The Noisy Clutter of Quiet Emptiness: The First Minute of Conflict in A Da’s Three Monks

This was my mid-term paper for Ehrlich’s FILM42 class in Spring ‘09. Embed of the animation below, followed by the paper after the jump (no promises that the video will remain, but the wikipedia page sure isn’t going anywhere).



A Da’s Three Monks presents a narrative focused around the escalating conflict of a small group of monks who find themselves living in the same monastery. The conflict is presented very gradually, beginning with a single monk who is chipper and carefree, building up tension as the mouse and the second monk are introduced, and continuing until the third monk arrives and the disagreement and frustration reaches a head when the monastery catches on fire. I’ve chosen to focus my analysis on the point where this escalating conflict is first introduced: when the second and first monks have a dispute about carrying water. During this minute, A Da’s choices in design, animation, and sound help illustrate the psychology of the characters and the action of the narrative. Specifically, design and animation choices separate the characters of the first and second monks, establishing a status relationship that both indicative of the psychology of their characters and integral in establishing the action and conflict that introduces the continuing plot of the narrative.

The conflict begins when the second monk, having just walked out of the monastery with the water buckets, hesitates and decides to turn back and beckon for the first monk to come with him. The first monk had been gleefully dancing and laughing as the second monk left. The animation of the characters through the entire film is very rubbery, but the first monk is in this moment especially fluid and loose. Moreover, his head rotates 360 degrees as he laughs, a physical impossibility that urges the viewer to understand, in this moment, that this monk’s world is fantastical and “cartooney.” These animation choices that force the viewer to suspend disbelief in the constraints of normal human anatomy invoke a mood that is both jovial and juvenile. Like a child who is excused from doing his chores, the monk is ecstatic that he has avoided the difficult trip up and down the mountain. Thus A Da’s choices in animating the first monk in this moment of child-like joy further the viewer’s understanding of the psychology of the first monk.

Indeed, the childlike psychology of the first monk is made explicit when the second monk beckons for him to help carry water. In this shot, all that is visible of the second monk is the one beckoning arm reaching in from out of the frame. This arm is above the first monk’s head, creating a status relationship where the first monk is seen as the child and second monk as the adult—perhaps the mother. Again, the viewer is reminded of the little boy who is beckoned to do his chores. Putting the bodies of adult figures out of the frame is a common device in animation which solidifies the adult-child status relationship. This probably works because the viewer, either currently a kid or remembering what it was like to be one, recalls that kids, both because of height differences and because of shyness, often spend less time looking at faces and more time looking at legs and arms when they interact with adults. The design choice of placing the second monk’s body out of the frame in this shot furthers the child-adult status relationship that is integral to the narrative as well as the psychology of the two monks. And the second monk seems to be enjoying his higher status—his smug, sideways smile as they walk down the hill provides a glimpse into this psychology. This child/parent status relationship established in this brief interaction is in stark contrast to the initial relationship of the two monks, where they were seen very much as equals, bowing to each-other and gladly taking care of one-another. This previous equality is made very clear during the scene at the end of the previous day, just before this scene, when the first monk is helping the second monk to unload the buckets of water—the two monks’ eyes meet and they smile.

The fact that this conflict represents a shift in the action of the narrative is also portrayed through a change in music. As the second monk is leaving the monastery to get water and the first monk is staying back and laughing, the music is at first a continuation of the peaceful, meditative music that was played while the two monks were happily meditating at night. However, when he pauses and decides to turn around and tell the first monk to help, the music changes. This change is further accented by a brief pause that lasts about a second, while the screen shows a close up of the frozen monk, his eyes shifting as he comes upon the decision. The new music after the shift is significantly more noisy and less serene, however it only subtly communicates conflict or frustration. Indeed, it is very much like the music that plays at the beginning when we are introduced to the first monk, who happily walks along without a care in the world, which in turn is similar to the music that plays when we are introduced to the second monk—a scene which has the same care-free attitude. However, there is a slight difference, and please excuse my lack of musical vocabulary to adequately describe it. Essentially, the music has one main sequence that is repeated over and over, sometimes with slight modifications. In the version that plays as the monks are descending the mountain, the very end of the repeating part is different, and the best way that I can describe it is “less satisfying.” Instead of reaching a logical end and then starting from the beginning, it sort of “fizzles out” with a whining noise. This whining noise consistently happens when the first monk raises the stick, making the bucket hit the second monk in the back, drawing attention to the connection between the mood of the music and the mood of the characters (and thus the psychology of the characters as well). Similarly, as the monks descend the mountain again, though it no longer “fizzles out,” the music doesn’t seem to reach a satisfying end before it starts again. This incomplete feeling of the score draws attention to its repetition, and repetition communicates frustration. Each time the monks hit a switchback, the music starts over and the monk which had previously been relaxed is suddenly under strain. The repetition in the music and the animation really puts the viewer inside the heads of the monks who are asking “when is this going to end?”

The conflict comes to a head when the monks throw down the bucket, and animation, sound, and design all come together to set a dramatic scene of frustration. Both monks’ bodies had been under strain at odd times, and their contortions became more and more dramatic until the second monk’s back is so mangled that it is in the shape of a “z,” just before they throw down the bucket. Here again we see A Da’s use of unrealistic, rubbery motion, which in this case exaggerates the monks’ strain. Similarly, when the first monk measures the stick with his hand, overshooting the center, the second monk angrily swats at him. In this moment, the sleeves of his robe fly out, and his arms even seem to expand a bit. The dramatic gestural visual—reminiscent of a painting by Pollack—is accompanied by a harsh honking sound. The pairing of these two make the anger of the second monk quite explicit. The same sound effect is used when the first monk sticks out his tongue, which is also exaggerated (it is almost as big as his entire head), making clear to the reader his frustration and anger.

Beyond the honking sound effect, there is a more dramatic musical choice at this point: the silence. The silence is complemented by a similar design choice: emptiness. The two monks are isolated on a blank background (granted, the background is somewhat bare for most of the animation, but in this moment it is noticeably completely empty), as they sit back to back in silence. You could cut the tension in this scene with a knife. The change from music to silence and from movement through a subtle landscape to static sitting in emptiness both pinpoints the conflict that is essential to the narrative and places the viewer face to face with the psychology of the characters. Indeed, for a moment there is a shot of nothing but a closeup of the bucket itself, highlighting its symbolism of conflict and its centrality to the narrative. With everything else stripped away, the viewer sees only the bucket, stick and monks, and is thus forced to meditate on the difficulty of the situation, just as the two monks are themselves focused in bitter agitation on their frustration with the situation. There is no escape.

At the end of the minute, when the first monk proposes using a rulers as the “solution,” choices with the animation and music situate the conflict within the broader arc of the narrative. After the line is drawn on the stick, as the two monks are carrying the water back up the mountain, their animation shows that both characters are still slightly dissatisfied with the situation. The second monk’s back is still bent, the first monk’s eyebrows are raised in uneasiness, and both monks have a subtle frown. They each seem a bit happier than they had been while they were getting “the short end of the stick,” but they are certainly not the jolly fellows that they were when they were first introduced. Similarly, the music is closer to the music that plays during the happy-go-lucky introduction of each monk, but there is still something slightly incomplete or unresolved about it. These choices in music and animation not only illustrate the dissatisfaction of the characters, but they also suggest that, while the conflict seems to have been resolved for now, in reality it has only been put off, and there is more to come. Thus the scene is very specifically situated within the action of the broader narrative, showing the first glimpse of struggle, and foreshadowing the continuation (and escalation) that is to come.