Ranging from 1920s Toronto (In the Skin of a Lion, 1987) to Italy during World War II (The English Patient, 1992; Booker Prize) and Sri Lanka wracked by civil war (Anil's Ghost, 2000), Ondaatje's lyrical, elliptical narratives spotlight a small coterie of people drawn together by a mystery that shapes the story and governs their lives.
Now, getting arrested in Weehawken, being forced to eat his onboard sandwich in an airplane bathroom and bombing hard on a shared bill with the Muppets (Statler and Waldorf are probably gay, FYI, because "They go to the theater seven nights a week and they bitch about everything,") are presented as embarrassing narratives spotlighting his befuddlement and inappropriate reactions.
Krakauer's narrative placed a spotlight on the actions of Anatoli Boukreev, a guide on Fischer's team who was climbing without oxygen and descended from the summit without clients.
But, by the same token, if we can flip the narrative, and shine the spotlight on stories of achievement, we can shift from what Hansen called "a preoccupation on loss" to the "inspiration of possibilities".
This, of course, is an excellent way of casting the narrative into modernist "reflexivity," spotlighting the inventor behind the illusion.
The projected future -- an America whose social fabric has all but disintegrated -- feels thin and arbitrary; it is hard to imagine anything going on in this world outside the narrow spotlight of the narrative.
Some of the narrative line-up this year includes, "Spotlight," co-written (Josh Singer) and directed by Tom McCarthy, Caroll," directed by Todd Haynes, "Bridge of Spies," directed by Steven Spielberg, "The Preppie Connection," co-written (Ashley Rudden) and directed by Joseph Castelo, "Youth," directed by Paolo Sorrentino.
Christopher Akerlind's precise and spooky lighting is full of dramatic shadows and vanishing and reappearing spotlights that become narrative tools, cues and even props for Ms. Lauren, and the soundscape, created by Darron L West (mostly piano music that begins in Satie-like simplicity and gathers dissonance), is gorgeously effective in suggesting the turbulence of Woolf's emotional weather.
Our media is full of superheroes with "secret identities" playing that role, metaphorically--but only in recent years has mainstream media allowed these other narratives to appear in the spotlight.
