The Rear View
-The opening credits lay out the structure for which the movie is to be presented. Curtains are being raised from windows in imitation of a theatre curtain up. In this way, the audience as well as the protagonist get a feel for watching a story play out from this seat, which we as the audience never leave. In this way, as Jack looks through every window, each one becomes a stage on which the multiple stories of the film are to be played out.
-In a way, this voyeuristic view through people’s windows is slightly perverted in the fact that we constantly see women and men in their undergarments and going about their lives. However, there seems to be nothing wrong with this technique for that is all we are allowed to see. In a way, we a forced to become a perverted voyeur and grasp at any form of entertainment, just as Jack does.
-In some ways the stages on which these neighbors perform their lives correlate as to what Jack himself may be going through or his thoughts on a certain matter. The married couple entertains his thoughts on marriage. The lonely woman correlates with his own feelings of loneliness at times. And so on, and so forth.
-Right before the scene where the dog is murdered, the curtains in Jack’s room are closed. This can be seen as a faux curtain call. By this, I mean that the stage is now closed off to the viewer and the only evidence anyone would have had goes unseen. This curtain call helps to add to the fact that as much as we can see, we cannot know everything.
Atonement
Set Design:
-The opening of the movie comes from the child’s room, specifically a dollhouse. The room is filled with flowered wallpaper and the colors of green and pink are first introduced, two colors that remain very prominent throughout he whole first part of the movie.
-The structure of the house is that of a stereotypical high-class family. This mansion that the family lives in resembles the dollhouse in the young girls room. This set allows for a significance to be carried on what the child owns and does. The mansion she owns is the mansion she is in, and in this way a sort of control is given in the visuals to Briony.
-The greens of the interior walls of Briony’s room match the green of the nature surrounding the mansion giving a sense of being alive which is in contrast to the second half of the film that is mostly concerned with the colors of browns and off-whites to represent a form of decay.
-The mansion of the first half is a labyrinth in which the audience cannot pin point where each room is. This maze-like quality is followed through with just about every scene in the film. The set designer is more focused on how the characters journey through the sets rather than focusing on where everything is in relation to the other.
-In the second half of the movie the nature is wilder than the tame nature surrounding the mansion, which creates the dichotomy between danger in the wild to the peace in the tame. This also is exemplified in the choice of color. Even though they both contain shades of green the former is one of darkness fading to brown, while the latter is one of bright lighting and a lively green.
Music:
-The sounds of the film are very important to entire feel of the movie. Each sound within the diegesis of the film create the non-diegetic film. The motif of the typing on the typewriter began with the Briony writing a play. This same typing noise and musical arrangement reminds the audience of the theme of writing a story. Whether it be a banging on the car or and operatic vinyl record, they both leave the diegesis and become the music within the outside world of film.
-Every movement of the film is extenuated through the sound editing. This helps to convey the emphasis on details within the film.
Breathless
Thought:
-As discussed prior to the screening, the film contained many jump cut. However, something interesting that I noticed was that Michel’s singing would not be cut as well. Especially during his long traveling scenes, Piccoard’s voice would have a continuing flow even though the landscape was constantly changing. Similarly, the many of the conversations in the movie contained these same jump cuts, yet did not take away from the flow of the actual conversations. These effects on the visuals did draw my attention to the fact I was watching a film and watching actors portray the absurd and humorous events on the screen. In a way, the entirety of the movie was built upon the idea of actors within the world. This can be seen through Michel’s constant emphasis on his face and lips, especially to resemble Henry Bogart. His constant tones and facial expressions are made to remind the audience that this is an actor in essence. Michel is an actor for he is trying to emanate Bogart, yet since this is a film there is another actor involved behind the character of Michel.
