that allow the viewer to understand its individual narrative logic. Kaufman uses the conventional and the recognisable as a conduit into his unique storytelling style.

Like Malkovich, the corruption of Propp’s archetype in Synecdoche involves an unconventional placement of linearly connected functions. Near the start of the story Caden lets Adele and Olive leave for Germany, thus he sends his daughter to live with Maria who Caden learns is using his daughter to fulfil her artistic whims. This is a case of complicity, Propp’s seventh function (Propp, 1968, p. 30), leading to an absentation, Propp’s first function (Propp, 1968, p. 26). By the time Olive is a young adult, Caden finds his daughter at her “Flower Girl” performance in Germany; he desperately calls out to her, his cries falling on deaf ears before bouncers drag him away. In a few short scenes there is a pursuit – of the princess by her father, rather than the villain – then an unrecognised arrival and a sudden rescue from Caden’s pursuit that keeps the princess trapped under the influence of the villain, Maria. Following the film’s own narrative logic, this part of the story is a mixture of functions twenty-one through twenty-three, but one that occurs closer to the middle of the film than these functions would according to Propp. A corruption closer to Eternal Sunshine than Malkovich, but more of an amalgamation of logically-related functions than the outright transformation of one of them.

 

Key Narrative Units

In ‘Hybrid Plots in Psycho’ (1982), Wollen details the key narrative units among three Alfred Hitchcock films; the Proppian functions that all three films have in common and that constitute a narrative structure that is specific to Hitchcock as a storyteller. The following section of this analysis will do so in relation to Charlie Kaufman, using the above-mentioned films of his screenplays. Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine, and Synecdoche share key narrative functions of their own that form Kaufman’s specific narrative structure.

The first act begins with the absentation of the hero from a place of their home: Craig goes to look for a new job; Joel goes to meet Clementine after her memory-wipe; Caden goes to work on his production of ‘Death of a Salesman’. With the establishment of the recognisable narrative world comes the introduction of a fantastical idiosyncrasy: the seventh-and-a-half floor of the Mertin Flemmer Building where Craig finds Lester Corp; Joel discovering the memory erasure service at Lacuna; Caden’s friend Hazel buying a new house that is constantly on fire. Finding a goal to achieve, the hero gains a utilitarian artefact: Craig stumbles across the portal to John Malkovich’s brain; Joel decides to have Lacuna wipe his memories of Clementine; Caden chooses the theatre at which to produce his magnum opus.

In the second act, the hero gains a helper: Maxine joins Craig in capitalising off the portal; Dr Mierzwiak guides Joel through the memory wipe process; Claire works with Caden on his play. Soon after follows the discovery of one character’s love for another: Maxine becomes romantic with Lotte; Patrick confesses his feelings for Clementine; Caden marries and starts a family with Claire. There is then a change in the relationship(s) of the hero: Craig becomes smitten with Maxine; Joel, reliving his past, restores his love for Clementine; Caden abandons his new family only to discover that his old family has now abandoned him.

This leads the hero to compound their struggle: Craig imprisons Lotte and pursues Maxine; Joel goes off-map to try and save his memories of Clementine; Caden complicates his work with simulacra and his emotional state with reconnaissance of his old family under the guise of Ellen. Others come to discover a violation of an agreement, order, or trust on the main character’s part: John Malkovich discovers Craig’s exploitation of the portal; Mierzwiak and his employees discover Joel has gone off the map; Claire leaves Caden over his relationship with Hazel. From here, the hero’s situation worsens: Lotte makes Craig realise how he has become a villain; Mierzwiak makes it harder and harder for Joel and Clementine to escape the memory wipe; Caden not only ends up living in a small closet but also suffers the death of his daughter and then his mother.

