daydream delusion / limousine eyelash: September 2014

Friday, September 26, 2014

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)

Monday, September 22, 2014

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.

Monday, September 15, 2014

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.

Monday, September 8, 2014

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).