Almost Famous

In Almost Famous, the music choice is incredible. Arguably one of the best scenes in the movie is just after Russell goes to the fan's party. Everyone is sitting on the bus and singing along to Tiny Dancer by Elton John. It's a beautiful moment where the entire discordant group is brought together by and reminded of the thing they're all there for - music. The music choice for this scene was   relevant because Tiny Dancer talks about someone who is with the band but is not a musical part of it, a seamstress for the band, someone who's just there for the ride and there to enjoy herself. The character of Penny Lane is much like the tiny dancer of the song, and this is the part in the movie where William knows that he loves her but has to leave anyway. In Tiny Dancer, there is the line "Only you and you can hear me/when I say softly slowly." William only tells Penny that he needs to go home. She tells him that he is home, which is a feeling that came about as a result of listening to Tiny Dancer in particular. In contrast, when Simple Man by Lynyrd Skynyrd is playing, William is on the phone with his mother, trying to convince her to let him stay with the band a little bit longer. The first part of this song matches what's going on in the scene. "Mama told me when I was young/Come sit beside me, my only son/And listen closely to what I say." William's mother is definitely the overpowering sort of mother that fits with this song well. She also lets him stay, and there is another part of the song that says, "All I want for you my son/Is to be satisfied." William's mother lets him stay with the band because she knows it means a lot to him and it is helping him towards the career that he enjoys, which is writing about bands. She is willing to put him first, which is something that she doesn't say outright that the song says for her, which is music characterization. Both Tiny Dancer and Simple Man convey how the characters are feeling at those moments, and that is what makes them fit in the movie so well.

Compared to the music in the background of the film and the music that is sung throughout, the uses of silence in the film are important also. There is usually some sort of sound still, but it is nonsynchronous sound. For example, when Penny is dancing on the trashed stage. There is a song playing, but it has more to do with what happened immediately previous to the scene. The fact that Penny is silent makes the scene feel off, like it doesn't quite fit, and then when it's over the viewer is left questioning the purpose of the scene and what it was doing at that moment in the film. Looking back at the lyrics, it makes sense, the song is about dancing. But in the moment, it seems almost like it doesn't quite fit. This shows how Penny feels in the context of the rest of the band and how she is almost too good for them. She can dance on the stage alone and it's still amazing. There is another moment like this. William has taken Penny to the plane to let her go home, and she has a moment of realization about her feelings for him. Or so it can be assumed, because she presses her hand to the window and watches as he runs with the plane inside the airport. What is important about this scene is not how perfectly the song chosen fits with the scene but the fact that both characters are silent, letting the song tell the story for them. With the rest of the movie, this feels very natural, but it's interesting how the songs do most of the talking. The two people in this scene manage to share a profound moment in silence, one that is enhanced by the song in the background. That is how sound should happen in movies. The music makes the moment feel more real rather than cheap and manufactured, the way it can when two characters have that magical moment of realization. This was sound done right. 

Movement and Editing

There are a lot of movies about love and a lot of movies about time. But rarely do such movies have a variety of film techniques to make these themes well integrated throughout the movie. However, they are usually diverse in nature. Amelie, Across the Universe, and Vanilla Sky are not films that usually go together. Neither are Snatch, Memento, and Donnie Darko. But both sets of films have common themes within them. The first set all tell stories of love, and the second set revolves around time. All six films are very well made, and use a variety  techniques. However, in the first three films, movement is largely used to convey their message of love, and in the second three, editing is used to great effect to show time. Both techniques are used in all of the films, but movement is more prevalent in some, just as editing is in the others. Through the use of movement and editing respectively, similar themes of love and time were presented in six very different films.

Love is frequently shown in movies with lots of kissing and holding hands and being mushy. In Amelie, it's a little different. Amelie is all about love, but she doesn't show it physically until she meets the man she's been leading on a chase for the entire movie. No, Amelie is clever, and actually for most of the movie is alone except for her friends. But she loves them too.

There is a very nice scene where Amelie uses old letters from her landlady's husband to make a new letter to bring some sort of closure. In that scene, it goes into fast motion when she is cutting the letters and rearranging the words. This movement shows how hard she is working to make everyone around her happy and that she works very fast to do so. By going into fast motion to bring someone joy, Amelie is showing her love for everyone around her. Across the Universe uses the opposite technique to tell a different love story. In the middle of a song, there is a scene where everyone is underwater and naked. The important part, though, is that everybody is moving in slow motion.

