"UNBEARABLE OR GREAT, YOU GOTTA LOVE EVERY HOUR": MIMESIS and CATHARSIS in VANILLA SKY (2001), AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999), and ALMOST FAMOUS (1999)

NOTE: I had a lot of trouble formatting images and videos in this post. The examples of each technique in image/video form appear after the paragraph in which they're referenced. I placed a (1) (2) or (3) after the description of the example, which directly correlates with the order of one of the three images or videos at the end of the paragraph. Also, nothing would center :(. 

From hallucinogenic drugs to fantasy novels, the human obsession with distorting reality is a thread that runs deep throughout our psychology. As much as art often tries to reflect reality, something will always end up a little bit wrong-- that's the nature of perception and creation. Famous diarists Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion have mused heavily about the flaws in storytelling from real life events. As soon as something is written down, both famous writers have surmised, something is changed about it-- tinted a different color than it was experienced, misrepresented in some imperceptible way. Because of this strange quality of creation, how we distort reality has become the main interest in creating effective art in lieu of never distorting it at all. Film in particular is a medium that allows a creator to completely build a scene and control how the world is represented, from set design to the editing room. In some films, another layer is added to the creator's mimesis ("representation or imitation of the real world in art and literature"): the character's perception of reality. Some of the greatest films and most enthralling blockbusters are often called "mind-bending" or "reality-twisting", and explore deeply what's going on in a character's mind as they build their mimetic version of the world. Three such films are Vanilla Sky (1999), American Beauty (2001), and Almost Famous (2001). Through the literal construction of a dream world, the role of unhealthy fantasy in one's life, and disillusionment with the true face of something loved; these three films have a deep thematic similarity. At first, the protagonist of each film is immersed in a glorification of real life: a dramatized and twisted mimesis that doesn't really reflect reality. Then, throughout the film, they travel on a journey towards accepting a more realistic representation of reality and accepting their place in the world. Each character's perception of reality at the end of the film is much more healthy and true than their perception at the beginning. This experience proves very cathartic for each character in the film, releasing their inner emotional tension and purging their toxic views from their life. Throughout the plotline, this journey is revealed using film techniques in photography, mise en scene, movement, editing, and sound to make the message of the journey clear. Through watching the story play out, a viewer can begin to examine how they see their own reality, and what their own personal mimesis entails. How do they distort the world around them? Does it keep them from embracing something valid and true about their existence? By the time the credits roll on each of these films, the viewer is overwhelmed with a similar catharsis felt by the characters as they face their life with new perspective on their world and the value of reality over fantasy.

"The chef prepares a special menu for your delight," Paul McCartney sings in the opening lines of his song "Vanilla Sky", the namesake of the 2001 psychological sci-fi thriller by Cameron Crowe. "Oh my, tonight you fly so high up in the vanilla sky/unbearable or great, you gotta love every hour/you must appreciate/this is your time, this is your day/you've got it all, don't blow it away." The entire story of Vanilla Sky describes a unique situation in which a character recreates his own mimesis, or representation of the world in which he lives; allowing for an in-depth exploration of reality vs. fantasy. When publishing superstar David Ames finds himself in a disfiguring car accident that disrupts the entire fabric of his silver-spoon existence, he signs a contract with a corporation promising him cryogenic freezing and his subconscious suspended in a lucid dream state after his death. Even before the viewer is aware of the narrative flipping between David's life and his death-dream, film techniques help highlight the difference between harsh reality and the fantasy world he creates for himself. Vanilla Sky includes a whopping 428 references to popular culture intentionally embedded by Cameron Crowe into the film, an incredibly detailed design of mise en scene that reflects both David's job at a pop culture magazine and the fact that he is constructing his dream world entirely from "reference" of the reality he knows. Within the frame, similarities can be drawn between a network of pop culture frenzy and the actual images on screen. For instance, it is revealed near the end of the scene that one shot of David and his love Sofia walking down a street completely parallels an album cover that David loved in his real life, The Freewallin' Bob Dylan. The psychologist that David talks to in his dream world bears an uncanny resemblance to Atticus Finch from the film To Kill A Mockingbird. Lighting is also an important difference to signify David's perfect construction of reality and the difference between the film's "reality" and "mimesis"-- during the last scenes that David can remember of his "real life", he goes out to a club with his old friends and finds himself dancing and drinking, wearing his latex mask to cover his disfigured face. During these scenes, he is washed over in flickering lights from the club. David is often entirely washed over in blue, creating an eerie representation of the man whose life is becoming a nightmare. The use of cool colors is exaggerated to overtake the viewer with the same unsettling, sickly, and ghost-like sensation that David is beginning to feel overtake his life. As David begins to find his life more and more harsh and uncomfortable, so does the viewer. This is contrasted later in the film, when the lighting sends a warm wash of color over David in the comfort of his constructed world. For instance, in the final scene of Vanilla Sky, the entire world appears tinted in a soft pink color. A halo effect is created behind the heads of David and the girl he loves, Sofia, as they stand on a rooftop in his pastel perfect world. In a film whose opening song (Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place") croons "there are two colors in my head", the use of warm vs. cool colors is clued as very important to the contrast of the two different words David experiences. The view from the rooftop in the final scene is a very expressionistic portrayal perfect for the science-fiction world, using stunning effects to make the clouds around David and Sofia look like something out of a Monet painting. The form in which David's world is portrayed correctly conveys the infinite possibility of his mind. A Sigur Ros song plays softly in the background, highlighting Cameron Crowe's ability to understand the emotional appeal of music as the high notes swing and fall, and in a moment of pure catharsis, David decides to jump off of the rooftop and end his dream to wake up in the real world. The kinetic symbolism of David plummeting across the screen and off the roof reflects his "letting go" of his dream and accepting reality as holding true value above fantasy. As the viewer absorbs these film techniques and watches David take his journey of rejecting his fantasies, they also undergo the same catharsis that David experiences in that final scene: the realization that the true world is preferable over a sugarcoated representation of it.