The third act presents the hero with a temporary glimmer of hope: Craig, posing as Malkovich, is a successful puppeteer with Maxine as his wife; Joel and Clementine promise to meet again after the memory wipe; Caden befriends Tammy, the actress playing Hazel in his play, and even makes amends with the latter. The hope then vanishes with the coming of a major shock: Dr Lester kidnaps Maxine to force Craig out of Malkovich; Joel and Clementine discover their Lacuna tapes and with them, the inevitable failure of their relationship; with Sammy and Hazel’s deaths, Caden loses his control over the play before his cast and crew suddenly die. Finally, the narrative ends with unity and failure: Lotte and Maxine start a family while Craig is a prisoner in the mind of their daughter; Joel and Clementine are a couple again, but with the knowledge that their relationship may fail all over again; Caden sits with his last surviving cast member and the knowledge that he will never finish his masterwork before he dies.

Propp, Hollywood, and Kaufman

There is a strong fundamental connection between Propp’s archetype and the classical narrative structure of Hollywood cinema. Both run on a strict logic of cause and effect, both feature clearly-defined character roles whose actions and relationships drive the story forward, and both involve a protagonist journeying to defeat an antagonistic force and thereby (or thereupon) achieve their goals. Kaufman’s narrative structure neither completely conforms to this archetype, nor does it defy every element of it. As Dzialo states, Kaufman’s writing follows certain aspects of a traditional archetype (Dzialo, 2009, p. 107). However, Kaufman’s own narrative structure also reworks parts of this archetype and the several ways in which it does so reveal the kind of storyteller Kaufman is in comparison to classical Hollywood.

One of the main aspects that Kaufman’s narrative structure shares with the Proppian Hollywood archetype is a general cause-effect logic, though Kaufman’s is less strict than that of a classical structure. The hero’s compounding struggle, for example: in a classical structure the villain would specifically and directly be responsible, but Kaufman’s heroes tend to bring it upon themselves; whether by converting to villainy (Malkovich), impulsively breaking a prior agreement (Eternal Sunshine), or succumbing to their own emotional turmoil (Synecdoche). Then there is the worsening of the hero’s situation: rather than this resulting from the villain’s interference, Kaufman derives this from a sense of inevitability or repercussion; whether it be Craig’s guilt following the consequences of his actions, Lacuna’s process being inescapable once Joel has allowed it, or Caden losing his family after neglecting his and Claire’s marriage.

A more specific similarity between Kaufman and the Proppian Hollywood model is the journey of a goal-oriented protagonist to overcome an antagonistic force. Craig endeavours to profit from the Malkovich portal both to self-actualise and to end his financial troubles. Joel enlists the service of Lacuna initially to subject his memories of Clementine to – but later to save them from – the memory erasure process. Caden sets out to create his greatest ever stage production to self-actualise and overcome his fears of underachievement, while also setting out to reunite with his family and separate his daughter from Maria’s corruptive influence. But a conventional structure ends with a clear-cut victory for the protagonist, while Kaufman’s stories end with a sense of uncertainty about – and even denial of – said victory. At the end of Malkovich, Craig is one of the few characters who is not victorious due to his conversion to villainy. Joel and Clementine’s victory at the end of Eternal Sunshine is temporary and oxymoronic due to their relationship being caught in a cycle of break-up-make-up, as symbolised in the ending shot of the two running in the snow over and over. The ending of Synecdoche completely denies Caden his victory; instead, he dies having never finished his opus or reunited with his family.

The obvious distinction between the Proppian Hollywood archetype and Kaufman’s unique narrative structure, as discussed in the above sections, is the approach to character roles. A conventional structure is usually quite specific in the definition of its character roles and the relationships between them. The villain endangers the princess, the dispatcher sends the hero on their journey, the hero battles the villain to save the princess, and so on. Although Propp does note the possibility in some cases for a degree of flexibility with the distributions of these functions (Propp, 1968, pp. 80-82), traditional character roles nonetheless fall into clear and easily definable categories. Kaufman distributes character roles with much more ambiguity and fluidity. Characters like Craig and Lacuna shift into the complete opposite roles from their original ones, going from heroes or donors to villains. Some character roles are much more debatable: does Maxine aiding Craig in his exploitation of the portal make her as much a villain as a helper? Do Clementine’s suggestions for escaping the memory wipe define her as a helper, or does her status as the object of pursuit and rescue confine her to the role of the princess? Characters like Caden, Claire, and Hazel fall short of their functions; ultimately, they are unable to achieve their goals or help others succeed in their endeavours.

