Alfred Hitchcock does some real work in his voyeuristic take on cinema, Rear Window (1954). James Stewart plays a man bound to a wheelchair whose soul entertainment during the summer is to watch his neighbors from his rear window. Aside from the opening shots of the film which show us the courtyard of the complex from anonymous rooftop locations, the entire movie takes place from the vantage point of Stewart’s window. As Stewart learns more about his neighbors via peeping through this narrow perspective, Hitchcock slowly shows how he becomes more involved by the use of different props. At first he is simply watching, then he progresses to binoculars, and then to a telescopic camera lens. Because cinema puts us into the role of a peeping tom in other peoples’ lives and continues to make us more involved as time progresses, Hitchcock does the same thing with Stewart watching his neighbors, he becomes the role of the camera recording the information. But the camera does not see everything, and context must be guessed as Stewart can’t always hear or see what is going on. This is much like the fabula and syuzhet, the camera is only given partial information. The roles of Grace Kelley and Thelma Ritter represent the luring aspect of film as well. At first the two women are uninterested in Stewart’s endeavors but they soon become drawn in as the plot develops, much like the audience does. Eventually they leave the confines of what the camera (Stewart’s apartment) gives them, and explore the context surround the narrative (the neighbor’s apartment) much like we entertain possible plotlines in our minds.
I also wanted to note how Hitchcock uses separation of James Stewart and Grace Kelley to develop their relationship. The first time Kelley is seen is in a very intimate position, very close to Stewart. At first glance this may seem like a very passionate couple, but in reality Stewart does not even think they will work out. He is emotionally distant. As the two begin to separate in space, ultimately reaching a peak when Kelley is in the other apartment, Stewart realizes she is in danger and how close he feels to her. The reverse correlation between spatial distance and emotional connection is counter-intuitive, but awesome.
Breathless
Breathless (1960) was a movie that I really enjoyed watching. The editing and choice of shots really made the movie interesting to view. For instance, there was one scene I really like where Godard would use jump cuts to the same shot every time Michel would insult the girl from New York. I felt like it added some absurdity to the movie, the emphasis on each insult made it seem, to me at least, like he was really reaching and it was obviously not working. I also enjoyed some things that were kind of taboo in cinema and still are. One example is when Michel is driving through the French countryside talking to the viewer. At one point he breaks the fourth wall and spikes the camera. That technique is rarely done today so I thought it was pretty cool to see it used in a way that was not tacky.
I thought the key moment of the film was actually very late. It is when Godard shows the crowd that Michel has been shot in the back. Instead of facing the camera, Michel is shown running away from it in a very long take. It was kind of a break from all of the absurdity of the film. There was no real noise but the steps Michel was taking down the street. I think this was done to separate the scene from the lofty mood of the movie. The silence kind of grounded me back to reality, making it fact that Michel really was going to die.
Overall, I thought Breathless was a very cool movie for the time it was made. I loved the nonchalance of the characters and the different techniques that were experimented with.
Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker (2008) gives us an interesting look into the world of a bomb-diffuser specialist serving out a campaign in Iraq. Several editing techniques were used in this film in order to portray the idea that there are cameras everywhere capturing moments in modern warfare. Instead of smooth, professional shooting, scenes are threaded together with swish pans, amateur zooms, and a constant shaking that comes with the territory of using a hand held camera. These techniques mimic how an average person would film a moment. Because most people can not go back and re-shoot something, they must capture all of the action within the frame of their handicams or cell phones, and a few of the point of view shots capture this.
As well as knowing that some of the points of view in the film are not from a soldier perspective, it becomes clear that the viewer may be watching from an enemy perspective. For instance, one scene shows a man looking down from his porch. This is followed by an eyeline match showing the diffuser digging up IED's in the sand beneath him.
This and other points of view create very intense, quick-paced scenes that show the audience just how fast war can happen. Sometimes characters are killed in the blink of an eye, without the use of music mounting to a crescendo in the non-diegesis.
I also admire the use of actual film in this movie. With the ease of digital manipulation, many directors use digital mediums to capture moments, and this is fine. However, the use of 6mm film gives The Hurt Locker a grander sense of realism with the grit and grain of the film stock.
Gosford Park screening notes
Gosford Park (2001) is a film that portrays the lives of socialites and servants in an English mansion. Due to the number of people in each scene, whether it is servants in their working quarters, the affluent in their upstairs realm, or the common areas where both are constantly interacting, a deep focus is used to capture every moment that occurs between each character. The technique is very effective because it allows multiple storylines to develop on screen without using close ups and constant angle changes to show that people are conversing. This allows the director to remain focused on the entire crowd, an important visual element of the film which shows the audience the extent of how lavishly chaotic the mansion lifestyle truly is.