In terms of cinemetic style, Sam Mendes' film American Beauty (1999) is a much more realistic film. Mendes abandons jaw-dropping impressionist-inspired skies in favor of more "lackluster" portrayals of suburban houses and environments. The focus in American Beauty seems to be on the content rather than form. However, it still manages to fully immerse the reader into a character's mindscape, through the portrayal of a character "living their dreams" in a much more abstract way. From the first scene of the film, in which establishing shots track over a suburban town, the viewer is taught to sympathize and connect with the central character of Lester Burnham. A voiceover plays of Lester speaking, connecting the audience directly with him as a character. Lester lives a very monotonous and corporate-controlled life, stuck in a loveless marriage and never experiencing true joy. The scene in which the action of the film starts rolling is a scene in which Lester is dragged to watch his daughter Janie's dance performance at a high school sports game and sees Janie's friend Angela dancing out on the court at half time (1). For the first time, the film transitions into a scene of pure fantasy, moving the viewer into the character's flawed portrayal of life. The lighting in Lester's fantasy is very high-contrast, highlighting the drama and glamour that he feels in his perversion as he begins to sexualize the young girl. Movement is mechanically distorted into a slight slow-motion and atonal music clashes with odd bass sounds and drum clashes. The scene is almost perfectly symmetrical, showing Angela as the dominant contrast of every shot as she dances in the middle of the crowd. In the most notable highly symmetrical shot, Angela opens her jacket from the direct center and rose petals balloon out in all directions. These techniques are used to signify that Lester is fantasizing, not truly observing real life, and that the scene is a poor imitation of what's really happening. They also highlight Lester's unhealthy obsession through their dramatization, in some instances using left to right camera movement to create a strange eye movement for the viewer and suggest that the world Lester is creating is uncomfortable and unnatural. This distorted view of reality is mended later in the film when Lester comes to terms with his role as a father and accepts his aging, choosing to become grateful for his beautiful family instead of chasing his lost youth. In a scene in which he stands in his kitchen and wonders about his daughter's well being, Lester's face is lit entirely from above for the first time (2). Earlier in the film, the contours of actor Kevin Spacey's face were often exaggerated in shadow, lit from below to signify his slightly antagonistic nature. Being lit from above signifies his rebirth and acceptance of morality, almost reflective of a light "from heaven". Lester's death scene includes a heartbreaking anticipatory setup in which the camera pans over his white kitchen tile seconds before it is splattered with blood as his killer shoots him in the head. After his death, we are again immersed in Lester's representation of his life. However, now the images are accompanied by soft piano music and show him in left to right pans laying on his back as a child, admiring his cousin's new car, and admiring his family with fondness. This thematic montage is meant to truly show how much Lester has changed throughout the film. His mimesis has changed from an unhealthy, dramatized obsession into a true appreciation and love for "every single moment of [his] stupid, little life". (3)

Another 1999 film and and Cameron Crowe classic, Almost Famous, outlines a more complex tale of wonder and disillusionment with reality. Toeing the line between a standard a coming of age film and a musical, Crowe uses the function of music to signify time and locale-- selecting tunes from Led Zeppelin, The Who, Elton John, and dozens of other classic rock artists to immerse the reader in the period of rock and roll mania. Carefully cultivated costumes also have their function within the frame to solidify the time period and characterize each figure in Almost Famous-- the glamorous yet deceitful Penny Lane wears large furry coats and carefree summer clothes, Crowe's alter ego reflects his youth in baggy t-shirts and jeans, and the band Stillwater is dressed as rock and roll "outlaws" or "cowboys" (1). Almost Famous is the story of William Miller, a young teenager who is hired by Rolling Stone magazine to follow the upcoming band Stillwater in their tour and write an article about what he sees. Right away, this film also carries the central theme of the character's mimesis, or perception of reality. In the movie, his mentor Lester Bangs warns William that the world of rock stars is not what it's cut out to be, and that the musicians will use him to get what they want. Lester knows that the glamorous world of rock and roll is an illusion, but William loves rock and roll so much that he slowly forgets Lester's advice and "makes friends with the rock stars". In a scene where William accompanies a distraught rock star named Russell to a house party, the viewer begins to get a picture that something is wrong in the relationship between the stars and the band. Stillwater has just had a huge fight and Russell's future with the band is looking dubious as they enter the house. The party is very densely textured, showing bodies and heads everywhere layered within the frame, but William is always shown somewhere between 5 and 20 feet away from Russell. This establishes a social or public proxemic pattern that exemplifies the vast difference between their characters. In one shot, Russell stands on a roof above the mass of the party and screams the words "I am a golden god". The camera shows an aerial over the shoulder shot of Russell's birds-eye-view on the partygoers, symbolic of his position "above" them in the social order and his invincibility that he feels as a star (2). The viewer is immersed in the surreal experience that William is having as he comes to terms with the huge ego of a superstar and the turmoil that the emotional distance of the musicians brings on everyone. This experience foreshadows a later scene, in which the band totally rejects his article and ruins the end of his tour and relationship with the Rolling Stone editors. William is crushed because his perfect perception of reality has been destroyed. In the words of Lester, "They made you feel cool, and hey, I met you. You are not cool." William's perception of rock and roll as a perfect haven has been disrupted, and his fantasy destroyed. However, throughout the movie, hints of the real value of music are sprinkled in. In one of the most poignant scenes, William's beautiful friend Penny Lane spins and dances on a trashed floor to Cat Stevens' "The Wind" (3). The pure beauty of the music and Penny's reaction exemplifies the quality of music that William loves, and that Lester says makes it "a place apart form the vast, benign lap of America." William's final realization when writing his article is that he can't just write a piece that glorifies the band into superstars, but he also can't forgo that beautiful and emotional poignance of music that made him fall in love with rock in the first place. William decides to write his article with a mimesis that includes everything-- the good, the bad, and the ugly of his tour with rock and roll. This experience proves very cathartic for William as he processes his experiences and feelings towards music, and for the viewer as they realize that a true view of life includes both the amazing parts and the unpleasant parts.

