Partway through Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," I found myself gripped by the realization that this film would forever paint my grasp of history. Sure, I knew about the pursuit of Bin Laden, about the stealthy raid on his Pakistani compound -- that was all in the news, and I tend to keep up with the news. But the tone, the mood, the images (especially the images of the compound itself, which have become iconic, and synonymous with both the event itself and the film) are new, and are a product of the film and its creators.
At first, I found this realization troubling. Who were these people that I should trust their version of history? But then, it dawned on me, all of history, or what survives of it, is preserved in this way.
I recall learning in grade school that "history is written by the victor." This year, we are reminded (perhaps) that history is actually written by the storyteller.
From "Argo" to "Lincoln" to "Zero Dark Thirty", it has been a year of historical films, films that take what we think we know of history (a lot, in the case of "Lincoln", very little in the case of "Argo") and re-tell it to us. They give us new avenues through which to appreciate the actions, decisions and challenges that faced our forbears. They re-define how we see politics, and how we understand our role in the world.
That's a big responsibility for a storyteller to bear, and some carry it with more grace than others. But it's humbling to note that in the end, it's not the most accurate history, but the best told story that survives.
-AzS
Saturday, February 02, 2013
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Musing Pictures: Take Me Home (2011)
I just caught this sweet indie on Netflix -- my wife picked it, and neither of us knew what to expect. "Take me Home" is not the only independent rom-com we've watched recently, but it stands out as a reminder of what movies (independent or otherwise) can accomplish.
A professor of mine from Brandeis, William Flesch, studies the "darwinian" evolution of stories. Very roughly, he suggests that the stories that survive longest are the ones that somehow beg to be re-told. From there, the analysis gets complicated, as he dives in to what goes in to such a story, and why it works.
Since first hearing about this theory, I began taking note of what stories have that effect on me. When I was first bitten by the film bug, around age ten, "Jurassic Park" overwhelmed me in this way. I wanted the story told to me over and over (I saw the film twice in theaters, and dozens of times on VHS at home), and I wanted it told in more than one way (I read and re-read Crichton's book until it was tattered, listened to the soundtrack until the tape got thin). I told my friends about it, and since I couldn't tell the story in quite the same way, recommended they see the film, read the book, and thereby receive it themselves.
Now that I'm expecting my first child (due in three days, in fact!) I'm recalling other stories, other narratives that I feel an urge and an eagerness to share. Books and movies that were important to me as a child become a part of what excites me about parenting: I may soon get to share those books and movies with my own kid.
But since I discovered my own interest in filmmaking, in telling stories rather than just receiving them, I've found myself in an unusual position of power. I don't have to pass the stories along any more. I can, to an extent, participate actively in their re-telling.
I had that sensation strongly when I saw Barry Levenson's "Sphere" back in '98. I had loved the book and recommended it to friends (a good story, demanding to be re-told), and had high hopes for the movie version. I was very disappointed, and decided (without irony, in the way a high-schooler dreams of conquering the world) that I'd re-make it someday, and that I'd simply have to do a better job. It wasn't that I felt I could get rich or famous in the process. The story simply hadn't been re-told well enough.
Sometimes, my response is subtler, as is the case with "Take Me Home". I'm writing about the film, partly, because I think it merits being seen (it's a story worth re-telling), but partly because it feels like the kind of story I want to tell. I don't feel a need to re-make the film (it's good enough as it is, after all), but there's something in the underlying structure of the story, something more basic that speaks to me, and that wants to find new expression through my work. Perhaps this is where my professor's analysis might come in handy, dissecting the narrative for its evolutionarily selected genes?
But ultimately, I think that's a big part of my journey as an artist and a storyteller, to find the story I need to tell, and to do what I can to tell it.
-AzS
A professor of mine from Brandeis, William Flesch, studies the "darwinian" evolution of stories. Very roughly, he suggests that the stories that survive longest are the ones that somehow beg to be re-told. From there, the analysis gets complicated, as he dives in to what goes in to such a story, and why it works.
Since first hearing about this theory, I began taking note of what stories have that effect on me. When I was first bitten by the film bug, around age ten, "Jurassic Park" overwhelmed me in this way. I wanted the story told to me over and over (I saw the film twice in theaters, and dozens of times on VHS at home), and I wanted it told in more than one way (I read and re-read Crichton's book until it was tattered, listened to the soundtrack until the tape got thin). I told my friends about it, and since I couldn't tell the story in quite the same way, recommended they see the film, read the book, and thereby receive it themselves.
