Cinematic techniques in A snow garden by Rachel Joyce

books that were in one way or another affected by cinematography (for example, F.S.Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, who not only wrote film scripts but also made extensive use of cinematic techniques in their prose). Christine Mary Gibson points out that ‘cinema appears to have affected writing techniques in four general areas: the visual, the presentation of time, sound, and assembling or editing’ [Gibson 1974: 35]. ‘Assembling’ and ‘editing’ correspond to the technique of montage, discovered by cinematography but also widely used in other arts, such as literature and theatre. The technique that deserves special attention is undoubtedly cross-cutting, which is based on switching between the action happening simultaneously in different locations. Another cinematic technique closely related to montage is the alternation of long and medium shots and close-ups, providing more general, panoramic views and, on the contrary, more direct and focused views. As for time, not only does time become reversible through flashbacks, it can also go faster, slower or freeze or provide the viewer/reader with glimpses into the future through flashforwards [Gibson 1974: 38]. Moreover, ‘cinematic fiction’ makes a special emphasis on the present tense, sometimes resorting to ‘second-by-second narration of events’ [Gibson 1974: 38].

Another point of influence is the focalization shifts or multiple viewpoints: ‘the camera’s constant and obvious dependence on point of view has surely been one of the factors in making writers more aware of the uses and control of point of view in modern fiction’ [Gibson 1974: 37]. Similar to the way the camera constantly changes its focus and angle, the narrative can present not only one point of view but instead can shift between different viewpoints of characters and the omniscient narrator.

Cinema combines the narrative structure with visual effects and, adopting cinematic techniques, literature can do the same: some of the above-described techniques are used to structure the narrative (montage) while others correspond to visual representation (for example, close-ups). Active use of these techniques in literature has led researchers to identify "cinematic fiction" (or the ‘film novel’) as a separate type of literature, ‘showing a firm notion about the art of cinematography as a whole, intermittent and sometimes extensive attempts at the creation of film-mimetic literary passages, and an exploration through narrative means of the place this medium has in human experience’ (cit. ex [Seed 2009: 4]).

Let us now turn to the analysis of Rachel Joyce’s cycle of short stories to see whether it can be described as ‘cinematic fiction’ and if yes, then how these ‘cinematic’ characteristics are realized in her prose. Rachel Joyce’s style of writing is remarkably visual, sometimes it seems to overflow with visual sensations, for example, the scene at the end of ‘The Christmas Day at the Airport’, when ‘sunlight pours down in a thick, flowing golden shaft. It’s as though someone has just hit a giant flash bulb’ [Joyce 2016: 111], or the ‘drinks that were an angry shade of orange’ [Joyce 2016: 145] in ‘A Snow Garden’ (are drinks as angry as Henry’s ex-wife?). I would even go further to say that Rachel Joyce’s style of writing is not only ‘visual’, it is ‘sensual’: we as readers are getting the full range of sensual impressions: visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory. In the first story of the cycle - ‘A Faraway Smell of Lemon’ - we not only see the silvery glitter of the christening cup through Binny’s eyes, we also feel its smoothness and coldness when she puts polish on it and starts wiping. The scene in the shop is literally filled with the all-pervading smell of lemon. This explicit physicality of the prose is enhanced through the careful description of the sensations in Binny’s body: ‘She receives the small, cold christening cup like a gift in the cradle of her palm, her whole body tensed. It touches the cuts on her hands, but it is so light they do not hurt’ [Joyce 2016: 40]. The book’s ability to appeal to all the senses rather than just two - sight and sound -means that it can provide its readers with a fuller and more realistic experience than the film.

This focus on materiality of the world also manifests itself through enumeration of diverse objects as parts of each character’s individual universe: for example, the orderly world of the shop with ‘shelves and shelves of cleaning products. They come in jars, canisters and bottles, some plastic, some glass, all arranged at regular intervals and in order of size. There are displays of brushes, cloths, scourers, dusters - both the feathered and the yellow variety...’ [Joyce 2016: 19]. Or the seemingly disparate objects reflecting Binny and Oliver’s happy family life: ‘...the school reports, the children’s shoes and toys, the feeding bottles for the baby Sal would not want to mother, the paper mobiles Coco would make... ’ [Joyce 2016: 222].