Every young child, teenage student, and adult alike knows the exquisite pleasure of simply sitting and daydreaming: constructing fantasies that excite the mind, but have little to do with real life. Whether that fantasy be a perfect world with the girl you love, the "sexy" image of youth that you lost, or the invincible godlike quality of rock and roll; fantasy often allows people to cope with the reality of their lives. However, when this fantasy becomes an unhealthy crutch, a "dose of reality" can lead to an awakening in all of us. Through the use of film techniques in photography, mise en scene, movement, editing, and sound; directors Cameron Crowe and Sam Mendes help illuminate the flaws in fantasy and the catharsis of accepting the true world. The characters of David Ames, Lester Burnham, and William Miller all undergo a journey in their respective films that illuminate a realistic mimesis and change each character as a whole and dynamic person. Watching these experiences as a viewer helps adjust the mind, and when exiting the "fantasy" of the film into the "reality" after leaving the theater, we undergo our own cathartic experience. The world around us is illuminated in new understanding: how we choose to perceive the world is instrumental to our mental and even spiritual landscape. When, as Sylvia Plath or Joan Didion would say, we write down our world as we experience it, what has changed from the life itself?

american beauty (1999): sound

Sam Mendes uses specific music to allude to traits of certain characters, as a recurring motif in their storyline. Lester's relationship to music is the most notable. During a scene where he buys drugs from his neighbor Ricky Fitts, Lester looks around the young Ricky's room and exclaims incrediulously, "You like Pink Floyd?" As he abandons his monotonous way of life in favor of a more reckless philosophy, music from his youth-- presumably the 1970s-- begins to feature heavily into scenes with Lester. During the pinnacle of Lester's journey back to youth, he smokes a joint while driving and singing along to the song "American Woman" by The Guess Who, echoing the sentiments he now feels about his straight-laced wife Carolyn-- "I got more important things to do/than spend my time growing old with you." During the climactic scenes of the film when Lester walks into the living room with the hope of seducing the young Angela, the lyrics to a Neil Young song (covered by Annie Lennox) that plays on the stereo begin to reflect his acceptance of his aging-- "Old man lying by the side of the road", "Don't let it bring you down/It's only castles burning... you will come around".

Mendes doesn't just use lyrical music to communicate meaning-- non-musical and instrumental sound is very important to Angela's character. Mena Suvari's acting style utilizes different voices to communicate with different characters-- Angela takes on a very casual tone to talk to Jane, but her voice rises in pitch and softens in
to a very sensual tone when she talks to and about Lester ("Have you been working out? You can really tell...") in order to portray the sexuality she wants to exude. When Lester fantasizes about Angela, the same music always plays-- a tense instrumental clash of symbols and drums combined with atonal bass sounds. This strange motif that follows the Angela fantasies throughout the film, from the high school gym to Lester's kitchen to the rosepetal-filled bathtub. This music not only signifies that the scene has transitioned from reality into a fantasy, it also serves to make the audience slightly uncomfortable with the odd, falling pitches and clashing tones. We can recognize from the music that Lester's thoughts are perverse, no matter how much new life he finds in his obsession.

ALMOST FAMOUS (1999): sound

Dozens of songs are used in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (1999), some for only a few seconds or less. In some cases, the context of the movie and the song that was picked to accompany a moment complement each other powerfully. After the lead character William's sister leaves home to become a stewardess, she leaves a note under his bed along with some records telling him to listen to The Who's Tommy with a candle burning and see his future. In the next few shots we see young William lighting a candle and "Sparks" begins to play in the background, offering Cameron a perfect segue to literally let us see William's future. In the next scene, William has aged several years, his interest in music has grown exponentially, and we enter the timeframe in which the main events of Almost Famous are set. Cameron Crowe effectively uses Tommy as a device to move across time and space.

When music is added to a film, often it is to tint the viewer's perception of the mood of the moment, how they should feel, and what is to come. Due to the unique experience of designing a soundtrack for a movie about music, Cameron Crowe uses diegetic music heavily throughout the movie. Most notably, at one point the band all gathers in the tour bus after a rough night of drama and slowly the band members and accompanying friends begin to thaw, listening to Elton John playing on the bus speakers and beginning to sing along. This is unique because the song isn't just used to color the moment for the audience. The characters on the bus are also experiencing it, and the mood of "Tiny Dancer" affects both the story and the viewer simultaneously. As Cameron Crowe was recently quoted, "music will always be a single essential language shared by everybody, and it continues to be, regardless of format, price, social networking, sex, nationality, concert tickets or technology". 

INVENTED YET VIVID: MOVEMENT AND EDITING in SNATCH (2000), ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007), DONNIE DARKO (2001), AMELIE (2001), MEMENTO (2001), AND VANILLA SKY (2001)

Every story is a multidimensional being, with plot creating its underlying frame and thematic structure helping to organize a story's thoughts. However, plot and theme mean nothing without the figments of life within a story that move the plot and theme forward and whose lives unravel to create a work of art: the characters. A film often aims to explore a character and their perceptions of the world. Well-thought and subtly introduced character development is a powerful element to any story, and the medium of film has the potential for unique investigations of character type and development. Movement and editing are usually used in a film to help create a fluid and operational story, but in many cases techniques in movement and editing not only give consecutive structure to the structure of a film but also help establish its characters, lead an audience to sympathize with them or criticize their reliability, and develop the personas that a viewer will learn to hate or love over the course of a film.