One example of this technique is seen in the mansion’s lounge. While the family converses in the background, a piano is being played in the middle of the room where an actor and his director guest are having a side conversation. All the while, there are other side conversations in the foreground with servants moving in and out of each layer of the scene. Even though the director occasionally zooms in on one particular conversation from time to time, the camera is primarily left in a deep focus which shows the bustle of the entire room. Leaving the camera in this position showed the development of storylines between multiple groups; the actor and the director, the help and the wealthy, and again the help interacting with one another to name a few. The zooms are used to give detail to the side conversations, but the deep space is essential to convey that all of these developments are happening at the same moment.
Another element of Mise-en-scène that is used in the film from beginning to end is blocking. However, it is not used in the typical sense of using an element of the set or scene to mask something, but more as a method of separating characters from one another. Often, windows are placed between the residents of the mansion and the help. Examples include the glass partition between the driver and the passenger in the opening scene and the conversations held through the window where the residents instruct the servants. The use of a transparent barrier between the two groups is very interesting because it suggests that even though there is a known separation between the served and serving, they can still clearly see into each others’ lives because of the space they share.
Shark in the Head Screening Notes
Shark in the Head is a film that paints the portrait of a middle-aged man dealing with schizophrenia. However, that is truly what it is, a portrait. Much like a picture, there is no context other than what is given to you in the moment captured. There is no real plot to the movie, it really just gives you an idea of what it would be like to view the world from the confines of your mind/apartment.
That being said, I think this movie might upset people because of its lack of closure in the form of a Hollywood ending; but that's kind of the point in a way. Instead of having a typical story told the same way, Shark in the Head is a film that uses a unique style to put you in the shoes of a man in schizophrenia. Instead of having a typical narrative progression to follow, the director presents the audience with moments from this man's life with a mental disorder. Time progresses chronologically, but there is no context to base how much time has passed or any way to relate one scene to the next. I feel like preventing the audience from being able to ground themselves to anything other than the existence of the main character really allows them to actually see what it would be like to have schizophrenia. Much like the man watches the news on television and can only understand it as a patchwork of sound-bytes and visual stimuli, we observe his day to day life as the exact same.
Because there is so much that this film leaves up to the viewer, and no underlying plot to reveal information about the characters, it incorporates a great deal of symbolism in order to show the internal conflicts of the main character. Two scenes in particular do this very well. In one of them, the man sees what seems to be a woman he remembers and cared for (probably his mother) and a cloth is being place over her face. When the cloth is removed, a neighbor who often goes out of her way to be kind to the man is in the former woman's place. The cloth passing over the first woman's face is symbolic of death and loss of a guardian, but when the cloth is removed it's showing the rebirth of that person's role in the form of his neighbor. Another theme that occurred was the symbolism of the set, which was simply the inside of his apartment and the street outside of it. While in the apartment, we see the man's vivid and surreal perspective. Then, while still inside, he takes what appears to be a small red pill. He closes his eyes and then decides to go outside, where he befriends a group of construction workers. This displays the man's struggles with his disorder and self-medication. On one hand he could stay off the medication and live in the blurred reality that he knows in his apartment, which is representative of his mind. But when he takes the medication, he goes outside to reality and aids the workers who represent the workforce and society. We see many instance where the pills are rolling around in his visualizations, and this is probably the idea coming up in his mind whether or not to take them. Toward the end of the film, we see him sitting in his window staring at a bottle of his medication. This is probably the most symbolic moment in the entire movie, because it shows how he must finally decide which life he wants to live.
Whether the life he chooses is a life in his own mind/apartment or outside with reality, the director calls to attention the fact that those two worlds can't exist simultaneously. Without context, the man can't look outside and understand the world from his window/perspective. He actually has to live in that world to function in it. Where we can separate what goes on in our mind and what goes on in reality, Shark in the Head is a commentary on how one man sees the world without something we often take for granted; context.
Memento Screening notes, which may have been as confusing as the movie.
"After watching it the second time..." I feel like a lot of people probably say this before giving any opinion on Christopher Nolan's cult-classic, Memento. This is due to Nolan's special way of making the audience relate to the protagonist, Lenny, a man who lived through a violent home invasion but lost his wife...and his ability to make memories.
By changing the film's timeline from the traditional classical paradigm to a movie with two starting points, the beginning and end of the syuzhet diverging toward the middle, Nolan portrays what it must be like to have no short-term memory. Because one starting point moves backwards in plot from the end of the movie, it greatly effects the clarity and unity of the film. You see effects without their respective causes, as well as character relationships and developments completely out of context. This way of presenting the narrative through the eyes of someone with no memory, albeit confusing, is extraordinary to experience the first time through.
