City of Glass: A Temporal Character of Plot

Abstract

This chapter will revolve around a film strategy that attests a gap of interpretation in City of Glass. Such a gap is established in the film through multiple layers of narrative, which indicates nuances. At the juncture of historiographical and fictional representations in cinema, different and/or contradictory interpretations may be derived through the gap. As a result, what have been conventionally unrepresentable and non-represented can be revealed. I shall borrow Paul Ricoeur’s terminology about the temporal character of plot, and systemically unfold how the film turns around the conventional practices by problematizing such a temporal character of plot. This chapter describes how the film exposes the spectators to such a temporal character of plot and thus the workings of ideological representation for a critical appraisal of their own spectatorship. It also analyses how a film may enable the spectator-subject to derive a better and/or new understanding of life, truth and history.