Movement is often used to develop  characterization, since the actors on screen are often the most dynamic figures in the frame. Across genres as diverse as crime and gangster films, such as Guy Richie's Snatch (2000); heavily choreographed and active musicals such as Julie Taymor's Across the Universe (2007); and psychological reality-benders such as Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko (2001), the movement of the characters within the frame is used to give us insight into the most important parts of their character as well as to create people that the audience can sympathize with.

For instance, during the climatic peak of Snatch, the underdog and eventual victor of the story engages in a bare-knuckle boxing match. Mickey, played by Brad Pitt, is struck heavily and falls backwards across the screen in slow motion, apparently defeated. He falls across the screen from right to left, a less natural movement of the eye for the average watcher designed to unsettle a viewer. Then a surreal shot of Mickey falling through water is played, using a distortion of movement to show his body sinking in slow motion. The light behind him, his battered body, and the drama of the slow motion shot build to cast Mickey as a martyr figure-- so when Mickey snaps back up to deliver the blow that wins him the match, the viewer is on his side. 

The movement in Across the Universe, in contrast, is much more tightly controlled and used to create a harmonious and organized portrayal of the emotion in each scene. In one of the most striking scenes of the film, set to the Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", (clip @ 0:45) the character Max is shuffled through a draft office in order to determine his eligibility for the US army. Long shots of Max and the other soldiers being dragged and shuffled through the process like puppets incite heavy kinetic symbolism, a propaganda-inspired dance number that paints the US government as ultimately oppressive and controlling and Max as a victim of the restrictive and violent system. In Donnie Darko, one scene meant to explore the setting of Donnie's high school employs heavy mechanical distortion of movement. As the scene opens, the camera swivels in a stunning tilt shot around a fixed point, swinging a sideways view of a schoolbus upright as boys jump out of the back and walk towards the school. This scene employs speeding pans of the school's scenery that eventually collide with the path of a main character and fixate on them, dying down into slow motion as the characters perform actions related to their plot arc or personality (dancing with the dance team, snorting cocaine inside of a locker, or reading alone by a fountain; for instance). This method of revealing character traits allows a viewer to become familiar with Donnie's life and builds the world of Middlesex, while still implementing an element of chaos from the changing speeds.

Similarly, editing techniques can also be used across a variety of genres to serve diverse functions. The editor of a movie wields great power in cutting film to evoke emotional appeal, or in many cases to simplify the film's complexity from a viewer's perspective. Often, important differences and contrasts in a film must be highlighted, and parallelism in shots across the time frame of a movie can be implemented effectively to accomplish a multitude of effects. In the 2001 romantic comedy Amelie, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, thematic montages factor heavy into the plot as flashes of images are brought to illustrate the voiceover narration regardless of the time or space in which they are occurring. This is especially prevalent in the opening scenes, in which Amelie and her parents are described and Amelie's past is established. Short shots of things that the family members like cut quickly across the screen, revealing important differences between family members within the repeated structure of fast, tight jump cuts. (clip @ 0:00-0:20). Memento (2001), a psychological thriller investigating memory and revenge, similar short fragments of film are used to stud the plot's forward movement with outside visuals. In this case, the protagonist Leonard's memories are used in quick succession. Throughout the film several fast shots are repeated, with objects and scenarios morphing near the end of the film to call the memories' accuracy into question. For instance, a repeated shot of Leonard pinching his wife's leg is later replaced by him giving her an insulin shot. Similar replacement of content in shots also factors heavily into Cameron
Crowe's Vanilla Sky (2001). Many scenes were filmed twice, with Penelope Cruz and with Cameron Diaz, so that flashbacks could reveal inconsistencies in the main character David's perceptions. Both women posed for similar photographs and drawings, and the shots were cut and juxtaposed next to each other during David's mental breakdown. Cutting continuously between girls creates the illusion of Penelope flickering to Cameron and back again, dragging a viewer into David's confusion and panic.

Across the canvas of time in any film, the characters hold the brushes and create the life that moves a film forward. Fictional people captivate and enthrall audiences, creating their own fans, people who identify with other invented yet vivid personas. Techniques of movement and editing such as distortion of natural movement or parallel shots can assist in revealing those characters within a story, and bringing any film to its most human potential.

VANILLA SKY (2001): editing

Like many other reality-bending films across time and genre, the status of truth and consciousness in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky (2001) is always in question. Vanilla Sky opens with initial establishing shots showing breathtaking bird's-eye views of New York City. Eventually, after dropping a viewer in David's lavish bedroom, a tense scene follows in which David leaves for work and finds NYC and Times Square completely abandoned. After David wakes up in a cold sweat and the entire ordeal was revealed to be a dream, the viewer is always aware that what they are watching may not be "reality".

The validity of David's perception and memory are weakened in several other ways throughout the film. For instance, in a clear execution of parallel editing, scenes are filmed once with Penelope Cruz and then filmed again with Cameron Diaz. In addition, shots of photographs and drawings of the two girls in the exact same context were filmed twice. After this, the shots were cut and juxtaposed next to each other during scenes in David's mental breakdown. Seamlessly, Cameron becomes Penelope becomes Cameron-- creating a flickering of memories between the two different girls through perfectly matched parallel editing. This brings the viewer concretely into David's confusion and panic.


The backbone of Vanilla Sky's editing technique lies in its tangled web of flashbacks. Though the forward-moving action takes place when David is being held in prison and a psychologist is investigating his mental stability, most of the film's action happens in the past. This serves an important function. The viewer is immersed in David's past memories in detail and feels the reality of their existence. However, at the same time, the viewer is aware that David is narrating the story and his perceptions of reality could be distorted from reality.

