Structurally Speaking: Jaws (Part I) posted by kza

So now that we’ve gone through the sequence method (albeit in a brief, condensed form), let’s apply that to some popular movies and see what happens.

I’m going to start with my favorite movie of all-time, bar none: Jaws. As you probably know, Jaws was the movie that, for better or worse, kick-started the concept of the “blockbuster summer movie”. It’s a pretty straightforward story (a clear protagonist, a clear antagonist, no flashbacks or other narrative tricks), and it seems like it should be a prime example of basic mainstream film structure.

Well… yes and no. Although for the most part it follows the sequence method mark for mark, there is a little twist, one that demonstrates the elasticity of the sequence method.

Let’s take a gander (the length of each sequence is indicated in bold):

Sequence One (3:56, or 5:09 if you count the opening credits)
In the first five minutes, two hippie-ish youths at a beach bonfire run off to the ocean, but the guy passes out drunk on the sand and the woman, Chrissie Watkins, is eaten by a shark, whom we’ll call Jaws, because we can. Sequence one consists of a single scene, and this scene contains the Point of Attack. The Point of Attack, you’ll recall, is when we see the dark storm clouds on the horizon for the protagonist, and know that his or her life is about to be turned upside down. Clearly, the PoA here is the appearance of Jaws, literally disrupting the surface by chomping a young woman in half. Note that no one else sees the attack, and at this point, we don’t know who the protagonist is yet. (It could be the drunk guy for all we know.)

Sequence Two (13:04)
The next sequence consists of (by my count) three scenes. In the first one, we are introduced to Martin Brody, the sheriff of Amity Island, as he wakes up to a call that leads to the discovery of the Chrissie’s dismembered hand. In the second scene, Brody decides to shut down the beach by his own authority, but the Mayor talks him out of it. In the third scene, Brody is trying to relax on the beach with his wife (but not succeeding, his mind playing tricks on him due to his conscience and his fears) when a little boy and his yellow raft are eaten by Jaws in front of everyone. (Also, the dog “Pippet” is probably eaten as well, but no one ever mentions poor Pippet. Well, I will. R.I.P., Pippet.)

In sequence two, the key moment is the identification of the Predicament. The Predicament is when the Protagonist’s world goes topsy-turvy, and this happens with the death of Alex Kintner. Up until this point, it seems like (within the world of the story) the problem of the shark is taken care of (if only by ignoring it). Brody is on the beach — is he there at the behest of his wife, or is he there to make sure nothing happens, or perhaps both? — and his conscience and his fears are bugging him, which Spielberg visualizes with a number of nifty cinematic tricks. Brody has essentially covered up the shark attack, and has the most to lose if the shark reappears. If it doesn’t, then life can continue as normal. But of course, Jaws is hungry, and so the eating of little Alex and his yellow raft changes Brody’s status-quo — not only does he have a damaging secret, but as the designated protector of the community, he has a shark problem on his hands. What is he going to do about it?

The first two sequences comprise the first act.

Sequence Three (9:29)

There are three scenes in Sequence Three. In the first, the city council convenes to figure out what to do about the shark. The second is primarily expositional: Brody reads up on sharks, and passes information on to his wife, and by extension, the audience. There is a small amount of drama, as Brody and his wife argue about their sons sitting in a boat not faaaah from the yaaaaahd. In the third scene, two locals attempt to get the reward money for Jaws by using a “holiday roast” as bait, but get more than they bargained for.

The two important points of Sequence Three are the Main Tension and the Point of No Return.

