fastidium

The pattern of storytelling we are accustomed to in the West was put down in writing almost 2500 years ago in Aristotle’s classic treatment on epic poetry and tragedy, his Poetics. What Aristotle meant by ‘tragedy’ was what we call drama today.

To this day, screenwriters still use his insights into how audience’s will react to movies. They are not a set of rules; Aristotle simply understood how audiences respond to drama. And, not only can Aristotle’s insights into story telling help you write that next blockbuster script but they can enhance one’s enjoyment of movies in general. Its not hard to diagram a good movie and see how it follows these basic elements of storytelling.

To illustrate this, I’ll use a fairly recent movie, The Departed. Its the story of two young police officers, Billy Costigan Jr. and Colin Sullivan (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon). Costigan and Sullivan are playing on different sides of the law. Costigan is an undercover agent trying to get into the good graces of mobster Frank Costello (played by Jack Nicholson). Sullivan is a mole within the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) and tips off Costello to any thing that might be of useful information to the Irish mob. As the story progresses and moles are discovered in both sides, violence and bloodshed are the only ways to figure out where loyalties lie.

The Poetics tells us that a good story should involve two distinct movements, the complication and the denouement. The complication involves a first cause of action and a final cause of action; that is, the first major event within the story that sets the plot in motion and a final event where the story unravels and the end is in sight. This final event usually concerns a central character’s moral conflict that developed as the plot was thickening.

Let’s go through some simple steps with diagnosing The Departed.

What is the first cause of action?

The first cause of action within a story is a self-initiated event that sets the entire plot in motion. Its probably not the very first event because story tellers almost always have to include some background for character development prior to this event. In The Departed, this first cause of action is the interview process that both Costigan and Sullivan go through with Captain Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sgt. Sean Dignam (Mark Wahlberg). We’ve seen some background scenes where Frank Costello places a small selection of young men to be moles in the MSP as cadets. Aristotle called this the prologue, it connects the back story to the front story (i.e., the plot action). In the interview, Queenan and Dignam are sure that Costigan is a mob informant because of his family background. This sets in motion the dilemma of finding out who is the real mole.

What is the final cause of action?

From the first cause, the plot of a story moves in a steady progression until the major conflict of the story occurs, the final cause of action. This is where the dilemma comes front and center, fortunes change, and choices by characters alter the ending significantly.

In The Departed, the plot moves along from the first cause quite nicely. The inclusion of the police therapist, Madolyn Madden (Vera Farmiga), helps to keep the two lives connected to each other. You might think that the final cause of action in the story is when both sides realize that they each have a mole but that’s just part of the plot movement. The final cause of action in The Departed happens when Sullivan calls Costigan on his cell phone and realizes who Costello’s mole is. From there, its a race for Sullivan to close up any loose ends and prevent Costigan from telling anyone about himself.

The complication and the denouement

Now that we know what the first and final cause of action are, we can lay the story out like Aristotle would. Simply put, the complication is the plot movement from first cause to final cause, the denouement is everything that happens after the final cause until the end. But we can go further than just labeling parts of a story.

After the first cause of action, the plot should be unified in a way that drives us to that final conflict that will come in the final action. Each event should be necessary or more-likely than not to push the story along. We shouldn’t get bogged down with further background information or scenes that have no relevance to the plot movement. The complication should be setting us up, it should be playing with our emotions.

The final cause should make us sit up on the edge of our seats. Its where we know that things have to be settled and it initiates the denouement. ‘Denouement’ literally means the untying. Its where our tensions should be released and we start to know that things have to be resolved. If the complication is what toys with our emotions, the denouement is where we start using our rational side to think about the larger questions that a story is trying to answer.

What’s the action idea?

Aristotle said that good writers serve the story, not their own agendas. Their task is to reveal truths about human experience and bring the audience to catharsis with their stories. A drama should make us think about dilemmas in our own lives as it climaxes and drives to its final conclusion.

But Aristotle was also certain that its not the characters themselves that make the story. They are necessary elements to telling the story but its the plot movement, character decisions, and moral conflict that tell the story, not the traits, professions, or predispositions of the characters that make a story worthy of being told. A good story is always greater than the sum of its characters and setting.

Its to this end that Aristotle would examine a movie in terms of its action idea. What kind of truth is it conveying? If we were to examine The Departed, what truth is it conveying about human experience?

I think the action idea of The Departed is simply that loyalty is a precious commodity. It could also be that loyalty runs deep. What do you think? I’m not sure about it but I think Aristotle would agree that a story’s action idea can be several things all at once.

Conclusion

We’ve looked at several key components of good storytelling as Aristotle would see it. Its fun to examine some of your favorite dramatic movies with this structure and it helps you to understand the screenwriting process.

One outcome of this analysis (and you should try it yourselves) is that Aristotle would probably hate what we know as romantic comedies. Though not necessarily dramas, this genre of movie usually tries to follow a pattern of first cause of action, final action, resolution. If you look closely, however, there’s nothing really universal being communicated in these movies except maybe “love conquers all”. I’m not saying that these movies aren’t entertaining because they are, its just that Aristotle probably wouldn’t think very highly of them.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, there’s a handy book called Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters by Michael Tierno. I’ve read the Poetics myself but this little book helped me to understand it more clearly.

Happy movie analyzing.