Smurto vaizdavimas kine: Nicolaso Windingo Refno atvejis ; Violence in cinema: the case of nicolas winding refn

Abstract

Violence was always a popular theme in movies. Nevertheless, through the history of cinema, we can track an everlasting critique of violent images. Since the beginning of the 20th century, violent cinema has been under constant political pressure, that required implementation of a strict censorship mechanism. That is why we can boldly state, that violent cinema is fundamentally connected to political questions of censorship and political order. By analyzing cinema violence, we raise questions about political concepts like fiction/reality, permitted/prohibited, moral/amoral and normal/abnormal. Usually, critics of violent cinema claim that violent films are a meaningless, but a dangerous product, that can transgress into reality. For example, violent movies can inspire the spectator to repeat the things that he saw on the screen. But such claims a priori deny the possibility that violent movies can become an original examination of violence itself. In this paper we claim that ultraviolent movies can raise an original discussion about the phenomenon of violence. This is where the problem of this paper arises. The goal of this paper is to critically analyze five ultraviolent movies made by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, and to examine how he creates his violent cinema. By investigating the relationship between narrative and violent images, we raise the question, do violent images inevitably become a meaningless and a dangerous object. The narratalogical analysis of five ultraviolent movies proves that movie violence can help the spectator raise important intellectual questions: who is responsible for viewing violent images, is the narrative and violence related and so on. This proves that cinema violence is more concerned with the cognitive processes of the creator or the spectator than with reality. And this gives ground for the criticism of mimetical theory of images and reality and the claim that movie violence is an insensible and dangerous product. This inquiry raises the question of the legitimacy of censorship of violent images. The originality of this paper comes in the methodological investigation of violent images, that is usually ignored by other researchers.