The Point of No Return is what keeps the protagonist from simply walking away from the Predicament. While this is an important quality to consider for most stories, especially those that use relationships as the stakes for the drama, I think it’s fair to consider that Brody’s position as sheriff creates an “automatic”, permanent state of PONR. True, he could walk away, but its clear by this point that at the very least, his wife enjoys their position in this society (even though they will never be considered “islanders”), not to mention they just bought a beachside house. However, I think there is an additional PONR, one that ties into the Main Tension. Brody’s solution to the shark problem is to close the beaches, but the Mayor amends that: “Only twenty-four hours.” The closing of the beaches is somewhat of a passive move on Brody’s part; it’s an attempt to buy time, to keep the story, in a meta sense, under his control. But stories are rarely controlled by the protagonists — they are more often playing catchup and having to react instinctively to the stuff the world throws at them — and the time limit imposed upon Brody is an example of that. And it’s a PONR because he’s locked into producing results in a specific amount of time.

A quick detour: when using some kind of model, like the sequence method, to analyze a story, it must be understood that there are no correct answers. Some answers are better than others, and technically one answer could be the best, but, if you can make a case, that, for example, Quint is the protagonist of Jaws, then Quint is the protagonist of Jaws. It’s perfectly okay for two radically different interpretations to stand side by side. (And to be clear, I don’t for a minute consider my analysis to be the best.)

With that in mind, the Main Tension is a question posed by the story (always starting with “Will”), relating to the protagonist, that is answered at the end of the second act. It (like any point of the story core) is a choice, but this choice has implications beyond itself. By choosing a Main Tension, you’re also choosing a scene or a moment in which to answer the Main Tension, and in the process, determining the beginning and the ending of the second act. This can create some interesting results, as we’ll see later on.

What’s interesting about the city council scene is that the council and the townspeople aren’t so much worried about the shark per se, but about how the presence of the shark affects them economically. The question that arises isn’t, “Will you kill the shark?” but “Will you close the beaches?”. If the beaches aren’t open, then, as Quint says, they’ll be on welfare for the winter. So, Brody, the protector of the community, is not asked to keep them safe physically (although there is that), but to keep them safe financially. The Main Tension is “Will Brody be able to solve the shark problem before the beaches open up again?”

Sequence Four (10:16)

I count only two scenes in Sequence Four, although it could be argued there are actually three. In the first scene, Hooper arrives to help out Brody, while at the same time, a mass of local fishermen go after Jaws in attempt to cash in on Mrs. Kinter’s bounty. In the second scene, one group of fishermen come back with a shark, that Hooper doesn’t believe is the real culprit, and at the end, Mrs. Kintner reveals that she found out about Brody’s cover-up and shames him.

The key point of Sequence Four is the First Culmination. I’ll admit, the concept of the First Culmination is still a little nebulous to me. As I wrote earlier, it seems to be more of a construction for the writer than the audience, although it has its uses for the audience as well. If we think of the mainstream screenplay as a series of beginnings, middles, and ends, from the “atomic level” of the beat to the larger level of the scene, all the way to the macro level of the act, then the First Culmination is an “end” that occurs within the first part of the second act. The idea is to have a moment that occurs around the midpoint of the story that represents a kind of climax — not a final one, obviously, but one that looks back at where the story has been and where the story is going.

In Jaws, this sequence reflects on both the past (the deaths of the Chrissie Watkins and Alex Kintner seem to have been avenged, and Brody pays for his mistake in the cover-up) and the future (Hooper, whose technical expertise we’ve been convinced of, believes the shark is still at large). Since we understand (from years of examples) that a mainstream film story ends with a confrontation between the protagonist and the antagonist, the image of the dead shark is a suggestion of the film’s end, without being literal — we know that the real shark is much bigger (thanks to Hooper), much smarter (by avoiding capture by the multitude of reward-crazy fishermen, not to mention nearly eating the two men who tried to capture him earlier) and likely, much tougher. The dead shark on the pier is as much a representation of the folly of trying to kill Jaws as it is the possible death of Jaws — so the outcome is still in doubt.

(That’s enough for now, until Part II. A note, however: an analysis like this, because it can never be absolutely right, is always, at worst, a conversation with the film itself, and at best, a conversation with other people. I invite everyone to continue this conversation about structure, the sequence method, and Jaws in the Spitball! forums.)

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