A functional approach to the relationship between narrative and form in film

Perspectives centered around content and interpretation are quite common in the field of art and cinema. In cinema, content and interpretation mostly come to life through the narratives of the films. Analysing films in a content- and interpretation-oriented way through their narratives is the main problem of this study. The concepts of form, content, style, and function were analysed first in the field of art and then in the field of cinema. Afterwards, these concepts and the theories and theorists associated with them were discussed and thus alternatives to content- and interpretation-centered perspectives were presented. The ideas of Russian formalism and neo-formalism were summarized and a functional approach to the style of the individual film was presented. This approach also determined the method that enabled the analyses of the films Stories We Tell (2012), Nocturnal Animals (2016), In the House (Dans la maison, 2012), Belonging (Aidiyet, 2019), which were brought together through being about narrative. Being about a narrative helped these four films to be grouped within the same study by excluding the criteria of genre, country, period, movement, director, technique and the functional approach to the style of the individual film helped to examine these films by putting the film form elements outside the narrative into the foreground. As a result of the analyses, it has been revealed how the four films use the elements of film form in light of the criterion of being about a narrative. It was also possible to reflect on the concept of film form, and thus the benefits of focusing on formal devices outside of the narrative, which play a major role in the interpretation of the content in films, were demonstrated.