Reaction:
-Although the movie id not grab my attention at first, I found it hard not to enjoy the movie. Having lightly studied the topic of existentialism before, I could see how the movie tried to grasp at humanity’s absurd nature. The whole film’s explores this through the character of Michel. He is already such a humorous character that throughout the movie, I couldn’t help but laugh at his situation. Especially during his conversation with Patricia, insults fly from his mouth like common words, yet he only desires to sleep with her. And furthermore, she gives in. Every bit of supposedly dramatic plot points, are presented as laughable. For me, the movie was an exploration into how we dramatize our lives to the point where they can no longer be taken seriously. For this outrageous factor, I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
Key Moment:
-For me, the key moment in the film is when Michel is staring at the picture of Henry Bogart and outlining his lips. Although this may seem like a trivial scene, for me it set up the fact that Michel is an actor. If you think about I, the outlining of his lips becomes a central part of his character for the rest of the movie. He is constantly focused on putting on a face. He does doing so, and Patricia outlines her own lips in homage. All this points back to this scene where Michel becomes the actor within this world for the audience.
Capturing the Friedmans
-The opening scenes of the documentary set up the portrait of a normal American family, introducing the people involved in the film through their own home movies. This puts forth to the audience a happier theme that would follow the film in contrast to the actual material within the documentary.
-An interesting choice by the filmmaker is to juxtapose the home videos with the actual Talking Head type documentary he is creating. Not only does this give the audience a glimpse into the lives of the Friedmans through narration and actual footage, but the fact that Arnold and his sons seem to be interested in the art of film themselves adds an interesting dynamic within the movie, creating an amateur movie within a movie feel.
-The choice in editing made by the filmmaker allows the movie to move between emotions and ideas all while presenting evidence to the audience with twists and turns along the way. This allows for an audience member to play the part of detective with the facts that are represented by the filmmaker. As shown by our in class discussion, almost every piece of footage can be interrupted to a different extent and with different meaning depending on what they choose to pick up on. Some of these opinions can be clashing, which shows that the movie is presented with seemingly no personal bias by the filmmaker.
-During on portion of the movie in particular, the film juxtaposes two interviews, on of Jesse Friedman and the other of his lawyer at the time of the case. The film quickly changes between the two speaking about the same subject, a confession for a plea bargain in the case. However, each on is recounting the events in totally opposite ways, where neither one of them is portrayed more trust worthy than the other. The choice as to who is telling the truth is left up to the viewer because the filmmaker makes no discernible judgment call.
-Although the audience is continually presented more and more back story about the life and hardships of Arnold Friedman, the fact remains that nothing pertaining to the case at had was revealed to either be true or false, regardless of any past experiences with pedophilia that Arnold may had had.
Gosford Park
Deep Focus:
-Throughout the movie the use of deep focus by the cinematographer allows the audience to see multiple interactions between the bourgeoisie of England. Each of these characters has a plot following them, which varies on importance to the over arching plot of the entire movie. This causes the audience to be forced to scan the entirety of the frame in order to figure out who has motive and reason to murder of Sir William, as well as revealing their own pasts and reasons for attending.
-However, the deep focus of the movie follows the servants’ actions as they move throughout the room. Even when the high class characters are talking at first they are edited off screen in order to follow the servants who are performing their tasks while listening in onto their conversations, which is emphasized by the deep focus and camera movement.
-Almost at the very beginning of the movie the deep focus calls attention to the bottle of poison, which is a recurring plot. This tells the audience that the story will have a murder involved.
-The camera makes an emphasis on showing many scenes from behind something to obstruct the view of the audience; however, the deep focus allows the audience to see perfectly what is going on behind the obstruction, as if we were servants peeking in on every little action.
-One scene in particular that heavily uses the deep focus is the scene when they are in the living area where all the high class characters are interacting with one another. The deep focus allows for the secretive conversations, sideward glances and mysterious happenings of all the characters to be available for the audience to scan and make sense of themselves.