The core difference between Kaufman and Propp, however, is the underlying philosophy that motivates the approach to narrative structure. The traditional model is consistently either fantastical or realistic. Kaufman uses a realistic set-up to facilitate a disruptive transformation of his story worlds into fantasy. The traditional model presents clearly-defined character roles to tie human actions to a strict view of morality. Kaufman mixes and reverses character roles to convey the ambiguity and subjectivity of morality. The conventional model places narrative functions into a rigid structure to convey a symbolic order it perceives to be objective. Kaufman reorders narrative functions according to his own unique, karmic view of reality. The traditional model concludes its stories with the hero’s victory to enforce a positive worldview concerning the triumph of righteous motivations and moral values. Kaufman injects his endings with a sense of failure and uncertainty to convey the fallibility of human nature and the resulting struggles of life. The narrative philosophy of Hollywood and Propp is one of optimism and the reliability of a symbolic order. Kaufman’s narrative philosophy, on the other hand, is one of nihilism and the inescapability of human flaws.

 

Conclusion

Charlie Kaufman’s unique story structure is a corruption of the traditional Proppian archetype that shapes the narratives of classical Hollywood cinema. The varying levels of complexity in Kaufman’s films reflect their idiosyncratic narrative logic that derives from the screenwriter’s pessimistic view of life’s confusing and hostile nature; a view in opposition to the ideology of comfort, objectivity, and optimism that typifies the conventional story structure. Some of Kaufman’s characters shift between roles that would normally be in opposition, while others fall short of the expectations of the roles they occupy. In Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine, and Synecdoche, the order of narrative functions differs not only from the Proppian archetype that typifies Hollywood classicism, but it differs between the three films as well. At the same time, however, there are also common denominators that detail how all three films contribute to a story structure that is specific to Kaufman. The narrative of each film may follow the journey of a goal-oriented protagonist in their quest to overcome an antagonistic force, but it is uncertain if their triumph is absolute or if they even triumph at all.

Kaufman’s specific narrative structure focuses on the fluidity and unreliability of rigid character roles; the reordering of a conventional story model to create a more individual model; the rejection of any objective symbolic order in favour of a subjective worldview; a deviation from the clarity and optimism in the endings of the hero’s quest in classical cinema. All these idiosyncrasies reveal a pessimistic philosophy that influences the choices of the screenwriter in building their own narrative structure. Kaufman’s reworking of the Proppian Hollywood model and his defiance of its comforting logic that promotes moral objectivity is indicative of the harsh worldview that governs these films. To Kaufman, human beings are fallible, mercurial, and prone to moral ambiguity. Life is confusing, difficult, and unpredictable. Crucially, as opposed to the joyous endings of Propp and Hollywood, Kaufman’s view of life is that people do not always get what they want.

 

FILMOGRAPHY

Being John Malkovich (1999). Directed by Spike Jonze [Film]. USA: Universal Pictures

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Directed by Michel Gondry [Film]. USA: Universal Pictures

Synecdoche, New York (2008). Directed by Charlie Kaufman [Film]. USA: Sony Pictures Classics

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Books

Hill, D. (2008) Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood's Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists and Dreamers. Harpenden: Kamera Books.

King, G. (2009) Indiewood, USA. New York: I.B. Tauris and Co. Ltd.

Propp, V. (1968) Morphology of the Folktale. 2^nd edn. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Chapter in Book

Dzialo, C. (2009) ‘“Frustrated Time” Narration: The Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman’, in Buckland, W (ed.) Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp. 107-128.

Journal Articles

Wollen, P. (1982) ‘Hybrid Plots in Psycho’, Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-strategies. London: Verso, pp. 35-39.

Wollen, P. (1982) ‘North by Northwest: A Morphological Analysis’, Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-strategies. London: Verso, pp. 18-33.