Sound does play an important role in the stories, although it is not as obvious as visual representation: the catchy tune that accompanies the girl in the red coat video, the pop songs X sings, the Christmas songs sung by the Girls’ Choir act as counterpoint for the action. There is also a great diversity of sound effects that reflect characters’ emotions and/or emphasize and intensify the collision thrills, like it happens in ‘Christmas Day at the Airport’. There is a realistic imitation of a muffled airport announcement; the crooning of the choir girls; the guttural sounds Magda makes when giving birth to her baby; and, finally, the chorus of shouts and yells the crowd produces to hasten the delivery, which contributes to building up the tension that is released when the baby is born. The strongest emotions, however, tend to be associated with silence: the silent scream is more filled with feeling than the loudest shout. Thus, no sound conveys the extreme degree of Henry’s relief in ‘A Snow Garden’: ‘He opened his eyes and wanted to shout’ [Joyce 2016: 156]. Another, even more vivid example, is found in ‘A Faraway Smell of Lemon’, where the absence of sound reveals the depth of Binny’s grief: ‘And then she bent over the pieces, the only thing she had left of her parents, and her face yawned into one gigantic noiseless scream’ [Joyce 2016: 34].

The visual emphasis in the stories is often combined with closeups, which follow the key character’s gaze focusing on specific details (objects, body parts, clothes): for example, when the crack in the wall catches Alice’s eye (‘There was definitely a hairline split in the plaster just at the point where the outer panel of the conservatory met the external brickwork of the house’ [Joyce 2016: 57]. Another example is the scene when Henry is looking at his ex-wife’s mouth (‘her mouth looked as though she’d eaten too many blackberries’ [Joyce 2016: 145]) and, when she accuses him of staring, the ‘camera eye’, reflecting embarrassed Henry’s gaze, immediately switches to her ‘new fluffy pink Christmas jumper’, which ‘seemed to have a picture of a knitted squirrel on the front eating some sort of sequinny nuf [Joyce 2016: 146]. Thus, close-ups show the individual perspective of the characters and bring to light meaningful, significant details. In the case described above, the close-up leads the reader to follow Henry’s gaze and thus provides more emotional involvement as we feel this character’s psychological discomfort.

Close-ups are alternated with what we can refer to as ‘medium shots’ and ‘long shots’. For instance, in ‘Trees’, Oliver is looking at his father, noticing that ‘he wore a checked shirt and pullover but he must have done up the buttons wrong because the left side of the collar had got swallowed in his pullover and the lower right corner of the shirt hung down like a flag’ [Joyce 2016: 202], which is a medium shot. In the same story, while Oliver and his father are driving, we get long shots of the streets they are passing: ‘Rows of semi-detached houses were wrapped like parcels in garlands of lights’ [Joyce 2016: 212]. It should be noted that this panorama of London’s street life is seen from the window of their moving car and, therefore, it is not static but dynamic. The movement of the ‘camera eye’ in the book can be also illustrated by the scene from ‘A Snow Garden’, in which Henry and the grocer are looking at the crooked fir tree: ‘Both Henry and the grocer peered at the tree with their heads tilted to correct the angle’ [Joyce 2016: 143]. Here the reader can actually ‘feel’ the change in the angle of the ‘camera’ as it follows the gaze of the characters, in their turn, tracing the curve of the tree.

The cross-cutting technique is not used too often in the book, except for one story - ‘Christmas Day at the Airport’, which, in my view, is the most dynamic and the most ‘cinematic’ story of all. Apart from the protagonists - Johanna and Magda - this story is virtually ‘packed’ with other characters, like the airport itself, each of them having their own storylines (the Kings family; the Girls’ Choir and its leader Shelley; Mrs Pike and Hester). The space in this short story is segmented and the storylines develop synchronically, with the author, like a film editor, cutting masterfully through various scenes and inserting mise-en-scenes taking place in different parts of the airport. Thus the story leads us towards its climax, when all the lines ‘meet’, all conflicts simultaneously (and magically) resolve and all the characters unite for a brief moment to celebrate the birth of the baby girl (the twenty-first century version of the Nativity story). Crosscutting increases the pace of the story, making it more dynamic and exciting.