Mise-en-Scéne: Costumes
-The concept of uniformity and lack of identity is a strong theme throughout the film. As would be expected, the servants all are dressed in the same uniforms, mostly consisting of a color scheme of gray. However there are very slight alterations to almost every servants’ uniform, whether it be wearing a hat or not, or Elise being the only one wearing that maid outfit. These slight alterations are even more evident when the audience is shown the blandness of the aristocrats. The color scheme for much of these characters is dark and more on the brown side, perhaps due to the lighting. Although their outfits may appear to have more variety, the bland color and texture and almost uniform cut of each costume almost acts as a forced individualism that is not present within the characters themselves. The servants with their slight differences are perceived to have more variation in personality, which is evident as the actors portray their characters. On the other side is the bourgeoisie who attempt to be above them, but are made to look more like the others than the servants. The actors and actresses themselves are given similar make up and hair style to compliment the actual costume, where the servants seem to have more difference even it what is supposed uniformity.
Shark in the Head
-The camera throughout the movie moves in a very voyeuristic fashion, especially in the opening scene of the movie. This implies from the beginning of the movie that we are intruding on someone’s private space: on someone’s mind.
-The main character of the movie retains child-like behavior throughout the movie. This child though has lost his innocence, which is portrayed through the massive consumption of cigarettes and alcohol by Seaman.
-The palette of colors remains a gray at night or a brown during the day. However, inside the house of Seaman, the lighting always seems to be red, just like the pills that run across the screen at times. This almost hits at the red as being a stabilizer for his mind.
-The world around the main character seems to animate itself whenever there is some dull, repetitive task being undertaken, whether it be robotic movement or dancing. With this the audience can see how child-like he is, as well as secluded from this outside world in which he can only interact with in his on mind.
-The whole movie portrays days as brief moment within the life of the main character, which allows for a sense of any time to be blurred and mix together with each passing scene.
-The music of the movie seems to always be started off by some sort of sound within the scene, which leads the audience to believe that the music is initiated within Seaman’s own head.
-The film itself seems to convey more symbolism within each scene rather than any specific narrative in which the audience can follow. This causes the audience to try and extract meaning from the movie rather than have a story to go home with.
Memento
Lack of Clarity:
-The action in the movie follows a man who can no longer create new memories. Because of this the action in the movie seems to occur without the audience knowing what is going on.
-Due to his condition, Leonard constantly makes notes to himself, either in the form of tattoos, pictures, or paper. This causes the propulsion of his actions to be more on what he has told himself, so if he does not write it done or not have the time to, any important information is lost, making the action of the film meaningless once again.
-Although he cannot create new memory, Leonard has flashes of the very last things he remembers as the plot of the film progresses, creating snapshots of what happened. However, in every memory he has his wife is still breathing, leaving the death of his wife to reside on an unreliable account from Leonard.
-Once the movie reaches close, the audience finds out that Leonard can lie to himself to keep the search going, because he will never remember if his wife is dead or not. This leads the action of the play to be based on a lie that he himself has no choice but to believe. However, at this point we do not know who to believe since Teddy is another untrustworthy source, so the question of which is the truth is never answered.
Lack of Union:
-The form of the narration moving backwards and forwards almost simultaneously through the different scenes, causes actions to be scene, yet the audience is left unaware of the why. The very opening scene is of Leonard holding a Polaroid shaking it, yet the picture becomes dimmer rather than clearer, causing the audience to realize that the story is going to be told backwards. They get the image of Teddy dying, yet they do not have an answer as to why. This formula is followed throughout the entirety of the movie where Leonard does something that the audience does not understand why, as he does not.
-As more complications enter Leonard’s world, the fact of his condition forces the audience to remember for him, yet Leonard as a character is never given any reason besides the ones he gives himself for moving forward.
-The events of Sammy Jankis are made important to the audience early on; however, before they even know about Leonard’s own condition, the audience is forced to give it more emphasis without knowing why. Furthermore, when Teddy says to Leonard that the story is actually his, the role the story of Sammy Jankis because muddy, forcing the audience to question which is the truth, especially when they have invested so much connection into the protagonist.
Unconventional Characterization:
-The narration is unreliable from the beginning of the movie because the protagonist, who is also the narrator, has no short term memory. The question of the notes is brought early on into the minds of the audience. A note can be a lie. He is forced to believe whatever he writes, yet how can he believe himself, and how can the audience believe what they are told.
