Do all movies have a plot?

Here’s a test: when you’re watching a movie if you were to ask yourself, “what is this about?” would you be able to answer? Almost every single movie’s job is to give the viewer a plot to follow, which then reaches its climax, and ultimately is resolved. Nearly every movie is about what happens in terms of plot.
     When you think of weird, baffling movies, which come to mind? Is there a director you can name who you’d associate with making movies that could be described as weird? David Lynch? Charlie Kaufman? Terrence Malick?

I. Movies with No Plot

The first film I can think of without a plot is L’Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni). It starts off about a young woman who goes missing on a boating trip, and then follows those close to her as they search for her. For a little while at least. And then they stop looking. And the young woman is forgotten. The rest of the movie isn’t about anything resembling a plot. Nevertheless, L'Avventura is cohesive and calculated down to every last detail. By the time it's over, you get what it's trying to say. 

     Then there’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais). The whole thing takes place in this resort. And as far as plot goes, you never know whether what anyone’s talking about is meaningful in any way to you as a viewer. It’s fun. It’s like trying to put together a puzzle, but the pieces don’t fit together. Last Year at Marienbad is an island. There’s never been anything else like it. It draws you in. It feels like a movie. It is a movie. But from the first few minutes onwards, there’s never any exposition or plot that builds into anything. It never gives you anything resembling a plot, I love it so—maybe the most stylishly chic movie ever made.

     Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati) doesn't have a plot. And I'm not sure whether that befits its comedy or sense of modern calamity better, but probably both. In Playtime, there's always a tendency for the characters to wander off and get lost, which always makes it fresh and preserves its spontaneity. Also owing to its playfulness is its lack of dialogue from the main character. Playtime might also be the best title for a movie without a plot.

     I've only seen Mirror (1975, Andrei Tarkovsky) a couple of times over the years and I humbly admit I don't even know what it's about but I do know it does't have a plot. But it's Tarkovsky, so y'know rain dripping inside dilapidated houses? But seriously I can't wait to see it again. 

     What many of these examples have in common is their innate cinematic qualities—textures, senses, setting. They convey so much that they don’t need a plot. Gummo (1997, Harmony Korine) is another example of these rarest of occurrences. Gummo might also bear the strongest signs of a kind of anarchist approach to narrative conventions. It’s too inspired to conform to a plot structure. Gummo is the most stylishly garbage movie ever made.

     Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch) exists as an improvisational experiment in exploring pure cinema. I made the mistake of reading as many interpretations as I could find about the meanings of Lost Highway (1997, Lynch) and Mulholland Dr. (2001, Lynch) to compare against my own ideas. So unfortunately, for me, Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr. have plots. But not Inland Empire. I’ll never know what happened to NIKKI GRACE. And I’m blissfully thankful not to. In a way I’d be happy if Lynch never made another movie because his filmography would be bookended by his two most purely cinematic films.

 

II. Movies with an Underdeveloped Plot

Another test to determine the plot of movie is to ask: what was the story about? Almost always a story is constructed based on a causal effect, and progresses raising the stakes of the goal/obstacle pursued by the central protagonist. Ever watch a movie and feel like there wasn’t the payoff you were expecting? Either the movie sucks or, the filmmaker wants you to experience something more challenging (and sometimes more rewarding).

     When Weekend (1967, Jean-Luc Godard) heralded the end of cinema, its claim is interesting to ponder in the context of it coinciding with Godard’s break with plot-driven filmmaking. And while for the most part Godard has spent the rest of his career making political or autobiographical or essay films, there was that 80s period where he returned to narrative films, yet managed to stay as non-conformist as ever.

     In MASH (1970, Robert Altman) the war’s already well under way when its story begins, and keeps going on after the end of the movie. Do they ever even mention which war it is? MASH doesn’t care because it’s too cool. A recalcitrant attitude is what MASH is about, and Altman ingeniously structures its narrative to embody this by disobeying the orders of established plot conventions. HAWKEYE and TRAPPER don’t pursue any objectives. (It could be said that their one goal is to subvert authority, but I’m only speaking in terms of plot.) 

     Next he follows up with Brewster McCloud (1970, Altman). As the narrative engine gets moving it’s not at all clear what the film is about. What we get are assorted bird references of several varieties. But why? It doesn’t matter. If it does, this movie’s not for you. At the climax of the film, when the suspect is apprehended, the narrative disintegrates. Because Altman doesn’t care about solving the crime, which would be conforming to a conventional narrative structure. Again it’s as though Altman wants to be able to make a film without a plot. 

     The dark side to Altman’s fun anti-authoritarian riffs is Michael Haneke’s austere manipulation of narrative forms to subvert our genre and character expectations subtly, in pursuit of an underlying, universally human message. Or in the case of Funny Games (2007, Haneke) to critique our relationship to and perception of a specific type of genre’s narrative devices as means of exploitation that capitalize on its audience's hunger for sadistic plot-points (yeah I said 2007). But that’s Haneke’s thing. The Piano Teacher (2001) seems like it’s gonna be about this spinster who has the hots for her young pupil and them having a steamy affair right? In Time of the Wolf (2003) do we get to find out how the world ended or what becomes of the survivors? Will we find out in Caché (2005) who’s been sending the tapes and why? Haneke has this beautiful way of making the question of “what is this about?” simultaneously elusive and enlightening.

 

III. Movies with a Deliberately Mysterious Plot

     What about movies like Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman) or Images (1972, Altman)? Lumping unreliable narrator and identity swaps together, it’s best to separate these from questions about plot. I mean yeah the narrator technically falls under the category of plot, but these are usually stories told conventionally with said twist built in.

 

IV. Conclusion

In McKee’s book on screenwriting, in the section he categorizes their different types, he claims that all movies have a plot. This post is an attempt to see if I were able to refute that claim. 

     Warhol’s entire staggering cinematic output, his pre-Morrissey 16mm films of the ‘60s eschew plot, but they’re basically avant-garde reality TV shot with a fixed camera. And I know I must sound lazy by not delving into the whole 60s experimental scene like Kuchar, Brakhage, Benning and those types, but I don’t consider their work “movies.” And I know there are also several of those movies where it's mostly just two people talking, but why bother?