Now that I'm expecting my first child (due in three days, in fact!) I'm recalling other stories, other narratives that I feel an urge and an eagerness to share. Books and movies that were important to me as a child become a part of what excites me about parenting: I may soon get to share those books and movies with my own kid.
But since I discovered my own interest in filmmaking, in telling stories rather than just receiving them, I've found myself in an unusual position of power. I don't have to pass the stories along any more. I can, to an extent, participate actively in their re-telling.
I had that sensation strongly when I saw Barry Levenson's "Sphere" back in '98. I had loved the book and recommended it to friends (a good story, demanding to be re-told), and had high hopes for the movie version. I was very disappointed, and decided (without irony, in the way a high-schooler dreams of conquering the world) that I'd re-make it someday, and that I'd simply have to do a better job. It wasn't that I felt I could get rich or famous in the process. The story simply hadn't been re-told well enough.
Sometimes, my response is subtler, as is the case with "Take Me Home". I'm writing about the film, partly, because I think it merits being seen (it's a story worth re-telling), but partly because it feels like the kind of story I want to tell. I don't feel a need to re-make the film (it's good enough as it is, after all), but there's something in the underlying structure of the story, something more basic that speaks to me, and that wants to find new expression through my work. Perhaps this is where my professor's analysis might come in handy, dissecting the narrative for its evolutionarily selected genes?
But ultimately, I think that's a big part of my journey as an artist and a storyteller, to find the story I need to tell, and to do what I can to tell it.
-AzS
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Musing Pictures: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
This is the future of cinema, whether you like it or not.
"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is the first major film ever shot and released in a format with a frame rate significantly higher than cinema's traditional 24 frames per second. Effects wizard Douglas Trumbull experimented with high frame rate technology in the '70s, creating the proprietary Showscan format, but was never able to utilize it in a feature film.
When a selection of critics and tech geeks got a chance to preview a scene from "The Hobbit" in this new, 48 frames per second format, the response was mixed at best. Many complained that it looked too much like daytime TV, or like a soap opera, and not enough like the cinematic experience it was supposed to be. I have to say, I agree, but only to a point.
There are several factors that taint the high frame rate (HFR) experience in this case.
First, most of us who are seeing "The Hobbit" in theaters grew up with television. I'm not talking about the new, flat-screen, high definition digital stuff. I'm talking, rather, about what used to come over the air to our cathode ray tubes, the big boxes in our living rooms. For much of the history of television in the US, TV was broadcast using a standard called "NTSC", which projected our news and shows at a frame rate of 29.97fps (30fps, in short-hand). This was typically an interlaced image -- each frame was divided in two, and the two halves were projected sequentially, instead of all at once. The frames weren't divided down the middle, but by alternating lines of resolution (so, the first half of the frame would be lines 1, 3, 5, 7, etc., and the second half would be lines 2, 4, 6, 8, etc.) So, although the resolution of a TV image was relatively low compared to what we'd see in theaters, the frame rate was higher (by nearly six frames per second), and the actual rate of flickering was much higher (and therefore much less visible) at nearly 60 half-frames per second. That, to us, subtly defined the television image.
When digital technoloists began to introduce 24fps video in the late '90s, I remember it as a heady time for independent filmmakers. For the first time, we could create content that had the "look" of film without losing the accessibility and cheapness of digital. At the time, David Tames of www.kino-eye.com broke it down for me as follows: We've become programmed by our own experiences. After seeing the news day in and day out in 30fps, we've come to expect fact-based, informational material to come to us at that frame rate. But since we're used to the cinematic experience at 24fps, we expect images that flicker that way to be fictional, to be narrative, and therefore fundamentally different than the 30fps "factual" images.
That has remained fairly true: fiction is shot at 24 frames per second, whereas non-fiction is shot at 30. Now that newer home TVs are capable of showing a 24fps image, the line has started blurring, but this hasn't been the case for long enough for us to un-learn our visual expectations.
So, when we see "The Hobbit" in a higher frame rate, of course it's going to look like TV. The television frame rate is the closest thing we have to compare it to.
