Direct Gaze of the Actor Towards the Camera in Cinema in the Context of Identification and Alienation: A Discussion on the Films “The Brand New Testament” (2015) and “Funny Games” (1997)

From its earliest days to the present, film language has evolved within various contexts, undergoing transformations and bringing forth diverse cinematic narrative possibilities in different forms and content. These narrative options predominantly exist within the classical Aristotelian structure, but with the adaptation of the Brechtian structure to cinema, they have also taken on different and alternative directions. This shift has resulted in various changes across screenplay, cinematography, acting, and other areas. The central issue of this study is built upon these differences, with a particular focus on the gaze in cinema. The primary aim is to analyze classical and contemporary narrative structures in the context of actors' direct gazes at the camera, interpreting the distinctions through Jaco Van Dormael's "The Brand New Testament" (2015) and Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" (1997). The study intends to address how actors' direct gazes in these two distinct films differ between classical and contemporary narrative structures, examining them under the lenses of identification and alienation respectively. In this context, the study concentrates on how these gazes differentiate within both narrative structures across the selected films.