The beauty of a film is often rooted to its mystery, of how some parts are immediately realized and concluded by us, viewers, without showing too much. This type of technique is referred to as Diagesis.
Basically, diagesis is a technique used by screenplay writers who rely on the viewers' capacity to understand parts of the film's story through giving hints of what happened but without showing the the entire story.
In the movie Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros), a lot of scenes were depicted incompletely yet we were able to understand the happenings of the story.
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| On the left side is Maxi's brother, Bogs. |
The scene when Maxi's brother, Bogs, accidentally killed someone is a good example of the Diagesis technique. It was never shown how he killed the person but the scene simply transitioned to the part when he went home full of bloodstains on his shirt. Immediately, we are able to conclude that Bogs killed someone.
Another scene where Diagesis technique was incorporated was the depiction of Maxi's mother's absence. It was never told that Maxi's mother was dead but we were given a hint through showing a scene when an old picture of his mother was placed in the altar with a lighted candle. In Filipino context, this is simply understandable that his mother was already dead.
Diagesis is a good way of trusting your viewers' capacity to understand hints without deliberately showing too much scenes that may ruin the flow of the story. The movie, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, successfully uses the technique relying on the fact that its viewers would be intelligent enough to understand the film. Turns out we were! haha
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