With a movie such as Shark in the Head, it is hard to find a specific scene in which the setting play an important role in the mise-en-scéne because each set helps to elaborate on the this. However the scene I choose stuck out, as I believe it did for many. The camera is focused in on the face of our main character, Mr. Seaman (a name only said once throughout the entirety of the movie). The palette of gray colors on the walls behind him. A voice, which many of us assume to be that of a doctor and unseen by the audience, diagnoses the man with “the disease of the chicken butts”. With these words, the camera begins to slowly rotate around the incessant staring Seaman. Almost no shadow comes from the windows that appear to be whited out with a blinding white light. As the camera goes to a point-of-view shot, we see that he is not in a doctor’s office as the outside voice may have led us to believe. Instead we begin to focus in on a dryer, whose noise of tossing clothes resembles the ocean sounds that have played in his head throughout the movie. Within this dryer, we see the reflection of Seaman in the dryer, blurred out except for the colors of his hat. The tumbling dryer continues as we are forced to look inside the dryer full of long-sleeve button down shirts and dress pants. Cut to next scene.
Within this scene the, many things are revealed slowly to the audience as the camera moves towards the point of view of Seaman. At the very beginning of the film, the use of blinding white light from the windows created a seclusion from the outside world for him. With the movie being about a schizophrenic man, it can be pulled out that this use of lighting means that the audience is within the his mind, almost trapped there as he is. Within the room itself, the use of high-key lighting allows no shadow to intrude on the white/grayness of his mind. This gray palette used throughout the film yet specifically prominent in this scene also contributes to the idea of a blank/dull slate of his mind. Immediately preceding this scene, the motif of obsession has overwhelmed Seaman with the pictures of chickens to the point that he must clear his mind of that. With this in mind, we can see how the blank nature of the room portrays an outward interpretation of his mental state at that exact moment in the movie. Also the actors own expression is filled with an almost painful yet neutral gaze towards the dryer, which contains the objects of his new obsession: formal attire. This blank quality is furthered when we see his reflection in the circular frame of the dryer. His face is completely blurred, yet his silhouette is noticeable along with the colors and shape of his hat. As we look at this minute detail within the scene, it is fair to extrapolate that his identity is similarly black. Furthering on this concept, the idea of obsession presented earlier in the film can be translated as a creation of identity, which with his obsession gone, his identity is blank. All these different aspects of this one scene contribute tremendously to the mise-en-scéne of the film.
With all these details in mind, it is hard to elaborate on whether this over-stylized film has more manner than style. Some may argue that the way in which the story of Shark in the Head is told in a such an overly stylized that it must be heavily affected by manner, the way in which to tell it. However, I believe that any single scene in this movie can be extracted from context and still be drawn upon for meaning. Each use of mise-en-scéne contains a specific purpose and meaning on its own. Although the movie may have no narrative to follow per se, the film as a whole achieves style through the meaning of the specific uses of mise-en-scéne, which can be seen especially in the scene I choose.
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