Diactic

Methodology on story film by Japanese film theorist Teruaki Georges Sumioka. He insists that a story of a film considers a theme through the Dialogue with actions, i.e. "Diagogue".
Christian Metz thought that only documentary has exposition. Criticizing him, Seymour Chatman says, there is argumentation also in feature film. Some old films talked the arguments or precept directly by voice over or showed them implicitly by the conclusion of the story as known well as Ideology. However, implied author of Feature films in these days brings up to the audience an Aporia and lets not only the person in the films but also all the images to argue on the subject. Plural texts compete here each other for the answer. Different from Ideology films, the ending of the story gives no decisive conclusion and the audience are forced to stay in perplexity.
Sumioka found out a similarity to the traditional philosophical methodology in Chatman's theory. Succeeding the word from his master Socrates, ancient Greek philosopher Plato discussed Dialectic. Plato as well as Socrates thought that the appearance of the truth is always intricate and that no one in this world can see the original whole shape directly. So, we should start first with the investigation of the daily usage of the word. And through the Dialogue about the various examples and counterexamples, we can get a more minute general idea of the theme, namely the Idea.
On such basis of the theory on Dialectic by Plato, Sumioka insists that story film is the very Dialectic of the present day. However, the Dialectic consists here not of the normal Dialogue with words, but of the Dialogue with actions, "Diagogue". Diagogue is the chain development of actions and reactions on the identical theme.
With a special situation, a usual action comes into question of the intrinsic meaning. For example, a man proposes to a girl ordinarily, but she crabs about the way to say it. From this trouble, both have to start on the long wandering to find the true meaning of a proposal of marriage. The more typical example is "Platoon", where the two opposite sergeants struggle in the presence of the protagonist.
A hypothetical action for the theme by the person in the film makes reaction-chain after that subsequently. The set of the actions is episode. Each episode relates to the same theme, but from different aspect. Those episodes gradually approach the core of the theme while circulating around it as the axis. Sumioka terms it "the Spiral Up Structure" of story film.
See also Dialog act

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