It shows everyone's feelings and relationships at the time. In the forefront for most of the time is the main character Jude and his girlfriend Lucy. As they are together in the water, their heads make a heart. Their lack of any real movement shows how in love they are. They don't want to move and disrupt anything. They are very happy to just stay there together. It is a peaceful scene, and it gives the viewer a nice feeling. Jude and Lucy's love makes the scene feel calm, even though the rest of the movie is more chaotic. In Vanilla Sky, the entire movie is chaos as David messes up his dream world. But throughout is the love story he never got to live. David is in a car with his ex-girlfriend. She drives off the road to commit suicide while David is in the car. He is heavily scarred on his face, but still tries to go back to a different girl he met and is falling in love with. He finds Sofia while she is dancing and asks her out.

That scene has a lot of kinetic symbolism because she is dancing and he is limping. Sofia can remain loosely framed to show how free she is, how much she can move, but David stays tightly framed and walks stiffly, because he is trapped within his own body. The fact that she agrees to go out with him shows how powerful their love is, for it can overcome the obstacle of David being scarred and unable to move. Sofia knows that she won't be able to thrive if she is with him, but she is willing to give up that chance for him. Not only in Vanilla Sky but also in Amelie and Across the Universe - everyone finds their someone special. Everyone finds love somewhere. 

Time is a very important part of the world. Everything works on a schedule and everything has a time limit. Snatch is all about time and how little of it they have. Throughout the entire movie, they are worried about how they're going to find a new fighter in time, or if they'll be able to get somewhere fast enough, or being able to steal something and get away successfully. At the very end of the movie, when Bricktop's goons are about to shoot the main characters, there are a lot of things happening simultaneously, shown to the viewer with flashbacks and narrative segmentation.

Mickey's fellow gypsies have taken down the men lying in wait to attack them while Mickey was drawing out his fight to give them more time to fight theirs. This is also an example of parallel editing, how Mickey's fighting matches with the fighting the other gypsies are doing. All of these things give the impression that time has slowed down, when in actuality nothing has changed except everyone getting caught up to speed with everything going on. This feeling of just finding something out that makes the whole movie fall into place is essentially all of Memento. Leonard can't remember further back into the past than about five minutes, so all of Memento is told backwards. With this style of narrative comes some challenges, but the editor of this movie was well up to the task. The opening scene really sets the stage for the rest of the movie.

Someone gets shot in the head and someone else takes a Polaroid snapshot of it. But the key thing here is that the entire scene runs in reverse. This shows how the rest of the movie will be told in small increments and how Leonard sees things. Like the opening shot of the Polaroid developing in reverse, his memories fade after a few moments. This makes time impossible for him to perceive, and through editing, the movie shows this in just a few shots. Donnie Darko has a similar skewed version of time. The entire movie takes place in a tangent universe, a universe that Donnie has to bring to an end in order to save the rest of the universe. The last few seconds of the movie are the same as what happens after the first few minutes. Any piece of this movie can be used to show time because it is a movie about time travel. The biggest proof of the time travel, however, is Frank the giant bunny.

At the end of the movie he is shot in the eye, but for the rest of the movie he is wandering around and guiding Donnie through the tangent universe. The way Frank is edited in the film is interesting because he could be a figment of Donnie's imagination. The viewer doesn't know for sure that Frank is real until the very end, when he appears as a regular dude and not the mysterious guide he has been for the entire film. Frank is the best way to show time throughout the film because he is an important part of time for the whole thing. He tells Donnie when the world is going to end and he is one of the most helpful characters in the movie when it comes to the time travelling. Though Donnie Darko presented the most complicated time, all three of the films used the concept of time well through their editing.

All six of the movies - Amelie, Across the Universe, Vanilla Sky, Snatch, Memento, and Donnie Darko - used a variety of film techniques with regard to movement or editing to show the message of either love or time. A well-made film with a message like love or time can connect all sorts of movies. Most people would never consider grouping these six movies into these two groups, but it is possible because of how they were made. With common techniques and common themes, these movies are more alike than at first glance. 

