Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Pentadic Criticism: Dan in Real Life


In the film Dan in Real Life, the main character Dan has not been able to move on and find love ever since his wife passed away years ago. Within this story there are multiple smaller stories and important characters. The film focuses on this larger story, it overshadows the other smaller situations and I would argue causes most of the other problems in the story. Through looking at the act, agent, agency, purpose, and scene I am going to find out which term dominates over the others and through that analysis answer the question of what motivates this story.

The story of Dan falling in love weaves throughout the whole film. In the scene at the begging of the film, Dan takes care of his three girls by doing their laundry and frustrates them with his controlling demeanor. After traveling up north to meet his family for Thanksgiving, he meets this woman in the bookstore. They have coffee together after hitting it off at the bookstore. She then gets up and leaves frantically because her boyfriend calls for her. Dan goes home only to find out that his brother’s new girl friend is the woman he just fell in love with. Dan falling in love with this woman and having to watch her and his brother sweet talk for a couple of days ends up driving both Dan and the woman crazy and she leaves. He follows her and tells her he loves her. The brothers end up in a fight because Dan took his brothers woman, but the other issues Dan has with his daughters seem to look up after they give him permission to chase after her.

Coming up with the list of what to call the act, agent, agency, purpose, and scene was difficult. I wrote out four or five different scenarios and decided to label them as this:

Act: Dan falls in love
Agent: The woman
Agency: Meeting in the bookstore and having coffee together
Purpose: To help Dan move on from his wife and release control over his girls
Scene:  Up North in Dan’s parents town

After analyzing each term against each other, I found that scene dominates over the act, agent, agency, and purpose. Being up North causes Dan to fall in love, causes the woman to be up North, causes the woman and him to go out for coffee, and helps Dan to move on. If Dan was not up North than he would never have met the woman, therefore never fell in love, and as a result never moved on from his past wife.

Other terms that are dominating, but did not show up as strong in my analysis are the woman and meeting in the bookstore and having coffee together. The woman caused Dan to fall in love, to meet and talk, and to move on. Having coffee together caused Dan to fall in love and move on. The woman falls short by one point in being the dominating term. But, scene takes the lead because the woman would not be able to do all those things if it were her not being up North.

So, what motivates this story? Being away from normal, routine life has caused Dan to rethink things. Being around his family and their concerns for his well being has created a unique atmosphere, one where he can fall in love because his daughters are being taken care of and his daily responsibilities are relieved. Taking a break from the normal to have time to relax and reflect was important, but it was the need for Dan to relinquish the pain he his holding on to in order that he can find happiness, but also for the well being of his family that motivates this story.

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