(I wonder if this is the case in Europe, where the TV frame rate is 25 frames per second, extremely close to cinema's traditional 24. Do they think "The Hobbit" looks like TV? If you've seen it, and you're European, let me know!)
The second major factor in the 'small screen' feeling many reported in "The Hobbit" is, unfortunately, somewhat the fault of the filmmaker, Peter Jackson. The first act of the film is shot and paced like a 1990s British sitcom, and for that reason, serves as a poor introduction to the high frame rate format. It's where the story begins, so I can't fault Mr. Jackson for starting the film there, but the extended sequence in which Bilbo is visited by dwarves has little of the cinematic flair of other sequences in the film, so it doesn't counteract the sense of "TV" very strongly.
I think high frame rate cinema is here to stay. The images are very crisp, movement is very sharp. In the slow, steady journey towards greater and greater realism, HFR is an important step.
That said, I think it requires a much stronger cinematic filmmaker than Jackson, whose choice of shots and angles is often dissociated with (and occasionally undermines) the mood of the scene. One of the challenges of HFR is that so much within the scene is vividly clear. Jackson provides us with quite a few deep focus shots -- shots where much of what is in frame is in sharp focus. Without a very strong, steady storytelling hand to guide us, we get lost among the details.
Although I find James Cameron's stories frustratingly simplistic, he tells those simple stories very well. His plans to release the next two Avatar films in HFR may provide us with a very different visual-narrative approach with which to judge the format.
For more on high frame rates, here's a very informative website with examples: http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/high-frame-rate-video
-AzS
"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is the first major film ever shot and released in a format with a frame rate significantly higher than cinema's traditional 24 frames per second. Effects wizard Douglas Trumbull experimented with high frame rate technology in the '70s, creating the proprietary Showscan format, but was never able to utilize it in a feature film.
When a selection of critics and tech geeks got a chance to preview a scene from "The Hobbit" in this new, 48 frames per second format, the response was mixed at best. Many complained that it looked too much like daytime TV, or like a soap opera, and not enough like the cinematic experience it was supposed to be. I have to say, I agree, but only to a point.
There are several factors that taint the high frame rate (HFR) experience in this case.
First, most of us who are seeing "The Hobbit" in theaters grew up with television. I'm not talking about the new, flat-screen, high definition digital stuff. I'm talking, rather, about what used to come over the air to our cathode ray tubes, the big boxes in our living rooms. For much of the history of television in the US, TV was broadcast using a standard called "NTSC", which projected our news and shows at a frame rate of 29.97fps (30fps, in short-hand). This was typically an interlaced image -- each frame was divided in two, and the two halves were projected sequentially, instead of all at once. The frames weren't divided down the middle, but by alternating lines of resolution (so, the first half of the frame would be lines 1, 3, 5, 7, etc., and the second half would be lines 2, 4, 6, 8, etc.) So, although the resolution of a TV image was relatively low compared to what we'd see in theaters, the frame rate was higher (by nearly six frames per second), and the actual rate of flickering was much higher (and therefore much less visible) at nearly 60 half-frames per second. That, to us, subtly defined the television image.
When digital technoloists began to introduce 24fps video in the late '90s, I remember it as a heady time for independent filmmakers. For the first time, we could create content that had the "look" of film without losing the accessibility and cheapness of digital. At the time, David Tames of www.kino-eye.com broke it down for me as follows: We've become programmed by our own experiences. After seeing the news day in and day out in 30fps, we've come to expect fact-based, informational material to come to us at that frame rate. But since we're used to the cinematic experience at 24fps, we expect images that flicker that way to be fictional, to be narrative, and therefore fundamentally different than the 30fps "factual" images.
That has remained fairly true: fiction is shot at 24 frames per second, whereas non-fiction is shot at 30. Now that newer home TVs are capable of showing a 24fps image, the line has started blurring, but this hasn't been the case for long enough for us to un-learn our visual expectations.
So, when we see "The Hobbit" in a higher frame rate, of course it's going to look like TV. The television frame rate is the closest thing we have to compare it to.
(I wonder if this is the case in Europe, where the TV frame rate is 25 frames per second, extremely close to cinema's traditional 24. Do they think "The Hobbit" looks like TV? If you've seen it, and you're European, let me know!)
