Radiance

From the Personal Reels of Percival Alfred Unck

[A camera is on. The screen is black, for the camera is skewed toward the wall, a clandestine attempt to capture the child without her knowing she is being recorded. Occasionally, flickers of silver interrupt the darkness—echoes from a screen showing more lively activity somewhere behind the device that picks up the following quiet conversation.]

PERCIVAL UNCK

Now, in any film it is important that you know who is telling the story, and to whom they are telling it. Even if no one on-screen talks about it, the director must know, and the writer, too. Now, who is telling this story?

SEVERIN UNCK

Daddy is telling the story!

PERCIVAL

[laughing] Well, Daddy made the movie, but Daddy is not telling the story. Look at the characters and how they speak to each other. Look at how the film begins, how the very first scenes shape everything else. Now, who is telling the story?

[There is a long silence.]

SEVERIN

The camera is telling the story. It’s watching everything, and you can’t lie to it, or it will know.

PERCIVAL

My girl is so clever! No, the camera witnesses the story and records it, but it is outside the story. Like a very tiny god with one big, dark eye. Baby girl, look at the lovers, and the villain, and the doting father, and the soldiers, and the ghosts. Which one of them is the authority? Who controls how the story is told? And who is the audience, for whom all these wonderful things are meant?

[Another long silence follows. There is a rustling, as of a little girl twisting her lace skirts while she tries to work out an answer.]

SEVERIN

They are all telling the story to me.