-When Natalie changes Leonard’s memories, the audience also asks what else could have been changed throughout his time on the investigation, leading the audience to trust Leonard’s retelling less and less.
Intrusions:
-The movie draws attention to its own formulation by presenting the action not only backwards but in two separate sections: one in color and the other black and white. These two narratives move together: one from the future in, the other from past out. Because of this structure, the audience can never fully delve into the film without being consistently retold that they are watching a film.
Psycho
Music:
-At the beginning of the movie the tone is set out with abrupt, screeching high-pitched violin notes. These immediate sounds almost make the viewer jump from their seat, establishing the severity of the subject matter of this movie.
-Almost soon after the jolting introduction, a more subdued sound progresses into the audience’s ear allowing the viewer to pay attention once again to the actual happenings of the exposition. However, the motif of jeering staccato notes is carried throughout not allowing the audience to completely feel safe.
-The musical theme of high dissonant chords continues while Marion decides whether to take the money and flee or not. This obviously non-diegetic technique allows the audience to realize the implications of taking the money, expressing temptation. This temptation is also posed as an extreme danger as the music suggests it will be. From this point dramatic motif of the music choice will add the danger that an audience of people who have not seen the movie before will interpret, pulling the audience into the action through sound rather than point-of-view shots on the camera.
-The string orchestration chosen by the composer allows for the drastic changes in music from a calming, flowing legato to a sharp, piercing staccato keeping the suspense of the movie pulled through much of the non-diegetic music that continues to begin and stop with the same abrupt action that the music itself contains.
- While Marion drives on the highway, fleeing Phoenix, the musical motif plays alongside the dialogue of those off-screen, mixing the diegetic and non-diegetic into this off-screen world that seems to surround the act of Marion’s flight, the audience begging the question of when the actual danger will occur.
-When Marion reaches the motel, the music no longer seems to just stop as in previous conversations between Marion and other characters; instead, the music seems to subdue itself into the background, letting the audience register aurally that something of importance rests within Norman Bates. This also envelopes Norman in the sense of danger that the music has carried for the majority of the movie up to this point, forcing the audience to make an unconscious correlation between Norman and danger before anything is actually revealed about the almost saccharine motel owner.
Lighting:
-At the very start of the movie, the choice that Hitchcock made to do this movie in black and white is made evident. This choice holds many implications: primarily the stark difference between light and darkness within the films theme. With this the first scene in the movie, where Marion and Sam are carrying on their affair, the lighting is darker than it should have been with he daylight coming in from outside. However, the purpose of this is to attach the idea of this being the darker and more risqué part of Marion and Sam’s relationship.
-As the narrative progresses to the motel, the combination of darkness and rain in the night helps to give the Bates Motel an eerie look and feel to the eyes of the audience, who are forced to lean in and focus more on the screen in order to capture the detail of actions being acted out.
-Within the motel itself, the light that illuminates the room is minimal focused on a few small lamps and such in order to continue the ambience of shady motel, which is in contrast with the brightness of Marion’s actual home and office back in Phoenix.
-In her motel room, the lighting continues with the minimal amount; however, the white walls in the bathroom blaze through in the almost, causing a squinting of the eyes to adjust to the new lighting established. This helps to give some sort of importance to the blazing white nature of the bathroom, which almost appears dangerous in comparison to the milder lighting of the rest of the room.
-After the first murder occurs, the entirety of the lighting in the film lessens and lessens until a scene with Marion’s sister and Sam, where their faces are almost all but gone to the vision of the audiences, who can only make out silhouette of their heads. This device helps to give the representation of the darker side of the mind that the film explores.
Visual Effects:
-Much of the camera work within the film is focused on close-ups of the faces of the main characters and those that have some major effect on them. This brings to mind the old adage “the eyes are the gateway to the soul”. Because the movie is focused on the instability of the mind, it would only make sense that the facial expressions and eyes of Marion and Norman play an important role in the meaning of the movie.
