MIRACLE AS A FILM DRAMATURGY MODEL (2023)

All-Russian State University of Cinema, named after S.A. Gerasimov

For a long time, miracle remained outside the subject area of positive philosophical analysis, being a purely religious concept. This trend, in turn, persisted not only in science, but also in art. Currently, there is a revival of the authors' interest in the category of miracle. In modern works of art, the miraculous becomes an element that goes beyond the purely religious discourse, but nevertheless continues to connect the transcendent reality — hence we can conclude about the marginal nature of this concept. The modern researcher N.A. Khrenov sees this phenomenon as a sign of the formation of an ideational (alternative) type of culture, appealing to the terminology of Pitirim Sorokin's concept of socio-cultural dynamics.

Miracle as a category and its connection with catharsis have been developed in detail and comprehensively in philosophical science, but so far they have not been systematically analyzed from the point of view of functioning in a cinematic construction — this is precisely the key task of this study. G. Leibniz in The Theodicy defines a miracle as something "that exceeds reason, contradicts only that what is usually experienced and learned on the basis of experience" [1, p. 91], says that "God ... performs only those miracles that are necessary in him (the universe)" [1, p. 301], and also calls the revealed ability of God a miracle "to free his creatures from the laws prescribed by him and to do through these creatures what exceeds their nature" [1, p. 76]. Summarizing the above, let's try to identify the main attributes of such a philosophical category as a miracle and find its special characteristics in the space of a movie:

1. Inexplicability — the inability to uncover the logic of what happened, to get to the bottom of the mechanics of performing a miracle. From the point of view of cinematography, a miracle is a powerful twist, working on the principle of "the impossible has become possible." Attempts may be made in the film to find a scientific explanation for a miraculous event, however, in this case they must fail: where there are reasonable grounds, the miracle disappears — thus, the viewer and the characters of the film feel the effect of an overworld, supra-rational law. For example, in the film "The Miracle" (2009, dir. Alexander Proshkin, screenwriter Yuri Arabov) attempts are being made to explain Zoya's position from the ideological standpoint of materialism, with the help of medical facts, but no one succeeds in doing this in the stagnant Soviet world.
2. Regularity (non-randomness) — that is, the presence of a cause-and-effect conditionality of a miracle as an event for a given subject: if in life it is not always possible to trace this logical chain, then in the scenario design this connection should be determined by the viewer. For example, in the movie "The Horde" (2012, dir. Andrey Proshkin, screenwriter Yuri Arabov) the miracle of healing is not performed immediately, after the first appearance of Metropolitan Alexy in the Tatar-Mongol camp, but visits him at the point of the highest self-abasement. However, there is no question of strict predestination in this case: as soon as predestination arises, the genre tools of horror and tragedy are included, which are incompatible with the mechanism of functioning of the miracle in the film, which will be discussed in more detail later.
3. Transgression — a miracle is a borderline phenomenon lying on the verge between the possible and the impossible, and functions by overcoming this limit, that is, as a result of the breakthrough of one reality of being into another; in this act, a violation of the prescribed law of the physical universe occurs: for example, overcoming the boundary between life and death, rational and irrational in the film "Ordet" (1955, dir. Karl Dreyer), when Johannes resurrects his daughter-in-law Inger.

What kind of miracle does the viewer empathize with? What causes him the most emotional response? The functioning of the "miracle" in the space of the film depends directly on what kind of logic of human presence in the world the author of the work assumes: whether the author limits existence to the logic of reason or allows the truth and the root cause to be found outside the rational. It is the author who lays down the mechanism by which the viewer experiences the strongest emotional and psychological impact, or this does not happen. In this regard, one can single out another property of a miracle as an event — its cathartic character, that is, a purifying effect on the viewer, arising as a result of an increased sensitivity to perception and reading of moral values affected by the plot conflict, from a certain angle. If this view is positive, if the categories of human (usually European) culture included in the film's discourse (God, goodness, faith, love, mercy, etc.) are treated as significant, and none of the above attributes are violated, then the viewer is dealing with a miracle in its classical sense. Aristotle in Poetics defined the mechanics of catharsis as purification "through compassion and fear" [2, p. 651]. It follows from this that an indispensable condition for a cathartic experience is not only a positive reading of the cultural ideals stated in the plot, a plastic gesture of emphasizing and affirming them, but also a plot preparedness of the vicissitudes: a miracle should happen only after the hero passes through difficult obstacles and internal irreversible changes – only then will the viewer have the opportunity to fear for fate a hero and actively empathize with him.