MEMENTO (2000): editing

The editing techniques in Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000) seem to serve two core functions: to present multiple versions of reality to the audience, and to arrange the chronology of the movie in a coherent yet ultimately twisted manner. Christopher Nolan uses very short flashbacks to call the true story of Memento into question, "whipping back and forth" through jump cuts "to check for differences in 'repeated' shots". Tiny fragmented shots of Leonard and his wife are replayed near the end of the scene, for instance, with an insulin syringe added into the otherwise completely parallel shot of the memory, questioning the validity of Leonard's pre-accident memories. In one scene in which Sammy is sitting alone in an asylum, "for literally a split second of screen time, we see Leonard himself in Sammy’s chair" as someone walks in front of the camera. This tiny flash of a scene's altered reality, also implemented notably in David Fincher's Fight Club, is what truly convolutes the film's presentation of reality-- in conjunction with Teddy's verbal explanations of Leonard's true story.

Nolan also uses editing techniques to present the film in an interesting chronology. Evoking the themes of memory loss, true knowledge, and confusion; the plot of Memento is shown backwards over a series of short scenes. These scenes move in reverse through time. Spliced between each scene is another timeline, shown in black and white, in which the chronology moves forwards, detailing a conversation that takes place just before any color scenes in the movie. In a masterful scene in which the "beginning" of the color shots meet the "end" of the black and white shots, Leonard takes a polaroid "and the Polaroid’s color image fades in, so does the color of the entire scene", fusing the timelines together. This seamless transition between timelines clarifies the film's confusing relationship with time, leaving the audience with a perception that is still intriguing but ultimately comprehendible.
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Quotations taken from Andy Klein's "Everything You Wanted To Know About Memento": http://www.salon.com/2001/06/28/memento_analysis/

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007): movement

Across the Universe (2007), directed by Julie Taymor, is an ambitious project: a musical studded with jaw-dropping effects chronicling a group of young people in New York City during the late 1960s, accompanied by no less than 34 Beatles songs. Amidst the haze of overlaid film footage, clashing musical interjections, and special effects that spin and swirl through the scenes; Across the Universe still has time to enter the individual characters' emotions. Lucy's sadness and hurt over her loved ones being drafted contain perfect examples of action/reaction shots in the storyline. During the "Strawberry Fields" number, shots of the war on television and her brother Max immersed in violence and danger are met

with the movement of tears across Lucy's cheeks. In a scene in which Prudence sings "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" as a ballad to a fellow cheerleader before coming to New York, football players scuffle and fly around her in slow motion as she walks forward at full speed. This formalistic approach to the scene creates the dramatic tension that the slow, emotional retelling of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"demands.

Spaced with into these personal, emotive motions in Across the Universe are bold, fast, almost startling visual effects and choreography. In one musical number, "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", Max checks in with the draft office to determine whether or not he is fit to serve in the US army. In perfect time with the music, Max and other soldiers are pushed and shoved into tightly choreographed lines and moved like puppets by the military officials as well as objects in the room which come to life, sliding Max around the surreal landscape of the transformed office. Posters of Uncle Sam physically reach out from their frames and stretch toward Max and the audience, implying kinetic symbolism as the stretched hands invade his space and march him around as a soldier.

 In contrast to the dark implications of the choreography in "I Want You", in one of the film's opening scenes, a band plays "Hold Me Tight" at a high school dance as Lucy and her boyfriend dance. Here, the choreography is completely different than in the "I Want You" scene, implying carefree times as the camera watches in an areal shot and happy teenagers spin in circles, dizzy and giddy and unaware of the love and tragedy they will face in the coming years.

SNATCH (2000) + AMELIE (2001): masculinity and femininity

The hypermasculine grit of Guy Ritchie's Snatch (2001) is a thin skin laid over something much more complex. Immersed in the violence-ridden underbelly of the city, each character in Snatch puts on a tough face to stay on top of the scuffles that plague their lives. However, this masculine facade really serves to highlight the vulnerability of Snatch's characters. Some gangsters showcase vulnerability through the actors chosen to play them (for instance, the age and implied fragility of Bricktop's physicality, the babyface of Tommy). Others are immersed in details that speak on the contrary to
their tough outer core-- Mickey's tattoos are peppered with hints of femininity and his tenderness and
protectiveness for his mother surfaces repetitively in his plotline. Immersed in Guy Ritchie's dimly lit, unpolished sets and tied together with loosely framed shots and tense anticipatory movements, these elements of Snatch's characters stand out, highlighting the inner delicate parts of his crime-ridden world.






On the contrary, Jean-Pierre Juenet's Amelie (2001) exhibits the opposite circumstance: a world of femininity surrounding a core of masculine attributes. On the surface, the journey of one female character through softly lit, brightly colored, and often tightly framed clear shots seems an easily digestible romance film.

Even though these elements persist through the storyline, even ending in a slow motion shot of Amelie and her new love riding together on a motorcycle, in reality Amelie's character's most important developing attributes are considered very masculine. Amelie's plotlines are all propelled forwards by Amelie's desire to have some form of control or upper hand in the situations she sees around her. Her character largely revolves around serving justice, whether it be giving gifts or punishing others-- a very masculine idea. Her one fear throughout the movie seems to be that she is too fragile for the love she craves-- however, by the end of the film, her main character development is overcoming this fear and seizing the world for her own.
 agency and drive to get what she wants stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of the haze of innocence and naïveté that is used as the lens to view her.

OLD TROPHIES: MISE EN SCENE and FAILURE in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001)

The subconscious way that people react to their environment is incredibly far-reaching. The behavior and mental state of everyone is constantly affected by the position of the objects around them. Since it is often said that art mirrors life, the meticulous control of visual images of a film is infinitely important to how the audience perceives the film. Mise en scene, literally "within the frame", totally exemplifies this idea. The set design, position of objects, contrast, and patterns of the objects within the frame of a film completely shapes the tone of the film and tells its story. The master of mise on scene has often been named as none other than Wes Anderson, whose distinct aesthetic can never be mistaken for another's. Wes Anderson's 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums seems to be a study in how humans cope with failure: through addiction, such as the darkly comedic Eli Cash; through paranoia, such as the disaster-obsessed Chas Tenenbaum; or, maybe, through persevering manipulation, utilized by Royal himself. The mise en scene of The Royal Tenenbaums strengthens the film's overall exploration of failure and creates a tone suggesting that the characters are each trapped in a life plagued by their failures.

