Mise-en-abyme

“Placed into Abyss”

The term mise-en-abyme is French for ‘placed into an abyss’ or ‘placed into the center.’ It originates from the field of heraldry, where it described the practice of placing a small replica of a coat of arms onto the center of the shield itself. In art and literature, it refers to the formal technique of self-reflection, where a work of art contains a miniature reproduction of itself.

This creates a sense of recursion or an infinite regress, like standing between two parallel mirrors and seeing your reflection stretch on into an abyss. It is a powerful formal device that calls attention to the artifice of the medium itself.

Visual and Narrative Forms in Cinema

In filmmaking, mise-en-abyme can manifest in both visual and narrative ways:

• Visual (The Droste Effect): This is the most direct form, where an image literally contains a smaller copy of itself. The classic example is the logo on the Droste cocoa powder box, which features a woman holding a tray with the same box on it. In film, this might be a character watching a video of themselves watching the same video, or a shot that frames a series of reflective surfaces to create an infinite tunnel.

• Narrative (The Story-within-a-Story): This is a more conceptual form, where the film’s plot contains a smaller, embedded narrative that mirrors or comments on the main story. This is the classic ‘play-within-a-play’ trope. The characters might go to see a movie, attend a play, or read a book whose story directly reflects their own circumstances and emotional journey.

Examples and Thematic Purpose

Filmmakers use mise-en-abyme to explore complex themes of reality, artifice, and the nature of storytelling. It is a self-reflexive technique that can break the illusion of realism and make the audience conscious of the film as a constructed piece of art.

• In Hamlet, the play that Hamlet stages for the king is a direct mise-en-abyme, re-enacting the suspected crime to gauge the king’s reaction.
• Charlie Kaufman’s films, particularly Synecdoche, New York and Adaptation., are masterful explorations of narrative mise-en-abyme, with characters creating art that consumes and replicates their own lives in an endless creative loop.