Vanilla Sky

In Vanilla Sky, the ending is a little frustrating. It has a good message, sure - sometimes the best thing to do is to start over - but learning that the entire movie was a dream is a sure way to annoy most of the audience. The point where everything became a dream is interesting, though. It starts out pretty

boring, washed-out colors, basic dialogue shots and two shots most of the time. But then there's this shot of the mask lying on the ground because that's where David passed out. The transition from this to the morning is subtle, but what happens is all of the colors get brighter, the skies go to their permanent state of Monet-like perfection, and, of course, Sofia has returned to him and is telling him to open his eyes. This moment has a lot of deeper meaning within the film, showing the point where David chose to splice the Lucid Dream with his real life. He chose this moment because this was the moment when he could tell that he'd just let a real chance at love walk out of his life. It was the kind of moment he could only really notice as a turning point upon looking back at his whole life. But in the

film, it is abundantly clear that a change has happened. Even without knowing that this is where the dream begins, it is clear that something has happened. The colors are brighter, the scenes are more exciting, the plot begins to move along faster. Now that David and Sofia have found each other, nothing else can happen. Of course, there are still the flash-forwards to David in the mask in prison after everything has gone wrong, but for the most part after passing out in the street everything gets better. The editing is what gives the film that feeling of excitement and wonder that is found in a dream, where everything is perfect. The editing also brought the incredible transition between the last of David's real life and the beginning of his new, dream life.

Another thing that was edited very well into the movie was David's scars disappearing and reappearing. He didn't reconnect with Sofia until after he got the scars, and until then he also didn't

want to have them. But she accepted him regardless of the scars, and he was happy despite his disfigurement. His choice to have his scars removed and his face fixed has a deeper meaning as well, but first and foremost he chose to fix his face so that Sofia would be happier because she wouldn't have to put up with stares and judgments from other people. He also wanted to go back to looking like and acting like the person she had first met. The deeper meaning behind the scars being removed from his face is that he is trying to leave his old life with Julie behind. Everything that she did to him, he is trying to remove so that he can love Sofia more fully. This scene was well-edited, as it used a variety of techniques like deep focus to keep the audience from seeing his face as Sofia peels the mask away. It creates a moment of suspense, the same one that David is feeling in that moment. The editing shows how much Sofia and David mean to each other, and how they are willing to do anything for the other. At one point, however, David has a nightmare that the scars have returned, and it surprises everyone when he turns on the light and

there is a scarred face in the mirror instead of a smooth one. Then he wakes up. There is parallel editing as he makes his way over to the sink and mirror again, just like in the dream. This creates a feeling of tension, because the audience knows what happened before when this happened. They know what should be coming, what has been set up to come. Of course, the dream he had was just a nightmare, but after this is when everything else starts to go wrong. The return of his scars signifies the guilt he has over being so happy with Sofia after Julie worked her way into his life. The dream environment was controlled by his mind, and his mind wouldn't let go of Julie. So she was back into his life. This was all preluded by the suspenseful nightmare about the return of his scars, and without the way it was edited, there might not have been a tension on which to build the falling apart of the dream world.

Across the Universe

In Across the Universe, movement played a big part in helping the story progress and making it better. Lucy was one of the main characters and she had some of the most movement involved with her. Around the middle of the film, her brother gets drafted into the war. Strawberry Fields Forever was a continuation of that storyline, showing everybody's conflicts in the form of war. In that song, Lucy has images projected onto her face. Lucy lets the projection become her expression, leaving her face as a blank canvas. It's an interesting example of movement because the character is so still. It shows how in shock she is, just letting the emotions wash over her. She doesn't really have any sort of emotion because she is too scared to let herself feel. It adds to the gravity of the moment and makes the audience feel the same way she does, even though she isn't moving. The projections on her face move, and that is the movement, but she doesn't, and that's what makes the difference to the audience.

There is another place in the film where Lucy's slight movements convey all of her emotion to the audience. Jude has just finished his song to her and she has made her way up to the roof next to his so she can see him. They are both crying, and then Lucy pushes her hair back and there is a freeze-frame. The tears running down her face created movement and feeling enough, but then she pushes her hair back and everything stops. It shows how she and Jude felt for each other. When she pushes her hair out of the way, pushing away their argument and anything else that was separating them, the movie freezes. It ends with a happy moment of forgiveness, a frozen picture, to remind everyone to forgive and push things away in the name of love. Lucy's small movement was enough to convey so much feeling to the audience. Movement was used to great effect in this film.

Jude, being the other main character, also had a lot of movement involved with his part in the film. When he first realizes that he is falling in love with Lucy, he sings I've Just Seen a Face and slides all around at a bowling alley. He goes down the lane like he's the bowling ball, and then everything get more brightly colored and hectic. Everyone's sliding down the lanes like they're surfing, people are running around and jumping over the ball returns, having a very good time. It is a lot of chaotic movement to show how it feels to fall in love. Wild, out of control, but still a really great time. All of the craziness of I've Just Seen a Face perfectly describes how Jude is feeling, with the help of song lyrics to push it just a little further. Jude went through a lot in the film - he fell in love, his friend went off to war, his lover left,

and he got deported. It did all work out in the end, but it took him singing on a rooftop to find Lucy and her love again. They both are crying, which is very moving. Then Jude bites his lip. This small movement shows how deeply he feels for Lucy. She has already left once, but he's gotten her back and he feels so happy. He bites his lip as a quick, sharp shock, almost as if to wake up from a dream if it isn't real. He thinks that seeing her again is too good to be true, but there she is, on the closest roof she could be. Their relationship, as far as the audience is concerned, hit that happy note and stayed there, because the film ends. All of the roller-coaster feelings that Jude felt he conveyed to the audience using movements both big and small, and it worked very well.

