...ist eine Enthüllung, die bedeutend wirkt. A revelation, a moment that completely shifts the meaning of what happened before or that suddenly cuts to the bone. This type of moment seems to show up in the oddest places. The end of the movie The Artist is a great example. Terry Pratchett is a master at this type of moment. Dorothy Dunnett was as well-there are a few great examples in every book of the Lymond Chronicles.
I never know what to call this beat in writing. It's one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it things. And it has many different forms. Terry Pratchett tends to write this moment as a shift in the balance of power. (Frequently when Granny Weatherwax goes from seeming beaten to beating the tar out of someone deserving.) In The Artist, it changes the motive behind the main character's choices. And in Dorothy Dunnett's writing, it can be...well, anything. Time after time, a shifting perspective on a series of events completely changes a character's morality or lack thereof.
It's tricky though, because when as author/director/what have you tries to create this type of shift and fails, it tends to be excruciating. The Elegance of the Hedgehog had an ending that didn't just disappoint me, but actively made me angry. Without spoiling the ending, let's just say that as I see it, the author didn't want to have too happy of an ending, so she tried for this type of perspective shift with a dramatic event.
But when they do work, there are few things in fiction more satisfying. I recently finished reading War and Peace (more about that later), and it had a fair number of them. (It would be fair to say that the two main themes of War and Peace are the evolution of identity and that Napoleon was an overrated jerk.) As I work on my list of great books, I'm looking forward to finding more of them...and maybe I'll even figure out what to call them.
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