The second major factor in the 'small screen' feeling many reported in "The Hobbit" is, unfortunately, somewhat the fault of the filmmaker, Peter Jackson. The first act of the film is shot and paced like a 1990s British sitcom, and for that reason, serves as a poor introduction to the high frame rate format. It's where the story begins, so I can't fault Mr. Jackson for starting the film there, but the extended sequence in which Bilbo is visited by dwarves has little of the cinematic flair of other sequences in the film, so it doesn't counteract the sense of "TV" very strongly.
I think high frame rate cinema is here to stay. The images are very crisp, movement is very sharp. In the slow, steady journey towards greater and greater realism, HFR is an important step.
That said, I think it requires a much stronger cinematic filmmaker than Jackson, whose choice of shots and angles is often dissociated with (and occasionally undermines) the mood of the scene. One of the challenges of HFR is that so much within the scene is vividly clear. Jackson provides us with quite a few deep focus shots -- shots where much of what is in frame is in sharp focus. Without a very strong, steady storytelling hand to guide us, we get lost among the details.
Although I find James Cameron's stories frustratingly simplistic, he tells those simple stories very well. His plans to release the next two Avatar films in HFR may provide us with a very different visual-narrative approach with which to judge the format.
For more on high frame rates, here's a very informative website with examples: http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/high-frame-rate-video
-AzS
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Musing Pictures: Life of Pi
Life of Pi looks wonderful in 3D. Like Avatar, it presents a hyper-real world that is at once authentic and magical. It doesn't push as far as Avatar pushed, not in terms of the visuals, nor the emotional punch, nor (significantly) the action, but it's still a wonderful cinematic experience.
That's not to say the scene isn't legendary. It's one of the most fascinating fight scenes in cinema, but in the context of its story, the attention to beauty overwhelms attention to pace.
In neither case are these scenes particularly emotional. That, I think, remains the most difficult effect to merge with beauty in film.
-AzS
One of the challenges that the film struggles to overcome is the dissonance between beauty and emotional connection. Beauty is deeply emotional, for sure, but when it surrounds a story, it doesn't necessarily inspire the story's emotions.
An example, pointed out by my wife as we walked to our car from the theater, is the scene in which Pi's freighter, which carries his entire family and most of the menagerie from their zoo, sinks in to the Pacific. The scene resolves with Pi, under water, watching the lights of the ship fade in to the blackness.
The image is haunting, beautiful... but ultimately, it inspires awe, rather than sadness.
I've seen very few films that have successfully utilized profoundly beautiful images in conjunction with pivotal emotional moments. Often, we see beautiful landscapes (in anything from The Searchers to Lord of the Rings ), but these set the scene. We see the beautiful landscape, then we move in to the characters and their moment within it.
Even in Independence Day, when the aliens blow up major cities, the effect is one of awe, rather than sadness or grief. For that film, it works, since we're expected to keep our moods light for what turns out to be a very fun, exciting adventure.
Spielberg is the only filmmaker who consistently utilizes beauty and the awe it inspires in conjunction with an emotional payoff. I'm thinking specifically of the astounding climax to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is very similar in some ways to the climax of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Elsewhere, awe IS the appropriate reaction (the final T-Rex shot in Jurassic Park comes to mind, when our heroes have already escaped, and we are given a chance to admire the monster without fear).
But isn't beauty something of Ang Lee's signature? I remember the first time I really took note of the director was with his beautiful film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That film is book-ended by two major fight sequences, both incredibly beautiful. One of them, across rooftops in a dark town, demonstrates Lee's strength. The beauty of the sequence serves to underline its magic, and becomes part of the awe of the moment, and of the story. Also, it is beautiful in the way dance is beautiful., so it lends itself to a certain narrative clarity.
The second, atop tall bamboo trees, is graceful, dance-like, and ultimately slows the story down. Beauty, here, becomes a hindrance.
That's not to say the scene isn't legendary. It's one of the most fascinating fight scenes in cinema, but in the context of its story, the attention to beauty overwhelms attention to pace.
In neither case are these scenes particularly emotional. That, I think, remains the most difficult effect to merge with beauty in film.
