A Filmmaker's Guide to: Internal Conflict

In this chapter of ‘the filmmaker’s guide’ we’re actually going to be learning about literature and film together. I understand that many of you are sitting in university during difficult times and finding it increasingly hard to study and I understand that many of you who are not at university or not planning on it are possibly stuck of what to do, need a break or even need to catch up on learning film before you get to the next level. This guide will be brief but will also contain: new vocabulary, concepts and theories, films to watch and we will be exploring something taboo until now in the ‘filmmaker’s guide’ - academia (abyss opens). Each article will explore a different concept of film, philosophy, literature or bibliography/filmography etc. in order to give you something new to learn each time we see each other. You can use some of the words amongst family and friends to sound clever or you can get back to me (email in bio) and tell me how you’re doing. So, strap in and prepare for the filmmaker’s guide to film studies because it is going to be one wild ride.

Internal Conflict

What is it?

An internal conflict is a conflict happening inside the mind of the character of the story. This is normally something moral or psychological that they struggle with and comes to form part of the main plot as we unfold the narrative.

In literature, internal conflicts are more than just common, especially in the modernist era with the rise of psychological studies, we came to more and more books that contained characters of questionable morals. Starting in the Victorian Ages with the works of MR James, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, M.E Braddon and RL Stevenson, psychological struggles were often drastic and horrific in nature. Possibly the best book to read on the Victorian approach to internal conflict is RL Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" for it contains one of the most physical stories relating to the concept.

Next, as we approach the war-time eras, we get stories of PTSD and violent moral questions. Books such as "All Quiet on the Western Front" by E.M Remarque and the poetry of Wilfred Owen are often considered to be the best for reading on internal conflicts as well as the poets of the 1930s. With novels including the works of Virginia Woolf and F. Scott Fitzgerald to become some of the most well-known for internal conflict amongst their era.

The Beat Generation's Jack Kerouac often discussed internal conflicts and dislocation in his books such as "On the Road" and his grief-stricken "Visions of Gerard", with Sylvia Plath making her internal conflict one of the stars of both his and her generation of the 50s and 60s in "The Bell Jar" and her struggle with her womanhood.

The transgressive eras contain writers like Hunter S. Thompson, Anthony Burgess, Hubert Selby Jr. and later on, Chuck Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis who all explored the internal conflicts of morality. Of what it right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad, what is legal and what is not, they could argue to the point of no return through the torment of their main characters.

What about in film?

Film adaptations of the works of these literary productions have been going on for years. If you want to explore internal conflicts to the extreme, I would suggest the following movies:

1. The Seventh Seal (1957)
2. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
3. Fight Club (1999)
4. American Psycho (2000)
5. Less Than Zero (1987)
6. Joker (2020)
7. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
8. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
9. I'm Not There (2007)
10. Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Now let's have a look at some further reading that you could do from different eras in order to learn more about the topic of internal conflict.

Further Reading

Easton Ellis, B. (2011). Imperial Bedrooms. 2nd ed. USA: Picador

Palahniuk, C (1997). Fight Club. 2nd ed. USA: Vintage.

Plath, S (2005). The Bell Jar. USA: Faber and Faber

Selby Jr, H. (2012). Requiem for a Dream. USA: Penguin Modern Classics.

Thompson, H.S (1994). Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. USA: Flamingo.