It is made clear through the diegesis of the film that each of the Tenenbaum children's accomplishments peaked at a young age, leaving them to live anticlimactic adult lives. Each character's unhappiness is made clear through the film's techniques of mise en scene. Margot Tenenbaum is usually shown at a greater depth than other family members and away from the more densely textured groups of Tenenbaum children and adults. She locks herself in the bathroom all day away from her husband, illustrating her failing marriage. The only exception is Richie, whose relationship with Margot is constantly troubling. This establishes a social and public proxemic pattern, suggesting an uncomfortable and detached family dynamic and hinting at Margot's alienation and depression. In all scenes with Chas and his twin sons, they wear bright red tracksuits in order to easily identify each other. These suits are a strong dominant contrast and imply danger and tensity with their bold color. Wes Anderson also makes use of highly symmetrical design, comparing Chas with his sons and further tying Chas's identity to preserving them (and, by some measure, preserving what they seem to represent: healthy childhood, which Chas experienced as a period of high success). In most shots of Richie, his old tennis headband jumps out as dominant contrast next to his face and body, hidden by the subsidiary contrast of his hair, beard, and dull clothing. The headband remains a constant reminder of his former fame and success, which were all ruined when Richie choked during an important match and gave up his career forever.

The Royal Tenenbaums, it seems, is a story based heavily in nostalgia. At the beginning of the film, the story walks through the childhoods of the Tenenbaum children, immersing them in childlike environments with a heavy 1970's aesthetic. However, as the children grow up, the house and objects remain more or less the same, lost in time. 

This creates elements of parallelism within the film, drawing strong ties between the Tenenbaums' child and adult lives.  The past affects the present throughout every scene of a film, literally invading the present narrative through Wes Anderson's sets. The characters constantly find themselves crammed into environments built for children, such as the tent full of childhood knick-knacks which Richie sleeps in over the course of the film. He has grown too large to fit in the densely composed tent, but remains uncomfortably stuck in his old life. Most notably selected are the trophies from Richie's childhood that are crammed in that weight the right side of the frame: a constant reminder of Richie's childhood successes. It seems that the presence of those trophies seems almost comforting. The inability to move on from the past suggests that the Tenenbaum children are clinging to their most successful age, creating the main conflict of the film.

Wes Anderson's techniques of mise en scene carefully cultivate the contents of each frame, supporting the exploration of failure through its motifs of childhood. Living in a world arranged by Wes Anderson certainly seems heightened and unrealistic, but in its own way, The Royal Tenenbaums does mirror life. The effect of failure has been explored through storytelling since Gilgamesh, but the compelling and unique story of failure driving three siblings back into childhood in The Royal Tenenbaums touches on an accessibility and relatability that is rarely matched.

BENDING ALL OTHERS: ETHICS in THE USUAL SUSPECTS, GLADIATOR, AND ETERNAL SUNSHINE of the SPOTLESS MIND

The medium of a film bends all literary techniques: in a world where information is absorbed visually, the look of the image becomes all-important. Just as the storyline shapes how the viewers think, the actual image itself has immense power to sway our perception and convey a message. The photography implemented in films tells an audience how to think about the characters, who they’re rooting for, and who to sympathize with-- creating the film’s moral structure and message. In The Usual Suspects, Gladiator, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, each movie argues that the moral high ground should be given to the character that the audience perceives as most helpless or maltreated. This perception can be altered and stretched to the limits of possibility using strategic film photography.

The Usual Suspects establishes immediately that this will be an almost exaggerated example of a crime and drama epic-- using low key lighting with fast film stock as well as low camera angles to create drama, intrigue, and power dynamics in the opening scene. Of the three movies, Suspects comes the closest to classical cinema, implementing a variety of realistic techniques (the interrogation scenes come to mind) and taking greater liberty with style in during the film’s suspenseful heists. In the midst of all this, the character Verbal Kint stands to the side of most shots and stares at the main action from the background. Next to the drama and intrigue of the other criminals framed in the suspenseful shots, Verbal looks inexperienced and lurks in the background. Hints from the lighting sometimes illuminate Verbal to highlight the contour of his face, calling attention to him; yet he remains an unremarkable character in most of the main action. He is also portrayed as handicapped, and the film implements close up shots on his limping gait as well as the acting skills of Kevin Spacey in order to bring his disability to our attention. As the police interrogate Verbal, sitting on a desk to create a high-angle view onto Verbal’s face, we begin to sympathize with his weakness. At the end of the film when it’s revealed that he is truly the evil mastermind, our allegiance with Verbal holds true and we cheer as he enters the getaway vehicle and drives away to cause more cold death and destruction-- all through the power of some lighting and camera angles. In that way, Verbal has tricked us as an audience into sympathizing with him. In an analysis of The Usual Suspects by Bill Johnson, he asks the question: “could a powerful man of will bend all others to see what he wanted them to see? Yes. Dramatically yes.”

Stunning shots and effects along with notable use of color and clarity make the cinematography in Gladiator memorable. Shot in high-contrast lighting that embodies the “epic” effect of the story, the corruption and secrecy of Rome’s elite jump through shadows and puddles of light reminiscent of film noir. The film’s execution mirrors “the dominant literary techniques” of an epic story-- “hyperbole and exaggeration” (Eric M. Lachs). In well-lit arenas, our hero Maximus is forced to slay or be slain in battle after battle of gritty, violent action scenes. From the very beginning, the injustices performed to kill Maximus’s family in the storyline have our sympathy-- however, this is only strengthened as we watch him literally struggle throughout the film. Through stunning long shots from a birds’ eye view and deep-focus shots enveloping the whole colosseum, we get a picture of just how small Maximus is amongst the crowd cheering and booing his attempts to fight for his life. In a series of medium shots where Commodus meets our gladiator “backstage” before their final fight, we begin to notice the contrast between Maximus’s dirty attire and beaten physique next to Commodus’ spotless bone-like armor and poise. Power dynamics make the film-- and also align the audience’s sympathies. No amount of brooding and frowning from Joaquin Phoenix can outdo the film’s tone of political depravity, cultivated through its alignment of Maximus as a martyr-- and thus, the film’s view of honor and respect are made clear in its ethical discourse of politics and tyranny.