-AzS
Monday, November 12, 2012
Trailer Talk: Jurassic Park 3D
While I don't want to go in to whether or not it's a "good idea" to re-release Jurassic Park in 3D, I think there's something to be learned from seeing that trailer in a movie theater.
Last night, at an IMAX screening of "Skyfall", I got to see some very familiar images from a movie I must have seen nearly a hundred times. The trailer for the 3D re-release of "Jurassic Park" included some of the film's iconic images, including that of the T-Rex roaring between the two stalled tour cars (at around 1:23). Of course, the experience was very sentimental for me -- those images came from a film that inspired me to pursue a career in cinema. Before I studied any other movie, I studied Jurassic Park. But the T-Rex image gave me pause.
There it was, a beautiful, clean projection on an enormous IMAX screen. And it looked different -- not that it was different than what I remembered, but it was unlike any of the other previews. In fact, it was unlike most of the big, effects-heavy adventure films I've seen over the last few years. There was something huge and magnificent about the image, about the way it was shot, the way it was framed, and the way it was finished. On that screen, the shot was life-sized, and almost had a tangible depth to it. This was not a 3D screening, but "Jurassic Park" wasn't made for 3D, and doesn't need it.
I've been thinking a lot about why that shot (and, in fact, most of the trailer) struck such a chord with me, and I think I've narrowed it down to two things:
1) Increasingly, the small-screen aesthetic informs big-screen movies. Lately, Hollywood has been churning out big special-effects films to try to lure movie lovers back to theaters. Unfortunately, the very filmmaking process is no longer a big-screen process. Movies are shot digitally, reviewed on small screens, edited on small screens, and make much of their money on small screens (TV and digital). The effects can be grand, but there is a grand theatricality that is missing from most newer films. "Jurassic Park" has that grand theatricality, the kind of showmanship that DEMANDS the big screen, and that fills that screen from edge to edge. There were elements of that showmanship in "Skyfall", but only in two or three scenes (fight/action scenes, shot beautifully and with surprising artfulness by Roger Deakins)
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what this showmanship is, or how it emerges. In the case of the T-Rex shot, it's a combination of camera angle, blocking, lighting, and probably a half-dozen other elements that make for not just a moving image, but a portrait of the event. It's magnificent.
2) Digital special effects have yet to master the tangibility of practical effects. Although the T-Rex in the shot is digital, there's much more reality in that shot (and in the film) than virtual-reality. Most of what we see was there to imprint on celluloid. I think digital effects can achieve this, but only if that's a priority for the filmmaker. For the most part, it seems to me that the filmmakers of current special effects films are more interested in the freedom to achieve the impossible than in the effort of making the impossible seem real and present in the film.
There's a part of me that's a little disappointed that this 20th anniversary release of Jurassic Park is a 3D release, and not simply a 2D re-release of the original film. It could teach us so much about what we should be doing with the special effects miracles at our disposal.
-AzS
Last night, at an IMAX screening of "Skyfall", I got to see some very familiar images from a movie I must have seen nearly a hundred times. The trailer for the 3D re-release of "Jurassic Park" included some of the film's iconic images, including that of the T-Rex roaring between the two stalled tour cars (at around 1:23). Of course, the experience was very sentimental for me -- those images came from a film that inspired me to pursue a career in cinema. Before I studied any other movie, I studied Jurassic Park. But the T-Rex image gave me pause.
There it was, a beautiful, clean projection on an enormous IMAX screen. And it looked different -- not that it was different than what I remembered, but it was unlike any of the other previews. In fact, it was unlike most of the big, effects-heavy adventure films I've seen over the last few years. There was something huge and magnificent about the image, about the way it was shot, the way it was framed, and the way it was finished. On that screen, the shot was life-sized, and almost had a tangible depth to it. This was not a 3D screening, but "Jurassic Park" wasn't made for 3D, and doesn't need it.
