The Usual Suspects, Storytelling

Another well known aspect to the making of films, is the use of storying telling.  Some of the great films that have been made, have had some sort of narrative to go along with whats going on in the movie.  For example in the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption, Morgan Freemans character Red, tells the story of how he met his friend Andy in prison, and the events that took place throughout their time in Shawshank prison.  This is an example of narrative storytelling. 
Films, along with novels, always seem to follow one true guidline to telling the story, and the is the use of the classical Paradigm.  Films use this type of narraive formula to keep the film orginized and to make sense.  It starts out at the expostion where the story begins and we meet the characters.  Then leads to the Rising Action which can start within the first 20 min of the film, but usually occurs in the middle.  The rising action shows us differnt conflics that the main character must face and what they go through.  That then leads to the climax of the film which occurs towards the end and shows how the charcter overcomes the conflict. After the conflict comes the Resolution, when the film is coming to an end, and we see the outcome or effects of the characters conflict.
In the film, the usual suspects, Kevin Spacey's character Roger Kint, is being interegated by a detective who is investigating the murdur of a dozen men and the destruction of a ship in the harbor.  Kint tells him the story of what happend, which turns into a narrative for the film.  He discribes how he met five other criminals in a police lineup and how they planned on taking revenge against the local police, which begins the rising action of the film.  They all decide to take a heist job which had been offered to them by a mysterious man that they have never met, Keyser Soze.  The climax of the film occurs during the heist of the ship, where the five men and Kint are in search of drugs to claim for Soze, but we soon find out that one of them has upset Soze in someway and that the heist is a revenge job against that person leaving many dead on the ship.  At the end of the film Kint finishes his story to the detective, and when the detective believes that Kint is telling the truth, he lets him leave.  however while the detective is looking around the room, he then sees on photographs and posters names, and places that were simular to the ones in Kint's story, leading to the resolution and the end of the film where we find out who Keyser Soze really was.



Works Cited

1. Understanding movies
2. IMBD