-The first major close-up that establishes something to link importance is when Marion is pulled over by a police officer, wearing dark black shades. These sunglasses reflect the lack of identity within the officer almost reflecting Marion’s misdeeds back onto herself as she looks into his eyes. This scene adds a major importance when Marion is driving in the dark and her own face reflects her thievery as her eyes stare forth and a sly smile crawls onto her face. It is almost unnoticeable at first, but as the scene continues the smile becomes more and more noticeable as the interrogation with the officer and the car dealer goes on off-screen.
-When Norman enters the movie, the close-ups of his face help to show the increase in his nervous habits, chewing to be one of them. His eyes are constantly shifting or staring deeply, especially with Marion. This helps to show when he is first introduced as something less then sane. This is furthered when he looks though his peep hole into Marion’s hotel room, which focuses the light on his piercing gaze, which adds more and more to the instability of the characters mind before the film-goer realizes that he is the murderer.
Full Metal Jacket
Syuhet
- The movie begins with a scene of what can be easily assumed as the routine shaving of the head of men entering the military
- The next scene consists of a General screaming at the new recruits into the marines
- Soon after there are scenes of training including running and obstacle courses
- The seemingly slow recruit, Leonard, is continuously physically disciplined by General Hartman; however, he becomes assigned to Joker to be trained
- Leonard learns slowly and begins to progress as a soldier, yet when a donut is found in his foot locker during Christmas, Hartman decides to punish the rest of the recruits for Leonard’s mistakes.
- Soon the other recruits retaliate and beat Leonard in his sleep with soap wrapped in towels.
- Leonard is shown in a slow decline into mental instability with his talking to his gun
- Graduation comes after more scenes of training with rifles.
- That night Leonard finally cracks and kills General Hartman and himself.
- The film then cuts to the Vietnam War, with Joker assigned as a military journalist.
- After a meeting of the journalists, the camp is attacked by the Vietcong on the Vietnamese New Year.
- When Joker is reassigned, the film cuts to a helicopter ride in which they meet a man killing innocent Vietnamese while riding with them.
- On route to meet up with his new camp, Joker comes across a mass grave of Vietnamese in which they are rotting in lye.
- Joker is then reunited with his old recruit friend Cowboy at the camp.
- While on their mission, Joker and company are attacked by unseen forces.
- After this attack, the men are interviewed by a film crew, which asks about their opinions of the war they are fighting.
- After an NVA retreat, Cowboy’s squad finds themselves being killed off one by one by a rogue Vietcong sniper.
- After Cowboy is shot, Joker and Animal Mother, another marine who enjoys war, go in to seek revenge with their squad.
- When Joker finds the sniper and realizes it is a young girl, his gun locks and puts him into harms way.
- Rafter Man, Joker’s photographer, guns down the girl and saves Joker. Soon after Joker is lead to the decision of whether to kill the girl or let her die slowly from the wounds Rafter Man inflicted.
- After choosing to shot her, the film ends with a narration by Joker and the squad marching to the Mickey Mouse Club theme song
Diegetic and Non- Diegetic Elements
- In certain parts of the movie, usually during very critical moments in Joker’s life, a narrator, who seems to be telling the situation from a past perspective, chimes in. The voice at first seems outside the film’s world; however, the speaker can soon be identified with Joker, even though from what may seem like a future voice. When and to whom the narrator is speaking remains unknown throughout.
- The movie begins with a upbeat, happy song despite the circumstance as a non-diegetic element. This recurs throughout transitions in the movie from one jump in time to the next, as well as some of the more serious moments. This non-diegetic element adds an almost comical nature to what should be serious, gory moments.
- Many times throughout the movie there is diegetic music that is sung by either the recruits, the General, or the marines as they march or run in either training or the battlefield. The songs are usually highly rhythmic for marching purposes; furthermore, they contain many humorous elements. For example, the ending march song is the Mickey Mouse club theme song.