I've been thinking a lot about why that shot (and, in fact, most of the trailer) struck such a chord with me, and I think I've narrowed it down to two things:
1) Increasingly, the small-screen aesthetic informs big-screen movies. Lately, Hollywood has been churning out big special-effects films to try to lure movie lovers back to theaters. Unfortunately, the very filmmaking process is no longer a big-screen process. Movies are shot digitally, reviewed on small screens, edited on small screens, and make much of their money on small screens (TV and digital). The effects can be grand, but there is a grand theatricality that is missing from most newer films. "Jurassic Park" has that grand theatricality, the kind of showmanship that DEMANDS the big screen, and that fills that screen from edge to edge. There were elements of that showmanship in "Skyfall", but only in two or three scenes (fight/action scenes, shot beautifully and with surprising artfulness by Roger Deakins)
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what this showmanship is, or how it emerges. In the case of the T-Rex shot, it's a combination of camera angle, blocking, lighting, and probably a half-dozen other elements that make for not just a moving image, but a portrait of the event. It's magnificent.
2) Digital special effects have yet to master the tangibility of practical effects. Although the T-Rex in the shot is digital, there's much more reality in that shot (and in the film) than virtual-reality. Most of what we see was there to imprint on celluloid. I think digital effects can achieve this, but only if that's a priority for the filmmaker. For the most part, it seems to me that the filmmakers of current special effects films are more interested in the freedom to achieve the impossible than in the effort of making the impossible seem real and present in the film.
There's a part of me that's a little disappointed that this 20th anniversary release of Jurassic Park is a 3D release, and not simply a 2D re-release of the original film. It could teach us so much about what we should be doing with the special effects miracles at our disposal.
-AzS
Musing Pictures: Lincoln
I was struck, as I drove away from the theater after seeing "Lincoln", by how few "point of view" shots were used. In fact, it has taken me hours to find the one moment in the film where the POV shot becomes central to the visual narrative scheme. Although there are a couple of other scenes that may include POV shots, it's just as likely that they're simply close angles -- there may only be one point of view moment in the entire film!
Steven Spielberg is not one to shy away from POV shots. In fact, some of his most famous moments (such as the shark attack at a crowded beach in "Jaws" or the rearview mirror shots in "Duel", "The Sugarland Express", and "Jurassic Park") feature POV shots. As I've written elsewhere, Spielberg uses these in combination with what I've termed "point of thought", camera placement and movement that evokes a character's mood or feeling, rather than literal point of view.
Spielberg's treatment of "Lincoln" relies heavily (and unsurprisingly) on this "point of thought" approach, but it's not Lincoln the character whose thoughts we're invited to join. The most iconic and memorable images of Lincoln (played brilliantly by Daniel Day-Lewis) are all from behind him, from over his shoulder. He would be in profile, but he's looking away, looking forward, to the future perhaps. We see the back of Lincoln's head, and sometimes a sliver of his profile. This isn't necessarily how others in the room see him, but it's how they feel about him. To those around him Lincoln is a dreamer, always looking forward, away, to the future.
Since Lincoln is presented to us in the way that those in the room feel about him, we have a sense of general mood or general attitudes, but not necessarily a strong allegiance to any one character's point of view. It's part of the film's attempt to present the story without too much mythology. It contemplates Lincoln the man, rather than Lincoln the legend.
But Lincoln the man becomes Lincoln the legend, and the transition happens as he leaves the White House, headed for the inevitable at the Ford Theatre. As he walks away, his black servant watches. And it's the black servant whose point of view we see: Abraham Lincoln, lanky, iconic, walking alone down a long hallway. In other words, we can never understand Lincoln fully without glimpsing him, even briefly, through a black man's eyes.
-AzS
Steven Spielberg is not one to shy away from POV shots. In fact, some of his most famous moments (such as the shark attack at a crowded beach in "Jaws" or the rearview mirror shots in "Duel", "The Sugarland Express", and "Jurassic Park") feature POV shots. As I've written elsewhere, Spielberg uses these in combination with what I've termed "point of thought", camera placement and movement that evokes a character's mood or feeling, rather than literal point of view.
Spielberg's treatment of "Lincoln" relies heavily (and unsurprisingly) on this "point of thought" approach, but it's not Lincoln the character whose thoughts we're invited to join. The most iconic and memorable images of Lincoln (played brilliantly by Daniel Day-Lewis) are all from behind him, from over his shoulder. He would be in profile, but he's looking away, looking forward, to the future perhaps. We see the back of Lincoln's head, and sometimes a sliver of his profile. This isn't necessarily how others in the room see him, but it's how they feel about him. To those around him Lincoln is a dreamer, always looking forward, away, to the future.