Living the Dream

In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, everything was about life. The main themes were living life to its fullest and getting out of the mundane world. The film also showed how there are endless opportunities for people to break out of their shells and get out into the world and live their daydreams. Walter Mitty finally got to live the life he was always dreaming about, and with excellent mise en scene the movie took the audience along for the journey. Towards the beginning of the film, there were a lot of linear, angular shots, but as the movie progressed there were more open, wide shots that brought the audience to Iceland and Afghanistan. Using these tricks and more, the movie felt like an adventure for everyone who was watching, and left an inspiring message to live the dream. Having a classical film approach, the movie uses more and more aleatory technique as it progresses, making it feel all the more real. Using mise en scene, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty takes the audience from feeling trapped in Walter's small world to freeing themselves along with him.

Towards the beginning of the movie, everything is very letterboxed and tightly framed. There is a working order to things, and there is always a plan. Pretty much every shot looks exactly the same.  When Walter is first in his workplace, his sister shows up and hands him a bright orange cake. That cake is the only thing that has color in Walter's workplace, and he's supposed to be working for LIFE Magazine. In theory, everything would be as lively as the little orange cake, but everything is drab and shades of blue or gray. Walter's birthday brings a dominant contrast into the frame, and it becomes clear how boring everything else is. Even the past covers of LIFE, which should represent life, are boring and dull, part of the background of Walter's world, a subsidiary contrast. There is one shot where he is looking around the corner at Cheryl, the object of his affection. In that shot, there is a wall so close to his face. It feels awkward to be looking around that wall. The aspect ratio is such that the wall is out of focus, but it still makes the scene feel closed form. The proxemic pattern is also social, and doesn't lend a lot of personality to the encounter. This is also an example of an anticipatory shot, which again removes the scene from being personal and renders it almost idle, a pastime that has become a habit, though not necessarily a good one. Finally, as Walter embraces adventure in a "screw

you" gesture towards his transition manager, he runs past several of the past covers from LIFE. They sort of start to blur together and at the end, Walter's face is on the last cover. This shows how he is finally living the life he's been printing pictures about for the past fifteen years. It shows how he is literally going to fly into the unknown just for a cover photo. Since the photo is of himself, he is really going out there to save himself from getting lost in the gray world he's found himself in.

Now that Walter has left his boring old world, the shots open up. Everything starts to be more loosely framed, long shots that take in the sweeping, colorful landscape. There starts to be more density of texture. The shots have more depth and more weight. Things seem to be more spontaneous as well. Walter winds up with a red sweater. This seems unimportant, but it allows him to be the dominant contrast in the palette of greens and browns, so for once in his life, he stands out. He also gets to use some of his skills that have lain dormant for some time, such as his skateboarding ability. Being out of his cubicle and therefore outside his box offers him greater freedom and shows him that everything he can do is important. He's not just the negative assets manager that nobody appreciates because they don't see what he does. Now, he doesn't need a specific skill set. Now he knows that he can be important for everything that he can do. Of course, there are some things he can't do. Although Walter is very neat

and balances his checkbook frequently, before his adventure he never would have had to climb a mountain. But he will do anything to find this mysterious photographer. There is an interesting bit of parallelism from a fantasy Walter had at the beginning of the film. He imagines himself as a wild, foreign mountain man, come to sweep Cheryl off her feet. But at this point in the movie he is on the mountain for a whole host of reasons other than Cheryl. This kind of parallelism is fascinating because before, it was a workplace daydream, but now it's reality. Usually it happens the other way around, but here, it makes it clear that Walter is stepping into his daydreams and living life for himself and loving it. What will happen when he reaches the end of his quest, though? He finds the old photographer. He has to go back to his boring
old world. So now what? Well, it's not like he just ignores everything that has happened to him.

Despite being back in a symmetrical, boxed-in environment, he takes those experiences and keeps them, because he knows what it means to really live life. Walter knows he can do anything he wants to now. And who knows? Anything can happen. He knows he can do all these things now, so there's nothing that's stopping him from going out and doing them besides himself.

