A Film as an "Unfinished Script": theProblem of Composition

Abstract

There is an interesting tendency in the cinema of the 21st century first decade. We see the appearance of films based on the modification of the "film about film" theme which can be tentatively defined as "a film as an unfinished scriptn. The film's subject is the process of its creation. There are five particularly obvious examples: "Adaptation" (Spike Jonze, 2002), "A Movie about the Movies" (V. Rubinchik, 2002), "Reconstruction" (Chrisofler Вое, 2003), "Waiter" (Alex van Warmerdam, 2006) and "Stranger than Fiction" (M. Forster, 2006). The article investigates the peculiarities of these films' composition, the principles of the plot and attempts to understand the sources of this phenomenon in the cinema of the recent years.