Since Lincoln is presented to us in the way that those in the room feel about him, we have a sense of general mood or general attitudes, but not necessarily a strong allegiance to any one character's point of view. It's part of the film's attempt to present the story without too much mythology. It contemplates Lincoln the man, rather than Lincoln the legend.
But Lincoln the man becomes Lincoln the legend, and the transition happens as he leaves the White House, headed for the inevitable at the Ford Theatre. As he walks away, his black servant watches. And it's the black servant whose point of view we see: Abraham Lincoln, lanky, iconic, walking alone down a long hallway. In other words, we can never understand Lincoln fully without glimpsing him, even briefly, through a black man's eyes.
-AzS
Musing Pictures: Skyfall (2012)
I didn't think I'd be writing about plot holes when writing about "Skyfall", but some comments on plot holes by Sean Quinn (who I only know as @nachofiesta on twitter) got me thinking.
Here's the background: Scott Feinberg (@scottfeinberg, who I know from Brandeis) got in to a bit of an exchange with Mr. Quinn on Twitter after noticing this:
@nachofiesta: Another movie that's complete shit is Marathon Man. God damn that's a terrible movie.
When Feinberg pressed Quinn for an explanation for this surprising assertion (since Marathon Man is sacred ground to many cinephiles), the response was very specific:
@nachofiesta: So many gigantic plot holes.
Well. A plot hole does not a lousy movie make.
I think back to films with plot "issues" that are considered great films. "Batman Begins" has a thirty-minute climax that makes no physical sense (wouldn't a giant microwave boil people, too?). "The Big Sleep" famously doesn't seem to have much of a coherent plot altogether, and it's downright canonical.
Now, I think plot holes do have their impact, but only if the films are weak, or lack narrative conviction.
Plot holes are a kind of continuity problem. With visual continuity, we expect to see visual elements play themselves out in a natural, uninterrupted, contiguous way. A lit cigarette should get shorter and shorter with every shot. If it's a little shorter in one shot, then long again in the next, the discontinuity can be distracting, and can remind us that we're watching a film -- a construct (and if we can see the seams, it's not a very good one, is it?)
But we often miss these continuity "mistakes", especially when they're in great films. My favorite example is in Jurassic Park, during the fantastic T-Rex attack sequence. It starts with a T-Rex walking through a fence, and it ends with a car being pushed off a cliff. Trouble is, the T-Rex entered the scene from exactly the same spot where the car plummets at the end. It's complete spatial nonsense, but many people don't see it, even once it's been pointed out to them. The scene is extremely engrossing, made with conviction, so we don't spend time looking for the seams. We're absorbed, enthralled, lapping it up.
Unlike spatial continuity, plot holes can be much more forgiving. Usually, plot holes are moments where certain decisions or opinions or actions don't seem to make sense in the context of a character or story. They don't indicate a violation of hard-and-fast rules, but rather critical omissions.
Here's where this connects to "Skyfall". Not far in to the film, James Bond is shot at by a bad guy. The bullet breaks up, and he's hit by fragments. A while later, with MI6 in jeopardy, Bond gives them some of these bullet fragments to analyze. The results of the analysis are very new to MI6, and allow them to quickly narrow down their search for the bad guy. But of course, in the big scene where Bond is shot at, the same bad guy fires off hundreds more rounds. MI6 couldn't trace one of those hundreds of bullets?
Here's how we forgive plot holes: We get the facts of the story that are presented to us, but we know there's more to the story than what we're getting (at least, that's the way movies work these days -- we get a selection of shots that show us a scene, then another scene, then another, with sometimes vast gaps of time and space between them. We know there's more to the stories.) When we find a gap, we fill it in. "Plot holes" are just a little more difficult to fill in. In this case, I'm sure I could come up with reasons why MI6 didn't trace the bullet fragments. Maybe they were busy with other stuff? Who knows?
Who cares?
Ultimately, THAT's what does it. If you come across a plot hole and you care enough that it distracts you from the immersive experience of the story, it'll rip you right out of the film. But if you'd rather the story continue, you let it continue and ignore the discontinuity.
It's like when you're dreaming, and it's morning, and you're kind of waking up, but the dream is so good, so you keep sleeping. Sure, you're kind of awake, so the dream isn't really a dream any more, but if you like the dream, or if you care about where it's going, you'll do whatever you can to stay in that dream world just a little longer.