In the end, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was a truly inspiring movie that helps the audience believe that anything is possible.  With amazing mise en scene to further the story and make it feel that much more relatable and real, the movie makes its point in a beautiful way that leads all the senses to believe the many life truths it presents. Walter Mitty makes a beautiful journey from a boring, average Joe that is relatable to many audience members to a more adventurous, outgoing person who can live their fantasies. Using mise en scene to bring the audience along for the journey, the film takes someone ordinary, someone who very well could have just walked into the theatre, and shows how amazing life could be. By starting with everything very planned and anticipatory, but moving into a more spontaneous and aleatory style, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty brings everyone on an adventure that helps people to realize their full potential. The framing and shots in the movie are what made the journey so much more believable, and everyone watching the movie makes the journey right along with Walter.

Mystic River

In Mystic River, the idea of a cross was brought up a lot. Jimmy, of the three main characters, had the most crosses with him in the shots. He always had another obstacle to overcome, something to crucify him. At the end of the film, he is shown with a Celtic cross on his back. The way he is framed suggests that he is alone and struggling a lot with what he's done. He has just killed his friend. By keeping the shot asymmetrical and having him be in darkness, this shot shows how much Jimmy is upset about what he has done and how he is suffering. In the shadows, with a cross on his back. He has a cross to bear, and that is the murder of someone who, as it turned out, was innocent. Before that, there is a shot of him walking down the street, arms outstretched. Jimmy is once again being crucified in this imagery. This shot is different, however, because it is a symmetrical design. This reinforces the feeling of parallelism. On this same street, Dave dies the first time when the molesters take him away. On this street, Jimmy is tortured with the guilt of killing Dave a second time. Jimmy is dying himself in a way, because he has killed a man for something he didn't really do. In the Crucifixion in the Bible, Jesus died to bring peace and forgiveness to everyone. Jimmy is being crucified because he brought Dave the peace that only death could bring. In this film, everybody had their crosses to bear. Jimmy's was one of the heaviest.

Dave also had a lot of pain in his life. In his childhood, he was kidnapped by a pair of men pretending to be police officers and molested. The shot of one of them leaning around the seat and putting his hand up, revealing a ring with a cross on it, has a lot of significance. Not only does it represents what Dave is about to go through, something that will scar him for his entire life, but it also the perversion of something pure, like the church, which also signifies what he is going to go through. The shot is sort of a dramatic contrast between the ring, which should mean something good, and the fake officer, who is anything but. Towards the end of the movie, the two Savage brothers take Dave to the bar in much the same way he was taken from his friends when he was a kid. This parallel editing shows how something bad is going to happen to Dave, because when he was taken like that the first time, it did not go very well for him. Once they are in the bar, Dave seems boxed in, surrounded by people who are supposed to be his friends but who can't quite reach him. The shot has a lot of density and texture, making the viewer feel as heavy and intoxicated as Dave. Dave's discomfort at the bar directly translates to what happens next, which is him being betrayed by a friend and killed. Like in the car at the beginning of the movie, he dies, only instead of just his childhood dying he loses everything. Dave lost a lot in this movie, and he was on a cross from when he was just a child, suffering through it all.

The Royal Tenenbaums

The Royal Tenenbaums showed just how dysfunctional a family could get. For example, the father, Royal Tenenbaum himself, always introduced his daughter Margot as his "adopted daughter". This isolated her completely from the rest of the family. One trick the director used to emphasize this was to always put Margot in the back corner of a shot, except when she was with Richie. Richie was sort of like her excuse to be a part of the family. He helped her through a lot. But any time Margot was without him, she was tucked away in the corner. This showed how separate she was from the rest of them. She had her own agenda, she was doing her own thing regardless of what the family wanted her to do. When the whole family visited the grandmother's grave, Royal says Margot never got invited because it wasn't her real grandmother. At the graveyard, she distances herself from everybody and doesn't even appear in the same shots as anyone except for Chas's children. She is kept very separate.

Eli Cash played an interesting part in the movie. He wasn't really a Tenenbaum, but he desperately wanted to be. This played out with him having an affair with Margot and sending Etheline his newspaper clippings. He is very conflicted throughout the film, and this is conveyed by always having him surrounded by odd things. There is always something behind him, there is always something going on in the background, and it feels very chaotic. He also always has an air that he doesn't quite belong. This is shown with his cowboy hat never leaving his person, even when he is hiding in Margot's closet. Eli always has to be wearing his cowboy costume, even though he doesn't quite fit in with it on, because that is who he would like to be. This represents how he wants to become a Tenenbaum but just never quite fits in with the rest of them.