- They are also many times in the movie where much of the action of the world takes place of the screen. The movie watcher does not truly become aware of the Vietnam War until it is mentioned to have been going on during the training of the marine recruits. Also many gunshots and the battles that have already taken place are done off screen, although they do stay in the Diegesis of the film’s world.
- Like many other films, the critical moments of the movie have non-diegetic music playing, usually through the means of a drum cadence or metallic noise. The problem occurs here that the sounds seem so within the world itself that these outside noises seem to become part of the movie’s world itself, blurring the line between diegetic and non-diegetic noise.
Structure
- The film is mostly structured in two different parts: Marine Training and the Vietnam War.
- Most of the first half of the film centers around Leonard, who is consistently abused by his superior officer for not doing his job correctly, both physically and emotionally. However, Leonard is presented as slow, almost to the point of mental retardation, yet still carries a smile with him, causing him to resemble some sort of child-like innocence that the other recruits have already lost. From how the character is presented, Leonard is shown to have the capabilities to become a marine while being taught in a gentler more supportive way by Joker. However, Joker, his closest thing to a friend, soon betrays Leonard during the beating. Because of this Leonard then changes completely and becomes hard and more like the killer everyone wanted him to be. The director makes sure to show the dead look in Leonard’s eyes showing the loss of his once innocent mind. This loss soon is shown as instability through his talking to his rifle, “Charlene”. This becomes the thing Leonard is best at, shooting and therefore killing. The film then arcs into Leonard’s madness in the bathroom scene where he commits murder and suicide. However, the blame is not shown to be Leonard’s. His change into madness has forced him to do the only thing that they made him for: to kill.
- As discussed before there are many factors in the movie that come of as comedic that are intentionally placed within the scenes that seem most intense between any of the characters, such as Joker’s impressions of John Wayne. However, the intensity and negativity expressed throughout these encounters never seems to be released by these comedic exploits. Instead they force laughter upon the audience where normally laughter would not be considered.
- When the film moves to the next half, the motif of mental instability seems to continue with the nonchalant talk and portrayal of death among both the Americans and the Vietcong. The unease that the mass grave gives the audience follows soon after jokes about the man who is shooting down innocent Vietnamese. Furthermore, soon after some of the marines are shown masquerading a dead Vietcong as a US marine for fun. Although portrayed as comical, the feeling of unease and disgrace of the dead flows into the audience member who cannot help but laugh at jokes preceding and following it. This nonchalant nature of death pervades the movie throughout the second part, which follows directly after the mentally unstable Leonard commits suicide.
- Another idea that is continually expressed in the second half is the idea of being in “the shit”, which is first used with death by Leonard right before he shoots General Hartman. The use of this label seems to come up whenever killing and the nearness of death come upon any character.
Visual and Auditory effects
- Throughout much of the first of the movie, the idea of uniformity is carried out through the use of the green and white. During their training, each recruit resembles the other almost entirely, almost causing the audience to wonder which character is which at points. Green is used outside, while white inside on the characters. Almost no other color scheme is followed. This conformity in color helps to extract the individual character from the film without causing them to act any specific way.
- Color is only individual in the sandals that the recruits wear, which suggests that the individual is still present.
- When the movie moves to Vietnam, the color scheme changes to more usage of the different shades of green and grey to add a dirty textural feeling even by just watching the people interact. With the differences in even the slight shades, the marines are shown more as different people, albeit killers, to the audience.
- During speaking scenes, almost no other sound is heard besides the screaming or monotone conversations that they hold. This helps to emphasize the words spoken, as well as draw the attention of the audience to the most important sounds on the screen.
- When there is music, the audio is usually focused around drums, which helps to add that militaristic feel to the action of the movie. However at the most drastic parts, the use of repetitive clicks and metallic whines play frequently, adding unease to the listeners.
- At the end of the movie, the music crescendos with the girl’s heaving for breath, begging for a quick death from one of the soldiers. This puts the strain of Joker’s decision even more heavily on the audience, who are bombarded with the incessant drumming noises, metallic creaks, an gasping breaths of this dying young girl.
