Energy and eventhood: the infrastructural set piece

ABSTRACT “Energy and Eventhood” considers the relationship between infrastructure and the cinematic set piece. It proposes a working definition of the set piece as a distinctly (and perhaps excessively) effortful passage or sequence, and reflects on the tendency for narrative films to incorporate infrastructural sites and structures—such as bridges, dams and pipelines—into such set pieces. A number of writers on infrastructure, as both a cultural phenomenon and a representational object, have noted the aesthetic challenge of rendering it as visible and locatable; this article examines how that difficulty becomes manifest in the infrastructural set piece. It takes as its case studies Unstoppable (2010) and Night Moves (2013), two films noted for their distinctive rhythmic expressiveness, and each one deploying the convention of the set piece in ways that exemplify and reflect on the resistance of infrastructure to narrative containment.