Character

In my opinion, the main character(s) are very important to introduce within the opening of a film in which the intended focus of the film is the characters and/or their actions. This is because, in most cases, whoever the audience is introduced to first is the character they tend to have the most of a connection with, and this is the whole reason they want to keep watching to the end. Even if the film follows Todorov's narrative structure, when we know an equilibrium will be restored at the end, that connection with the character is incredibly important - we want to see how they ultimately overcome the bad things that happen to them, and we want to see them develop in themselves. However, in some films this isn't true - if the audience is first introduced to the bad characters, they are done so in a way in which will create dislike for them, and so they'll be rooting for someone good to come and 'save the day'. In films where the focus lies elsewhere, e.g. the location/scenery, we are introduced to that first instead - however, few films tend to focus on things other than characters, as it's an incredibly easy way to get someone to relate to and engage with the film - since, the characters are often like them in many ways.

Character profile of: Sara (Requiem for a Dream, 2000)
Sara Goldfarb is the mother of the main character, Harry, in Requiem for a Dream. She is a widow, with not much money, who spends most of her time sitting in an armchair in front of the TV watching diet shows. Once she gets a call from a TV show she enjoys, asking if she can appear on it, she decides to lose weight to fit into a red dress she wore to Harry's graduation. There really isn’t anything wrong with Sara at first; she just wants to lose a few pounds, misses her husband and wishes she saw more of her son. However, her mental state falls as she falls prey to a doctor who prescribes her diet pills too fast, resulting in her quickly spiralling into addiction.

I think what makes Sara so interesting as a character is the fact that she's so ordinary, yet her life is so out of control. She appears to become obsessed easily - first with her TV shows and her son coming to visit, second her red dress, and third, food and the diet pills. This makes her an unusual character to watch as we can relate to her in the fact that she is like a lot of people's mothers/grandmothers - she's widowed, with a son, and she lives on her own. However, the addition of her being obsessed with diet shows, pills, her red dress, and food almost juxtaposes this, which is why we find her so interesting. Also, the fact that we feel sorry for her in the beginning (because she's lonely, her son keeps stealing from her, and she can't fit into the dress that means so much to her) makes her a lot more iconic as a character, as when she spirals into diet drugs we feel very protective as if she's our own mother or grandmother.

Sara adds to the narrative of the film as she gives us a whole new plot to follow. While her son, Harry, is addicted to hard drugs, Sara becomes addicted to diet pills, which has similar, if not worse effects. This is very effective in terms of adding to the narrative, as people don't tend to see diet pills as particularly bad, but after seeing the effect it has on Sara, especially how similar it is presented to her son's drug addiction, we get a sense of how serious it actually is.

In the opening two minutes of Requiem for a Dream, we are introduced to Sara. The first thing we find out about her is that she has a son, called Harry (or Harold as she calls him), and he is stealing her TV set. She comes across as quite paranoid and scared, as she has chained her TV set to the radiator - we can figure out that it's not the first time her son has done this, and certainly won't be the last.


Character profile of: Caden (Synecdoche, New York, 2008)
Caden Cotard is a theatre director. At the beginning of the film, he lives at home with his wife (an artist), and his young daughter, Olive. After sucessfully producing his own version of Death of a Salesman, he receives a McArthur grant, and tries to create a play in which he can be brutally honest, realistic, and encompass his whole self. He does this by setting up a small version of New York in a warehouse, replicating real life. However, his life begins to falls apart more and more - his wife is now his ex, his daughter is growing up somewhere in Berlin, and his body is falling apart. As he buries himself deeper and deeper into his masterpiece, he begins to confuse real life with his play, which is populated with dopplegangers and small replicas of the real world.

To me, Caden is such an iconic character because he is what makes us draw all the main conclusions and ideas that Kaufman is trying to present - our lives have no meaning apart from what we bring to it, and there is no higher power that will make it make sense. He represents realism in the way that he is unglamourized, but not in the way that we would expect from a film - he seems to be unintentionally imperfect, portraying the idea that beauty and fascination in a person's life, such as the one Caden creates in his warehouse, doesn't lie in dingy streets or clogged gutters, but in the small imperfections that are everywhere. Caden makes us deeply consider life, death and our connections with people, through just being an ordinary person with a vision, and this is why I think he is such an iconic character.


Caden adds a lot to the narrative of Synecdoche, New York - he is the main character, and the whole film is based around him and his connections with his family, friends, co-workers, and his life. He makes the plot a lot richer, deeper and intense, and he is someone that we pity, empathize with, and love at the same time.

In the opening two minutes, we learn about Caden's normal life. The first part of the opening sequence is him waking up and going downstairs - in this, we learn that he isn't particularly well off, as his house seems quite small and dingy. The radio is playing when he wakes up, and a shot of him in bed that lasts a while allows us to hear the person on the radio say, 'It's seen as the beginning of the end', along with many other quite dark phrases, which tells us that maybe something bad will happen to Caden. After he goes downstairs, we learn that he has a wife, and a child called Olive.

Character profile of: Tyler Durden (Fight Club, 1999)
Tyler Durden is introduced to the main character, the Narrator, after there is an explosion at his flat, and Tyler offers him a place to stay. They meet on an airplane, on one of the Narrator's business trips, where Tyler reveals that he makes and sells soap for a living. Tyler lives in a broken down, abandoned house, and takes a very primitive approach to life - believing we life in a materialistic society, and that to truly evolve, we need to strip everything right back to the basics. They begin a club for recreational fighting, and off of it springs a project to disrupt society, called 'Project Mayhem'. However, near to the end of the film, it is revealed that Tyler is actually an insomia-driven creation of the Narrator - an idealistic version of him, and everything that he wants to be.

Tyler is an iconic character in my opinion, because he brings up a lot of interesting points about the society that we live in. He makes the audience consider the fact that we don't necessarily need to be as materialistic as we are, and he also makes us question the way that society is run. Because we relate to the Narrator so much in the beginning in the way that he hates his job and is bored with his life, we tend to automatically want to listen to what Tyler says when he is revealed as the Narrator's 'second personality'.

Tyler is a very iconic part of the narrative. He not only makes the Narrator's life a lot more interesting, and adds a lot of depth to it, but he also provides an incredible plot twist near the end, which changes almost everything about the film. He provides the main theories and ideas in the film, as it's entirely based around the transition of action from conformation to anarchy, showing his importance, as without him, the development would have gone a lot slower/not happened at all.

In the opening sequence, we aren't introduced to Tyler at all. He is in the beginning scene, but he isn't in camera - the audience doesn't know that it's him, unless they have seen the film before. However, this is effective in terms of character development, as when we are introduced to Tyler later on in the film (if you recognise his voice from the start), we are left with a lot of questions - the relationship between Tyler and the Narrator is incredibly different to what is shown in the opening sequence.