In addition, two more alternative forms of miracle functioning in cinema can be distinguished — anti-miracle and pseudo-miracle, each of which is related to the first, but violates one or more of its inherent properties described above. Thus, antichudo is an event characterized by inexplicability, transgression and regularity, but producing an anti—cathartic effect on the viewer by discrediting positive values. For example, in the film "Breaking the Waves" (1996, dir. Lars von Trier) the character of Bess McNeill actually sacrifices herself in the name of healing her paralyzed husband Jan. We are watching the terrible fall of a pure, naive girl, and to the last we cannot believe that her actions can actually affect the course of a serious illness. Bess's guilt looks doubtful, self-accusation seems groundless: how can a young girl's passionate desire for her husband to return home sooner lead to a terrible accident and his disability?! In the finale, Yang paradoxically recovers, but the main character dies — hence a mixed feeling arises in the viewer: is the exchange equivalent? Wouldn't it be fairer if the torturer husband who pushed Bess onto the path of self-flagellation died? "A martyr gives his tormentor the opportunity for revelation, awareness. And if a sinner realizes this, he will be able to repent, to renounce what he has done" [3, p. 23] — the Christian tradition tells us. And it is this component that is missing in the film directed by Lars Von Trier, so that the viewer would recognize what happened as a miracle: Jan's sincere remorse for the innocently ruined life of Bess.

Pseudo-miracle, in turn, in addition to spectator catharsis, ignores the property of inexplicability. It can bring catharsis to the characters of the film, but definitely not to the viewer, because the illusion of a miracle is either immediately declared as a deception: it is enough to recall the novella "Don't Make yourself an idol" from the film "The Devil and the Ten Commandments" (1962, dir. Julien Duvivier), where the hero, who appeared on the farm and appeared in the image of the messiah, "heals" Auguste's grandfather from paralysis, which he has been faking for many years to avoid household duties — obviously, the plot is comic; either the pseudo-miracle is in the opening part of the film, when the viewer does not yet have time to emotionally "stick" to the hero, and is certainly debunked later - this is the plot of the film "Benedetta" (2021, dir. Paul Verhoeven), where the stigmata manifested on the body of the Catholic nun Benedetta Carlini turn out to be self-harm and deliberate hoax at the end of the film.
It should be noted that the miracle is in a specific connection with the personality of the miracle worker: why exactly is this event given in the miracle, in whose name it is given (who is the object of the miracle in the space of the film), and also what is the redemptive price that the miracle worker will pay for the miracle to happen? It is important for the playwright to give answers to these questions. At the same time, the miracle worker character can act in the most direct, direct way, transforming reality on his own, so that the viewer sees the actions of the miracle worker and the miracle taking place in the frame. For example, in the film "Simon of the Desert" (1965, dir. Luis Bunuel) a Christian ascetic personally heals a thief who has had his hands cut off and exorcises demons from a priest. A separate question is, through whose agency supernatural phenomena are committed in this case: God supporting the holy martyr, or the Devil tempting him — but, anyway, it is Simeon's prayers and asceticism that lead to the desired result. This is also the mode of miracle-working in the films "Ordet" and "The Island" (2006, dir. Pavel Lungin, written by Dmitry Sobolev). In other cases, a miracle is performed by an invisible force, not through the direct actions of the character, but through a symbolic sacrifice made by him — such is Bess, who humiliates her moral purity and human dignity from the film "Breaking the Waves", such is Metropolitan Alexy in the film "The Horde", healing the Mongolian Princess Taydulla from blindness, only being of her own free will in slavery to the Tatar-Mongols, in an extremely destitute and desperate situation, and recognizing the exclusive power of the Divine will. Consequently, the main mode of being a miracle worker becomes martyrdom, that is, martyrdom, sacrifice — concepts that are completely meaningless from the point of view of rational thinking, but in paradoxical Christian logic find expression in the following law: the damage done to oneself determines the potential of the acquired good for another. “Martyr testifies to God, glorifies Him with his feat, and at the same time is saved, saves his soul” [3, p. 22]. By losing everything earthly, martyr gains eternity.

