Today I'm talking about the movie Cloud Atlas and the Mise-en-Scène in this movie. But, I'm only going to describe and explain a specific scene: the elderly people escaping from de nursing home. By the technology used in the house, and in the van they use to escape, we can see that they are in the 2010's because when they are inside the car, at first, they don't know how to start the engine because it was a button they had to press so they could start moving the car. This scene is filmed and based in England, 2012, in a nursing home where apparently wealthy people can afford it. The elderly's costumes are quite out of style because they are probably wearing the same clothes of thirty forty years ago. They, as characters, seem quite sad and depressed for being in that nursing home when some of them aren't even sick or mentally ill. And we can see that with the colours they wear in their costumes, the colours the edition uses in the scene and the colour of the nursing home: white and grey.
We can also observe that the length of the shots are very short, they can vary a little, but they're almost the same length. This is to create more drama and see every thing they're doing in detail so we don't miss anything. Leading up to the climax in this scene, there is the elderly in the van trying to figure out how to start the car engine, when they finally achieve that, they see that another member of the team wants to escape as well, so they have to come back for him. The climax is about them going back to the nursing home entrance to pick him up, and when the team member is on the van, they have to escape again from the owners of the van they stole from and from the nurse. Then, the former tells the janitor to close the gates and the elderly have to accelerate the van, otherwise they wouldn't be able to get out of the nursing home. They try to escape. Afterwards, they exhale victoriously celebrating they could get out and they keep on driving as far as they can. The music in this scene is perfectly well combined with three different melodies: The first one is the tension of figuring out how to start the engine. Once they figured that out, the music stops and the radio of the van plays the music that was playing before the owners turned off the engine. And the third one is about picking up Mr. Meeks (the other team member) from the entrance and getting out of there. When they brake the gates with the van there is a very delightful tone of victory helping us understand that they escaped the way they wanted to. There are no transitions in this scene, the shots are short and neither the shots nor the scene have transitions. This is to create mor tension and interest in the scene, and of course, the movie in general. In summary, Cloud Atlas is in constant cross-cut so we can get more involved in the stories and understand better the movie with all the details we need to catch. This cross-cutting is good for us, because if each story was shown individually, they wouldn't make the sense it makes with the cross-cuts, and the reason why we need those cross-cuts is to keep it interesting and catch every detail shown in each scene and shot so it could make sense to the next scene of the next story.
Today, I'm talking about the movie Raging Bull, but I'm writing specifically about the Cerdan Fight scene, where Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), an Italian American middleweight boxer, fights against another boxer. fIn this article, I'm focusing more in the technical characteristics on the scene more than in the story itself. First, there is this "Walking to the ring" part, where we can see that the camera work is a tracking shot, which is used to follow a moving subject by travelling alongside it. It can be filmed by a vehicle with an on-board mount, or by a long track set up following the line of movement. It makes us see everything that's going on in one shot. Second, there is this entrance to the ring where we can clearly see a panning within the fight zone, focusing the referee and then it quickly passes to Jake LaMotta making us feel more interested in about what will happen next. When we see the referee, the camera makes a close-up take to him, and then it makes a medium close-up shot to the boxer so that we can see that the former is pointing the latter meaning that the fight is about to start. Starting the fight, we can see that the camera is only focusing on the two of them, meaning the camera work is making a two-shot, with a medium shot, and when they start beating each other we can see a worm's eye camera angle so we can see their boxing gloves properly and see them fighting in a clear way. We can see what's going on by being beneath them. At the end of the fight, when Jake LaMotta wins, there is a slow motion to make it more dramatic making us think that this is the moment he has been waiting for, and we, like them, can enjoy his victory. We can see the camera creating a canted angle in LaMotta from ped up to ped down also in slow motion as part of the elements of victory. As celebration of the victory at the end of the fight, we can see the camera makes a tilt at LaMotta when the referee puts his belt on and an extreme close-up to see the boxer's face's reaction and what he might be feeling. Then, we can see a worm's eye to De Niro when he raises his hands as a sign of victory.
So, today I'm talking about a movie I always wanted to talk about, it's called Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang in 1927, Germany. I should talk about the analysis of the movie, by describing the setting, the people and what this movie is about. The setting of this movie is a mechanised, ordered and controlled world by the upper class, the government, the rich people. They create the impression of slavery and imprisonment. We can see the lower class going down to the Earth's surface so they can work and take their shifts. We know they're going down because all the workers get into a really big lift and then go deep in the Earth so they can work. It is considered slavery as we can see they all walk on a choreographed and synchronised manner, organised like soldiers but more shuffling and slower.
It makes me really think that we're not far from what Lang is showing us in Metropolis. We all work for one head and we may not be as sad and shuffling as them, but not all of us are happy on what we do for a living. Fritz Lang represents all workers as a small image to upper class' eyes. We can see the lighting is effective as we can appreciate the real situation in which they are represented. And it can be as symbolic as they take their shifts under the Earth's surface. And now, unlike the lower part of the world, we can see in the next opening scene the upper world, the rich ones. There is this man whose name is Freder, spoiled by his father, Joh Fredersen, and he is playing with some girls because he is just looking for having fun and have a good time. They are located in a really nice garden his father created for him so he could do anything and have fun.
By appreciating the contrast in which these two opening scenes take place we can know who is happy, who is not, who is rich, who is poor, who is "free" and who is imprisoned. We can also know Freder is playing with those girls, so their movements are free, simple and fun, unlike the workers who look like shuffling soldiers. Making such a great contrast creates a really strong relation between the two of them by saying the workers are being mistreated and manipulated by the upper class, and they get all the dirty job meanwhile the wealthy people have fun and live their lives to the fullest. So, the main characters are, as I said before, Freder, son of Joh Fredersen, and The Creative Man, who is a woman Freder falls in love with. But other main characters appear in the rest of the movie, as I'm only talking about the first two opening scenes. Freder represents the upper class and The Creative Man represents the working class as she comes into Freder's garden with a group of kids with her and said "These are your brothers!", meaning worker class should live a life as worthy and decent as the upper class. We can see that Metropolis is a movie about a completely different world with completely different characteristics, but it's as equally unfair and capitalist as our world.
