In many ways, the strategies of Mrs. Dalloway reflect the strategies I am trying to employ in my film. Virginia Woolf seems to effortlessly weave together a multitudinous collection of experiences, memories, and impressions from multiple perspectives. She accomplishes this through employing poetic prose that illustrate the mysterious yet undeniable connection between our subjective thoughts and the physical/visual world. The green dress Clarissa mends reawakens Richard’s contempt for her life style; the pen-knife Richard toys with reminds Clarissa of her annoyance to his oblivious attitude. This is not only done convincingly with each of the book’s central characters but also with people who seem to be there only by happenstance, such when the airplane flies over London and we are privy to the brief musings of a those who see it.
Any detail can ignite within us an emotion or recollection because, as isolated as we may feel from each other’s subjective experience, we all draw understanding from the same universe that produced us all.
I too want to incorporate this polyphonous view in my film. In some ways I have simplified the task and in other ways I have complicated it. Since my script focuses on the shared history of two siblings, the subjective comparison on a shared world is almost literal. However, where Woolf blends emotion and perception with poetic pros, I want to do the same with projected images retrained dailogue, which at the moment feels more opaque (although a certain amount of inaccessibility is permitted if not required).
Where character and visual impression cohabitate so well in Mrs. Dalloway, I’m developing them separately. It will take time before I can start to blend them, which in short means that my project is a fragmented mess at this moment. I remind myself that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing and that I should not shackle myself to the high standards of matching the level Woolf’s composition.
I’m still trying to access the multitude of perspective within myself.