The Miracle Worker is always a marginal character with trickster traits. In the case of a pseudo-miracle, the hero can be an outright cheat, a cunning man or a deceiver pretending not to be who he is. Such are Benedetta Carlini in "Benedetta" and the hero-God of the fourth novel from the painting "The Devil and the Ten Commandments". In the constructions of miracle and anti-miracle, miracle-working heroes can be saints, that is, intermediaries between the worlds of the human and the divine, like Simeon the hermit from Bunuel's film of the same name; blessed, communicating directly with God, like Bess McNeill from Cutting the Waves; Fools, whose actions are initially perceived as insane and blasphemous — such is Johannes, who returned to the Borgen house, imagining himself to be Christ, and bringing chaos into their life ("Ordet").
So, let's turn to the consideration of the genre gravitations of a miracle in cinema and try to answer the question why in some genre constructions a miracle is plausible and provides a powerful emotional impact on the viewer, while in others it does not. In our opinion, the miracle as an element of drama is poorly integrated into the design:

• fantasy, which initially assumes the space-time of an impossible reality, where the violation of the physical laws of the world familiar to the viewer is elevated to a principle, and a new world arises, with its own changed logic ("Dogma", 1999, dir. Kevin Smith);
• an absurdist cinema that exists in a coordinate system of broken cause-and-effect relationships, where numerous random events are indistinguishable from a miracle as a powerful vicissitudes;
• horror and thrillers, since fear films believe the existence of an otherworldly force to be plausible, regularly and in the most unexpected way invading the reality of the characters; they work with the psychology of audience perception in a negative key in such a way that a miracle event as a strong vicissitudes, changing the state of the heroes from extreme misfortune to happiness, has no place even in such a situation. The denouement of a dramatic situation as a rescue;
• detectives — on the one hand, there is a pressure of threat, nightmare and horror associated with the crime, on the other, in this genre it is especially important to get to the bottom of what happened, to reveal its mechanics, which contradicts one of the main attributes of the miracle — its inexplicability, but opens up a wide potential for plots dedicated to the investigation crimes committed in the form of a pseudo-miracle.

Successful genre structures for a miracle are:

• drama — in this genre, the miracle feels most organically, because the drama is based on a local human story, the goals of the characters are in other characters, in relationships, hence there is a great potential for sacrifice and martyrdom in the name of someone else; the drama solves the issues of life and fate from the point of view of human logic, therefore, a miracle as a powerful event that explodes this logic gives an additional spiritual dimension to the plot;
• historical miracle cinema is sometimes used for cathartic conflict resolution, often in a different, otherworldly reality, when this resolution is impossible in the reality of this world. For example, in the biographical war film "Korczak" (1990, dir. Andrzej Wajda) the main character, Polish doctor Janusz Korczak, and the children, who actually died at the hands of the Nazis in the Treblinka concentration camp, are miraculously saved: their carriage detaches from the train on the stretch, and the heroes literally soar in a jump, plunging into the misty unreal space of life and freedom. Here, the miracle is used to reconcile the cruel reality, where there is a place for mass infanticide, and the moral position of the author, his ideas about justice, even if they negate historical objectivity. The miracle in this case acquires the quality of an artistic symbol. Thus, when including a miracle in a movie, it is important to take into account the laws of its functioning: genre preferences, categorical attributes and the mechanism of emotional impact on the viewer. The miracle as an element of the drama of the film holds great potential for use in screenplays, not only in traditional designs, but also in the most unexpected combinations: pseudo—miracle can find application in the detective genre, anti-miracle - in the thriller genre, and so on. Having overcome the critical attitude of positivist science, the category of miracle has already firmly entered the field of discourse of modern art in general and cinema in particular.

Bibliography

1. Leibniz G.V. Essay.: In 4 vols. Vol. 4. Moscow: Mysl, 1989. pp. 76-301.
2. Aristotle. Poetics // Aristotle. Essay: In 4 vols. Vol. 4. M.: Publishing house "Thought", 1983. 788 p.
3. Krishtaleva L.G. The problem of experiment in the cinematic discourse of Lars von Trier // Scientific electronic journal ARCHICULT. 2014. No. 16 (4-2014). pp. 22-23.

Filmography

1. "Dogma", 1999, dir. Kevin Smith
2. "The Devil and the Ten Commandments" (1962, dir. Julien Duvivier)
3. "Benedetta" (2021, dir. Paul Verhoeven)
4. "Korczak" (1990, dir. Andrzej Wajda)
5. "The Island" (2006, dir. Pavel Lungin, written by Dmitry Sobolev)
6. "The Horde" (2012, dir. Andrey Proshkin, screenwriter Yuri Arabov)
7. "Breaking the Waves" (1996, dir. Lars von Trier)
8. "Simon of the Desert" (1965, dir. Luis Bunuel)
9. "Ordet" (1955), dir. Carl Dreyer.
10. "The Miracle" (2009), directed by A.Proshkin.