On Subjectivisation in Film Again

Tomasz Kłys

Abstract

Robert Birkholc’s book Podwójna perspektywa. O subiektywizacji zapośredniczonej w filmie [The Double Perspective. On Mediated Subjectivisation in Film] (2019) is devoted to the use of a functional equivalent of the literary device of free indirect speech in narrative film. The author projects this topic onto the broader background of subjectivization in the fiction film (i.e. the different techniques of subjective narration in film history and the history of this topic in film studies). Birkholc calls this film equivalent of free indirect speech “mediated subjectivisation”. He describes this category against a reflection on the relationship between the perspective of the narrative instance and the perspective of the film character. The author uses the notions of external and internal focalization, borrowed from the theory of literature. The category of internal focalization and its differentiation into narrativisation, personification and subjectivisation is the final and decisive tool for the meticulous analyses of five films in the second part of the book; according to the author, the formal dominant of these films is the mediated subjectivisation.