Chinatown Narrative

A Critical Analysis of ‘Chinatown’ (directed by Roman Polanski) and its Narrative

Chinatown is best described as a crime thriller as it is full to the brim with deception and illegal business that fills the narrative with twists and turns that are so reminiscent of the thriller genre.

The narrative of a film is its storyline, how it is told and from whose perspective. A simple narrative will usually begin with an introduction where everything is fine and normal which then turns problematic because of a conflict or event, then there will be a climax and at the end of the narrative the problem will be resolved; for example Goldie Locks would have a very simple narrative. At the beginning the bears go out all happy for a picnic and Goldie Locks enters the house all happy and not aware that she is doing anything wrong when eating their porridge and sleeping in their beds, until the bears come home (problem) and find their porridge eaten and her asleep in their bed (climax), but they resolve this when in the end she runs all the way back to her own home. This example of a simple Narrative is extremely different from that of ‘Chinatown’ because Chinatown has a very complex plot with many ups and downs, twists and turns which make it such a brilliant film.

In ‘Chinatown’ the narrative is presented in the eyes of J.J. Gittes so this is a very subjective narrative we can see this in many different shots for example when Gittes is driving the car you see through the windscreen as if you were looking through his eyes, also we see the events through his eyes, we flinch when his nose is cut and we feel repulsed when we find out that Mrs. Mulwray’s daughter is also her sister! The use of this type of narrative leads us into the story and connects us with the characters as if they were real. However with this type of narrative you only get one side of the story and one perspective, and even though Gittes is the most interesting character in the plot and is obviously the best choice for the subjective narrative to be based around, the audience still only receive his perspective and cannot know what is going through some of the characters heads even though we can guess, on top of this it is a biased view of the characters and plots that surround Gittes and he influences our opinions of the characters, for example Detective Loach the arrogant police detective who is in competition with Gittes comes across as a cocky idiot but from another persons narrative his partner for example he would come across as completely different.

The subjective Narrative is typical of thrillers and it is very popular to use an internal monologue like in ‘Sin City’ (directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez), and ‘Layer Cake’ (directed by Matthew Vaughn). Internal monologues draw us into the plot and the mind of the character, this is extremely effective in ‘Sin City’ with the monologues of all the men with gruff voices add an eerie, tension as there is only a faint sound of the background except the voice this draws us into their life and the storyline, this is why they are very typical of the thriller genre. The Narration in the first person by a male protagonist in both ‘Layer Cake’ and ‘Sin City’ is also a characteristic of the thriller genre as the voice of the men adds depth to the plot and also adds to the bleak atmosphere of many thrillers. Another type of Narrative that I have briefly mentioned before is the spiraling, twisting, turning narrative that is full of mystery and intrigue every single thriller has this sort of narrative and is how we classify a thriller, this is because the twists in the plot as in Chinatown draw you deeper into the lives of the characters and helps the audience to form an understanding of all the characters. The mystery and intrigue helps build tension and the theme of corruption, deceit and moral ambiguity, this is very evident in the film ‘Reservoir Dogs’ directed by Quentin Tarantino. In any film it is very important to get the narrative right because if you have a brilliant plot for a film but you tell it from the wrong characters perspective it can spoil the film. So using the subjective narrative from the point of view from J.J. Gittes in Chinatown was the right choice and is the factor that holds the brilliant plot together.

To conclude the narrative in Chinatown is very clever as it gets the audience involved in the action through Gittes’s eyes and it fits in brilliantly with the theme as the whole film revolves around him and his investigation and was the obvious choice for the subjective narrative. This film could have used an internal monologue as that would fit in with the thriller genre however I believe one of the great things about this film is that it keeps you guessing.