Vantage Point

Have you ever watched this movie? Yeaah, this movie released on 2008 and became box office. Anyway, it is often shown on the TV but I watch it again in my Movie Interpretation class, and the assignment is analyzing the narrative elements such as point of view, setting, and plot and plot structure. Today is the deadline of this assignment submission, even though I don't really master in doing analysis of this movie but I did the assignment, because beside I'm interested to do, doing this assignment is a MUST. I don't know whether my analysis is right or not, I'm gonna show you my analysis ... enjoy reading . . . feel free to leave a comment for this . . .

Narrative Elements Part 1 Analysis :

VANTAGE POINT

 by Haniah Hamidah Sahid

INTRODUCTION

Vantage Point is a movie which has type parallel storytelling of editorial technique. Parallel story telling is a type of editorial techniques which serves a movie by giving two events (characters also) or more happens in the same time which have correlation. It is proved by existance of many perspectives which were used. We have to look at the movie which is replied several times starting at 12:00 then it is continued by different stories depend on whom perspective. It is clear to claim that Vantage Point uses parallel storytelling in editorial technique, the events that happen in the same time are the activity that uses point of view of his/her, those include perspective of Rex Brooks, Thomas Barnes’, Enrique’s, Howard Lewis’, President Ashton’s,  and the terrorists’ (Javier’s, Sam’s and Kent Taylor’s).

POINT OF VIEW

This movie uses omniscient narration or point of view because we, as the audience, know everything in the movie. It can happen because we see the events by looking at each character’s point of view or perspective. Since this movie has many points of view, if the audience miss one of the point of view, they will still understand the story of the movie because we have other characters’ point of view which correlate to one another. This point of view gives effect of anxiety because we’ve known what will happen next but the characters haven’t, so there will be a sense of willingness to tell the characters about what is going to happen even though we cannot do that.  Although it also gives ‘mystery’ sense or a curiosity to the audience, it is not caused by restricted point of view, but because it is a action or thriller movie.

SETTING

The setting of Vantage Point is in Salamanca, Spain. The setting sets at noon (12:00 a.m) and on an event of International treaty about terrorism action. The condition there is so crowded that being provided many policeman to control the condition of  the public square besides to guide the U.S President.

PLOT AND PLOT STRUCTURE

A.   PLOT

 Every movie has a story absolutely – an introduction, climax, and a resolution, but beside that, of course every single movie has plot, and the structure is different from one movie to another movie, depends on the way of the director serves the movie. Yet, basically the plot of movie includes fabula and syuzhet. Fabula is the chronogical story of the character in the movie and we will not find any flashback here, so the story is just going on chronogically. If the movie is not shown chronogically, that means we should arrange the arrangement of the story by ourselves. While syuzhet is the way of the director orders the events in the movie, such as from climax suddenly flashback to the introduction, then back again to the climax to continue to the resolution. These are the fabula and the syuzhet of Vantage Point :

FABULA

Since it is a parallel storytelling, we should decide which one is the main character to follow his/her perspective in order to make the fabula (chronogical story). Here I chose Thomas Barnes as the main character, so I will follow his point of view to arrange the story chronogically and I make the diagram for the fabula, this is the diagram :

Explanation of the diagram :

1.       Thomas was asked to prepare himself to be an secret agent for President U.S then he recalled the memory of shooting tragedy that happened to Thomas Barnes last year.

2.       Thomas Barnes was preparing for becoming a secret agent for International treaty in Spain.

3.       Thomas Barnes controlled the situation and started being skeptic.

4.       Shooting happened then the situation on the Plaza Mayor was disordered.

5.       Coming Enrique and Thomas attacked him.

6.       There was a bomb in the hotel of President Ashton.

7.       Kent went to look for the shooter but actually to change his uniform.

8.       Thomas came to Howard to check his video camera then bombing happened in the podium.

9.       Thomas checked the recording on GNN, here Thomas knew that Kent disguised into a local police.

10.   Thomas chased Kent who were going to pick Javier up.

11.   Kent and Javier met Enrique in the underpass, here Enrique was killed by Javier, then Javier was killed by Thomas and Kent was killed when his car hit a wall.

12.   Came Veronica and Sam with President Ashton and their ambulance got an accident, here Veronica and Sam were killed.

13.   Thomas helped President Ashton.

SYUZHET

Since syuzhet is plot of the story which has the order of events in the movie, so the arrangement of the syuzhet is just the same as the director shows the movie for us. For Vantage Point, the story was started by the perspective of Rex Brooks, then after several minutes the story was dragged  back to at 12:00 and it’s continued by the perspective of Thomas Barnes, then back again at 12:00 with the Enrique’s perspective, then back at 12:00 with Howard Lewis’ perspective, after that back again in the time of 12:00 with the perspective of President Ashton and finally back again at 12:00 with the perspective of the terrorists included Javier, Sam and Kent Taylor, then the movie is continued by chronogical story without back again at 12:00 until finally the terrorists were killed and Thomas Barnes was succesfully helping and safing President Ashton.

B.    PLOT STRUCTURE

After having done with the fabula and the syzhet, it means we understand the story, and we will understand the plot structure also. Plot structure itself is the written form of the diagram that we have in the fabula analysis. So, here the plot structure is the whole story of the movie that uses one perspective, that is Thomas Barnes because I chose him as the main character of this story.

REFLECTION

This movie is a movie which has strong plot to tell the story. It’s not easy to be analyzed because there are many events happen in the same time following the characters’ perspective (parallel storytelling). However it is really interesting and challenging to be analyzed. By doing this project I am forced to be more critical in seeing every single details of the storry, the result is I understand the lesson material of Narration part 1, those are about point of view, setting and plot and plot structure.