However, this was my second time watching Memento from start to finish, and once I had seen the ending, or, I guess the middle, it was a lot easier for me to pick up on some things that made me appreciate the film a lot more. For instance, Nolan uses dialogue between the narrator and other characters in order to call attention to the way you receive information in the movie. These conversations intrusively question the reliability of the narrator as well as hint that the enigma of the movie, the identity of the second murderer, is really just to provide a purpose for Lenny's life.
I feel like Nolan was truly calling attention to the way we watch films. Regardless of if there is any closure in Memento, which there really isn't because every character is unreliable with an unreliable narrator, Nolan gives us an enigma/ Macguffin to keep us interested, much like Lenny needed to always be chasing a killer to give his life purpose. The question may never truly be answered, but that was never the point to begin with.
Psycho Screening notes
Question:
The interesting thing about Psycho is that at the beginning of the movie you don't have a full understanding of what the question really is. At first it seems to be a movie about two lovers trying to be together. One, Marion, goes through great struggle in order to find a way that they can be married and this appears to be the focus of the film. However, after listening to the dialogue between Marion and Norman it becomes clear that the movie is truly about people deciding how to deal with the confines that their own life can construct around them.
Promise of an answer:
When looking back on the film, the promise of an answer comes when the stories of two people are followed, each having made a different choice. Marion has chosen to run away from her life in order to pursue a new one with Sam. Norman, on the other hand, has chosen to stay and tend to his mother, ultimately accepting that his life will never be much more than the Bates Motel.
Fraud:
After the conversation with Bates about whether it is better to run away or stay and learn how to deal, Marion claims she needs to go back to Phoenix. This is fraud because the viewer thinks there is a resolution in this statement. However, this decision never really plays out.
Equivocation:
After, Marion claims that she wants to go back to Phoenix, she is shown calculating figures of the money she has stolen. With a distraught look on her face, she flushes the paper she was using down the toilet. This is confusing because it doesn't explain whether or not she will go back to her home.
Blocking:
The answer to the question is first blocked because Marion is killed. This leaves no way of figuring out whether or not staying or fleeing is a good decision.
Suspended Answer:
Through Norman's pacifying of his mother's demands as well as him cleaning up after he violent crimes, we believe that it may be best to just run, because how can you confront something that you have known for so long and shatter a relationship like a mother-son bond (whether that be by turning his mother in or forcing her into an institution).
Partial Answer:
We find that Bates Mother is dead. This leaves a lot of questions about who killed Marion.
Disclosure:
Turns out Norm was actually off his rocker, and had also assumed the identity of his mother. However, this is not actually disclosure. No one ever ended up having a problem resolved in this move other than the private investigator.
Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket
The movie starts off with almost a comic introduction. Following an introduction of young men being prepped for boot camp with a head shaving and a song about going to Vietnam, Kubrick begins the first act of the movie with a drill instructor verbally berating a long line of young recruits. The language is brutal and cutting, and at first seems funny, but as the scene progresses and instructor continues, something strikes me. There is no background music. And oh by the way, the instructor is getting physically violent. The way Kubrick sets up this scene allows the viewer to understand the harshness of preparing a young man for war, much like the recruits learn from the instructor that war is cold, violent, unfair, and there is no background music.
Kubrick also uses a narrator from time to time to keep the narrative flowing, however, we do not know who exactly the character is until much later in the first act. This could be for a number of reasons. I personally think it adds an interesting effect to the film. By not identifying a central character, who we later find out is Joker, we are forced to relate to every character, making the demise of Gomer Pyle even more horrifying. Another reason Kubrick probably waited to introduce Joker as the narrator, was to show how the military is impersonal. Because we do not know that any one character is more important than any other, it makes the group of clean shaven innocents actually seem like a unit.
Kubrick uses a privileged camera point of view to tell the story and often doesn't break away from this. Often the audience will be placed in a room or situation with the characters, but the camera angle will not be in a position where the viewer feels like they are actually there.
In the scenes that show the more horrific side of war, a non-diegetic score of metallic rumbling and bright industrial tinking creates a cold mood. Perhaps this is to show once again how impersonal war can be and how it can turn an innocent youth into a machine made for killing.
Splitting the movie into two major sections is what really makes this film special. Kubrick introduces the audience to the cold, clean, regimented lifestyle of a young wide-eyed boy being turned into a man at bootcamp. Nothing can be out of order, nothing can be wrong, and you are never right. Then, Kubrick does a 180 and exposes us to the reality of war in the second section. Nothing is orderly, nothing is right, nothing is wrong. The juxtaposition really helps the viewer understand the madness that was Vietnam.