Our third film is exemplary in not only the questions it poses but the way it gives us a clear picture of how to feel about them. Scholars like Christopher Grau have offered that “[the film] implicitly offers a philosophical position.” The intense formalism of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind allows a wide range of possibility to explore ethics. Instead of focusing on pure content, the expressionist Michel Gondry designed a wildly stylistic form to shape our perception of ethics. Realists working with realistic cinema may have been limited by the difficulty of describing having one’s memory erased while remaining true to our visible reality. Sunshine’s technique of implementing warm colors in slow film stock to signify bold, enthusiastic periods of Joel and Clementine’s relationship, usually shot in high key lighting, versus cool colors to signify confusion, anxiety, and degradation related to their memory loss helps an audience quickly identify Lacuna’s effects on the couple. The colors are intense and call attention through slow film stock. This positions Lacuna as the dark force from which Joel and Clementine try valiantly to escape, creating our sympathy and thus the film’s depiction of the dangerous medicalization of our personal lives. Its heavy use of anxious oblique angles and skittering cameras as well as high-angle shots in which Joel and Clem are viewed from above (on the lake, in their bed, when Joel is literally shrunk to toddler size, etc.) also positions them as trapped and helpless, creating an “underdog” effect in which the audience subconsciously begins to root for them against the doctors and technicians.

One could argue that who we are is what we stand for. The medium of film holds immeasurable power to create stories and worlds that force us to question our morals and think critically about the world around us. When we begin to sympathize with a character, we begin to trust them and their ethical judgement and allow the film to communicate with us on a deeper level. These three films, The Usual Suspects, Gladiator, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, use different theme and character and win an audience to a character that appears, on the surface, helpless and maltreated. By using film techniques in photography to illuminate these characteristics and create these characters’ worlds, the film can then communicate its moral structure through this character. When a film is taken apart shot by shot, that communication can be analyzed, and we can ask ourselves again: what are we standing for?

SOURCES:

http://www.storyispromise.com/wusual.htm

http://plaza.ufl.edu/icon2480/academia/essays/gladiator.html

http://www.academia.edu/208537/Eternal_Sunshine_of_the_Spotless_Mind_and_the_Morality_of_Memory

film terms for my mise en scene-sei

JULIA FALKNER, ERIN DORSEY, LUCAS LAIRD

DOMINANT CONTRAST

The Animatrix (2003)

DENSITY OF TEXTURE

Lost in Translation (2003)

HIGHLY SYMMETRICAL DESIGN

Freaky Friday (2003)

PROXEMIC PATTERNS (intimate)

Brother Bear (2003)

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (2004): formalism

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) raises a multitude of questions about love, ethics, and the human psyche. It also offers an array of choppy and tilted shots, impossible sets which morph and disintegrate, and wildly changing colors and shapes that make the film a poster child of "formalism"-- the thought that the focus of a film should be on the style rather than content.

• Sunshine asks us if ignorance is truly bliss-- that is, whether an erased memory can still have an impact on our minds and souls. After Clem has had Joel erased from her memory, she appears easily agitated, confused, and upset when elements of her life with Joel re-enter her surroundings. The instability of Joel and Clem's lives post-erasure is conveyed through the almost dizzying and swinging camera angles, bringing an anxious touch to the film. When we enter Joel's dream world, the camera angles, colors, and sets become extremely surreal. However, even in the opening scene full of moving full shots that ruffle past his bedroom and showcase his unsure body language, that surrealism and anxiety is present. This tells us that the extreme instability of Joel's world and surroundings in the dream are still present-- albeit much more subtly-- in real life after the erasure of the pair's memories.
• To further this from Clem's perspective, Clem and Patrick are shown post-erasure on the frozen river to which Clem once took Joel. The high-angle shot of them laying on the ice is a parallel shot to a former (chronologically) shot of her and Joel, however the differences in shadow and her facial expressions convey that something about this setup is vastly confusing and wrong. The bird's eye view traps them and Clementine scrambles to escape from a scenario that she once found peaceful.

• Aside from the trippy camera perspective, the film's highly symbolic use of color is a multifunctional device used to clarify the passage of time and the stages of Joel and Clem's relationship (from her personal perspective). The viewer can eventually map out that Clem's hair is green upon their first meeting, orange and red during their relationship, and blue in "real time"-- after the erasure of their memories. It's possible that the colors convey emotional meaning as well. The green might convey new life and birth. The red represents a bold, bright, "glory days" time in which Joel and Clem are happy together. That color begins to fade to a dull orange as their relationship falls apart. She changes the color abruptly from warm orange to a cool dark blue post-Joel-- signifying a rapid change in thought (returning to a cool color, as her hair was before she met Joel) as well as the literal idea of being "blue", depressed and uncomfortable with no clue as to why. When Joel remembers Clementine as they race around the dream world trying to escape the erasers, her hair is a bold red-orange, signifying that he ultimately chooses to remember her as a boldly positive force in his life.

the usual suspects (1994): lighting & camera angles

• The opening scene of a film is extremely important for setting the tone of the story, and The Usual Suspects (1994) does not disappoint. The movie opens in extremely high-contrast, gritty lighting and color-- a trademark of dramatic, suspenseful movies. The flames contrasted with the dark atmosphere creates a hell-like environment. Keyser Sozë is filmed from below, creating a low-angle shot that contributes to his dominance and supremacy in the wreckage of the ship. The snakelike ropes all over the deck of the ship symbolize deceit and the devil, setting the stage for Keyser's debut.

