Polyphonism of Narrative in Documentary Cine-Text (Exemplified by the Poeta Maximus Film)

Abstract

Narrative in the film text is considered as a story on interconnected events occurring within specific space-time frames involving the author, narrator and characters. The intermedial nature of documentary filmmaking complicates its analysis in the coordinates of any research paradigms. However, polyphonism as the means of creating an integral idea on a cultural product should be singled out among the universal categories. The specific character of the polyphonic narration in the biographical portrait film consists in the actualization of the plot-creating motif of memory, in particular, the creation of a common memory on the hero’s life. Compositional and plot schematicity is actually the pragmatic aspect of using a polyphonic narrative. It is convenient technologically for the authors of films, especially in cyclical documentary TV projects, to adhere to the developed narrative scheme of the screen story. This process of production/consumption of media products belongs to the clichéd forms of communication. The use of polyphony has become a part of the format for some documentary cycles and their regular viewers habitually read such an audiovisual polyphonic narrative. This makes it possible to be adjusted easily to the perception of a stereoscopic picture of events, a dimensional presentation of the story of the hero of a biographical or historical documentary. The authoress’s vision of the realization of the polyphonism of the film narrative in the documentary Poeta Maximus (2008) from the series Game of Fate is submitted in the article. It is concluded that there is a certain plot-compositional scheme of organization of audiovisual polyphonic narrative in the serial. Transposition (transition from the direct speech of the presenter in the picture area to off-screen commenting), imposition (simultaneous use of the chronicle of the epoch with off-screen reading of an excerpt from the artistic text), combination (simultaneous use of photographs and video fragments on the screen) are fixed among the specific figures of the screen narration in the analyzed documentary. The event analysis of the Poeta Maximus film (2008) has made it possible to draw a conclusion about the significant event saturation and melodramatic motifs of the film.