Psychological landscape films: narrative and stylistic approaches

Resumen

This article serves to broadly address formalist approaches to rendering natural settings psychological in cinema, or, in other words, mobilizing landscapes to function beyond their usual function as narrative backdrop. By “formalist” it should be understood that such an approach to visual representation is both inherently aggressive and experimental, where one implies the other, especially when compared to more realist modes of expression. Instead of human characters portrayed within an authenticating wilderness, as in the typical classical Hollywood Western, the precise topography of the landscape becomes reflective of a particular human consciousness.