I watched Eve’s Bayou, it was the only movie I could get my hands on since I am not in the United States. I’ve watched it before but it was different watching it with a purpose and a structured thought process. What type of dramatic structure does the film have – linear, episodic or thematic? Pick out any 2 successive scenes you think prove your opinion – analyze the transition from them to show how what links them is a contextual idea, an episodic shift from one storyline to another, or a direct logical cause and effect relationship.
I feel Eve’s Bayou has a linear structure with narrative representation. The movie begins with a voice over sayinl feel Eve’s Bayou has a linear structure with narrative representation. The movie begins with a voice over saying “Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others imprinted indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father | was 10 years old. My brother Poe was 9, and my sister Cisely has just turned 14. ” The voice over was the character Eve as an adult, she narrates various parts of the movie. From the opening credits Eve set’s the tone, place and time.
This film covers a specific amount of time and a particular situation/event, its scenes run as if you witnessed a day to day, week to week, event to event, and or cause and affect action by action. A one step at a time kind of chronological kind of order, with narrations and flashes in to a psychic future realm. However not so chronological that if you missed a scene you would be lost but moreover you would have missed some important or interesting fact about the movie. The first successive scene || would like to point out is one towards the beginning of the film.
Eve was talking to her sister Cesily about how she saw her father and Mrs Maddie (another woman) having sex in the shed while her mother, family and friends were inside the house. Eve was clearly distraught and emotional, telling her sister what she saw and Cisely stops her and says no that’s not what you saw or what happened. The camera then pans from them and goes back in time to the incident. It’s almost as if paned and move in a lazy Susan type of motion. In this scene Cisely explains to her sister Eve that what she actually saw was drunken harmless motions between their father and Mrs Maddie looking and dropping a bottle of wine.
The second scene that I proves this is a linear structured film is when Eve is with her father at work who is a local doctor. While he is attending to a patient in bed, ve watches the female patient act sick but peculiar with her father. Watching the film you know she is seriously flirting with him but Eve’s character is young and naive and doesn’t see the obvious flirting but knows something up. As they are about to leave the woman asks can the doctor give her something for her pain, he stops and walks over to the door and just before he closes it he tells Eve to go wait outside. these two scenes confirm to me that this is a linear film.
The first scene I describe Eve’s perception of her father is shattered but somewhat saved by the purposefully mismisinterpretation by her sister. Only to get an apocolyptic confirmation of what kind of man her father really is. 4. Whose story is this? Is the title appropriate? How do you determine whose story this really is? Cite a scene or moment in the film that supports this view. This is somewhat difficult because I kind of feel it’s everyone’s story (all the characters) but if it can only be one’s story then it would have to be Eve’s. She starts the film off narrating, the time, place, situation, tone and mood.
Not only is Eve attached to most of the scenes but it is also the adult Eve who intermittently narrates through the movie that lead me to believe this is her story. The movie is appropriately titled for two reasons I think, one it’s Eve’s store from her perspective and the setting location of where the event takes place is Eve’s Bayou. Two major parts in the film that stand out to me to support this is Eve starts the movie off and ends the movie with her narrating. The other scene is where the mother and sister-in-law are leaving town heading back to the house the camera shows a on coming bus with the location being Eve’s Bayou.