• The film also uses the faces of the characters to maximize its lighting direction. In the scene where Verbal is first questioned, his head is lit from above like a skull. In art (i.e. vanitas skill lifes) and literature (for example, Yorick's skull in Shakespeare's Hamlet), skulls have served as a reminder of death and the fleetingness of mortality. This lighting ties Verbal to death and places him, in a sense, above the police officers and FBI agents questioning him-- in alignment, again, with the devil and with death, the collector of happiness and success. 

• As Verbal, Keaton, McManus, Fenster, and Hockney meet McManus's friend Redfoot at the isolated temple after he tricks them, the faces of McManus and his men are lit from underneath. This is used to make characters look gruesome and menacing. This, combined with the low-angle shot, asserts that they are angry, powerful, and seeking to gain control of the encounter.

• When Hockney opens the back of the truck full of money, he turns to glimpse the figure standing before him just after he is shot. The camera focuses on a big close-up shot of his face in which he revolves into a light, illuminating his face from right to left as he looks at the figure wide-eyed. This change in lighting symbolizes truth as it finally dawns on Hockney exactly who Keyser Sozë is-- literally "shedding some light" on the situation.

what's eating gilbert grape (1993): observations

• An overarching diegesis that I noticed throughout What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) dealt with the concept of limits and boundaries. Gilbert and several other characters are often trapped in a crowded shot, such as the setting of the grocery store. Arnie is sent to prison, Mrs. Grape never leaves the house, and the entirety of the film takes place inside sleepy Endora. Both Gilbert and Becky's mother are also shown trapped inside a stalling car, literally stranding them to the spot in the shot. Mr. Carver is constantly asking Gilbert over the first section of the movie if he's "free" for a meeting. The family's house is slowly collapsing as the faulty foundations and the floors reach the limit of what they can take. Later in the film, Becky and Gilbert watch a sunset that she describes as "limitless". All these small details help contribute to the storyline and the theme of possibility and confinement.

• Gilbert Grape is known for its phenomenal acting-- obviously by Leonardo DiCaprio, who invokes a childlike element through his use of movement and space as well as his speech. However, Johnny Depp's acting is also important, although subtle. A key element I noticed throughout the film was his use of eye contact. During his affair with Mrs. Carver, he almost never looks her directly in the eyes-- in one shot, the camera moves between their two faces, his staring off elsewhere as Mrs. Carver fixates on him and kisses the side of his face. However, throughout the movie he is always facing and staring at Becky, mastering the concept of eye contact as a key indicator of attraction. At the grocery store, parallel sequences show Mrs. Carver and Becky moving through the boxes of food-- however, Gilbert avoids Mrs. Carver and stares fully at Becky.

• An interesting aspect of the use of mise-en-scene and symbolism in Gilbert Grape is the movie's attitude toward food-- especially in scenes with women. Obviously, Mrs. Grape's addiction and indulgence in food is a core aspect of her character, highlighting her depression and how she is immeasurably changed by her husband's death. However, several other female characters are tied to food, eating, and the mouth. Gilbert only makes grocery deliveries to women-- Becky and her mother as well as Mrs. Carver. Amy Grape is constantly baking and transporting food for her mother. Mrs. Carver is highly associated with sugar-- she is always seen in a grocery store or a kitchen (and on one occasion a drive-thru), both of her scenes highlighting her indiscretion with Gilbert are punctuated with eating desserts, and when she is upset she burns a pan of cookies. Even Becky is never seen without her red lipstick and pastel-colored clothing, evoking a more visual sense of sweetness and drawing attention to her lips as she and Gilbert eat ice cream and watermelon. The women in the film act as the prime emotional navigators and are very important to the plot line, yet by the end of the movie I have next to no sense of Becky's inner conflicts, emotions, and desires-- or, for that matter, anyone's but Gilbert's. The film's view of women is interesting to me and seems to straddle a line in which the women are numerous, present, and significant, but also associated with a frivolous "excess", indulgence, or consumption.

• Something particularly interesting to me about the framing of shots in Gilbert Grape was a certain shot of Arnie in the bathtub. Although I've never seen the film, I've read before that the Japanese anime movie Perfect Blue (1997-- created later chronologically than Gilbert Grape) contains an iconic frame of a character in a bathtub viewed from above. The director Darren Aronofsky wanted to use a similar sequence for his movie Requiem for a Dream (2000), so he bought the rights to remake Perfect Blue just in order to include a parallel shot. He also used this in his movie Black Swan (2010). Since reading that, I watch for overhead shots in films of characters in bathtubs-- the angle is so interesting, and the symbolic implications of washing, purifying, drowning are especially important in Gilbert Grape. Arnie is both drawn to and repulsed by water in the film. In one shot, the residents of Endora literally flock towards a water tower to watch Arnie climb as if drawn by an eerie supernatural force. Seeing the Perfect Blue-esque shot of Arnie completely submerged in water brought to mind the baptismal qualities of water in literature. 

• Another thing I noticed about the film was its constant mis-foreshadowing. There are parts of the movie in which Arnie literally knocks on a hearse or characters have a conversation about death, for instance specifically about the "fun" parts of death, while Arnie plays pinball in the background. In the opening voiceover, Gilbert discusses Arnie's lifespan, and constantly characters refer to his impending death-- "I just want to see my boy reach eighteen", etc., etc. Arnie is constantly placed in perilous situations, such as climbing the water tower or being left in the bath, yet all this hinting and foreshadowing never culminates in his death. Arnie is constantly balanced on a precipice of peril, misleading the audience into believing that he will die during the film, when really their attention should be directed elsewhere (towards his mother).