As it was mentioned above, cinematic fiction tends to put a greater emphasis on the present tense, which is true for A Snow Garden as well: two stories of the cycle are actually narrated by using the present tense (‘Christmas Day at the Airport’ and ‘A Faraway Smell of Lemon’) while the rest, being written in the third person past tense, still predominantly focus on the specific moment and often present a second-by-second narration of events. The individual narratives are non-linear, interspersed with numerous flashbacks (e.g. while the main action progresses, Binny in the first story has at least five flashbacks taking her to different stages of her life in the past). In general, the book has a quite complicated temporal structure: apart from the Christmas period, which is taken as the point of reference, there are flashbacks in every story corresponding to fragmented strands of the protagonists’ memories. Two stories (‘Trees’ and ‘The Boxing Day Ball’) also employ flashforwards told by the omniscient narrator. ‘The Boxing Day Ball’ occupies a special place in the cycle as, unlike other stories, it is set in the 1960s and provides a kind of a ‘prequel’ for all the other stories - the story of the girl in a red coat.

The next important ‘cinematic’ characteristic is the shifting points of view, which is one of the most interesting characteristics of Rachel Joyce’s prose. In such stories as ‘A Faraway Smell of Lemon’, ‘A Snow Garden’, ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’ and ‘Trees’, there is one prevailing point of view - that of the protagonist, although in some of them (e.g. ‘Trees’) the omniscient narrator has her say in the end, pronouncing her comment on what was happening in the story and throwing flashforwards to illuminate the characters’ future-to-come for the reader. In some stories, however, there are multiple focalization shifts: in ‘The Marriage Manual’ we are continuously switching between Alan and Alice’s viewpoint, with Will’s perspective taking over the finale. In ‘Christmas Day at the Airport’, there are Magda’s, Johanna’s, Mrs Pike’s, Shelley’s, and Mrs King’s viewpoints with the omniscient narrator’s voice concluding the story. It should be noted that the voice of omniscient and omnipresent narrator serves as yet another aspect uniting the stories into a cycle, expressing certain philosophy that brings to the forefront the continuity of generations and acceptance of the inevitable changes brought about by the passage of time (‘a generation goes and a generation comes’). This message is supported by the book’s epigraph: ‘A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in’ [Joyce 2016: 6].

And, finally, I would like to return to the comparison between A Snow Garden and Love Actually. This comparison was largely prompted by the structural characteristics shared by the book and the film: Love Actually belongs to the type of the so-called ensemble or multi-plot films, which, instead of one storyline and one protagonist, follow a number of different protagonists and their storylines or subplots. Through this multiplicity of storylines and characters, such films can reflect on a wider range of topics and situations, thus being more interesting and unpredictable for the viewer and creating ‘a more authentic’ view of life [Cowgill], Thus, ‘network narratives’ are established, which raise the viewer’s awareness of the differences in points of view and outlook on the world [Mitchel 2010: 181]. The storylines are usually tied together through one overarching theme and/or context. Ideally, all character paths should be working together to develop the one unifying theme of the film [Cowgill], The dramatic unity can also be created through characters crossing each other’s plot lines and playing supporting roles in other characters’ stories. Interestingly, as Neil Mitchel observed, these films resemble novels in the way they imitate chapter divisions and have ‘more rounded ancillary characters’ [Mitchel 2010:181].

I believe that A Snow Garden is constructed in the same way as ensemble films: as stated in the Foreword, the stories were built around secondary characters who were too interesting to remain as secondary (though it can be assumed that they were insufficient for separate novels): ‘Binny, for example, who is the main character in the first story of this collection, was no more than an extra in the early draft of my second novel Perfect, but she was too big for the book and threatened to overtopple it’ [Joyce 2016: 10]. It is remarkable that Rachel Joyce uses the word ‘extra’ when referring to her character, which is a distinctively cinematic term, thus acknowledging the connection that exists between her literary work and the world of films. Although each story presents a cohesive whole with all the necessary elements (introduction, climax, resolution, and so on), they also fit in within the general whole of the book and its unifying theme of Christmas as a special time for people to reconnect with their loved ones and to let go of the past, making place for new hopes and new plans. This message is conveyed through the persistently recurring motif of a young woman in a red coat placed in the idyllic snowy landscape. Certain protagonists are mentioned and even reappear in other stories (Binny, Will, Mrs King, Sally, and X), and the cycle opens and closes with the paired stories of Binny-Oliver, who break up before Christmas but will supposedly reunite soon after it is over.

This brief overview of the cinematic techniques employed in Rachel Joyce’s prose demonstrates that her book can be identified as ‘cinematic fiction’ since it shares quite a number of significant narrative and structural characteristics with films and more specifically ensemble films. Each of the above-described aspects, however, deserves to be a subject of further, more indepth analysis in the context of Rachel Joyce’s creative work and modern British literature in general.