So, when it comes to Sean Quinn's experience of "Marathon Man", I think something very sad happened. Whereas most people who saw that film found the experience engrossing enough to lose themselves in it despite the plot holes, Quinn couldn't overcome the realization that the story doesn't come together enough. It's sad because ultimately, we're all looking for that transportive experience. Sometimes, if you watch films too closely, too analytically, they can lose their magic.
And what about "Skyfall"? I think I was lucky. I caught the silly moment in the plot, and I considered letting it bother me, but I really wanted to enjoy this film, and so much of it had thrilled me already, so I let it go. On the drive home from the theater, I mulled the possibility of writing about the cinematography, or the unusually "artsy" action set-pieces, or any of a number of other topics. The "plot hole" was far from my mind minutes after the scene ended, and wouldn't have re-entered my thoughts had Sean Quinn not gone on about plot holes.
-AzS
Here's the background: Scott Feinberg (@scottfeinberg, who I know from Brandeis) got in to a bit of an exchange with Mr. Quinn on Twitter after noticing this:
@nachofiesta: Another movie that's complete shit is Marathon Man. God damn that's a terrible movie.
When Feinberg pressed Quinn for an explanation for this surprising assertion (since Marathon Man is sacred ground to many cinephiles), the response was very specific:
@nachofiesta: So many gigantic plot holes.
Well. A plot hole does not a lousy movie make.
I think back to films with plot "issues" that are considered great films. "Batman Begins" has a thirty-minute climax that makes no physical sense (wouldn't a giant microwave boil people, too?). "The Big Sleep" famously doesn't seem to have much of a coherent plot altogether, and it's downright canonical.
Now, I think plot holes do have their impact, but only if the films are weak, or lack narrative conviction.
Plot holes are a kind of continuity problem. With visual continuity, we expect to see visual elements play themselves out in a natural, uninterrupted, contiguous way. A lit cigarette should get shorter and shorter with every shot. If it's a little shorter in one shot, then long again in the next, the discontinuity can be distracting, and can remind us that we're watching a film -- a construct (and if we can see the seams, it's not a very good one, is it?)
But we often miss these continuity "mistakes", especially when they're in great films. My favorite example is in Jurassic Park, during the fantastic T-Rex attack sequence. It starts with a T-Rex walking through a fence, and it ends with a car being pushed off a cliff. Trouble is, the T-Rex entered the scene from exactly the same spot where the car plummets at the end. It's complete spatial nonsense, but many people don't see it, even once it's been pointed out to them. The scene is extremely engrossing, made with conviction, so we don't spend time looking for the seams. We're absorbed, enthralled, lapping it up.
Unlike spatial continuity, plot holes can be much more forgiving. Usually, plot holes are moments where certain decisions or opinions or actions don't seem to make sense in the context of a character or story. They don't indicate a violation of hard-and-fast rules, but rather critical omissions.
Here's where this connects to "Skyfall". Not far in to the film, James Bond is shot at by a bad guy. The bullet breaks up, and he's hit by fragments. A while later, with MI6 in jeopardy, Bond gives them some of these bullet fragments to analyze. The results of the analysis are very new to MI6, and allow them to quickly narrow down their search for the bad guy. But of course, in the big scene where Bond is shot at, the same bad guy fires off hundreds more rounds. MI6 couldn't trace one of those hundreds of bullets?
Here's how we forgive plot holes: We get the facts of the story that are presented to us, but we know there's more to the story than what we're getting (at least, that's the way movies work these days -- we get a selection of shots that show us a scene, then another scene, then another, with sometimes vast gaps of time and space between them. We know there's more to the stories.) When we find a gap, we fill it in. "Plot holes" are just a little more difficult to fill in. In this case, I'm sure I could come up with reasons why MI6 didn't trace the bullet fragments. Maybe they were busy with other stuff? Who knows?
Who cares?
Ultimately, THAT's what does it. If you come across a plot hole and you care enough that it distracts you from the immersive experience of the story, it'll rip you right out of the film. But if you'd rather the story continue, you let it continue and ignore the discontinuity.
It's like when you're dreaming, and it's morning, and you're kind of waking up, but the dream is so good, so you keep sleeping. Sure, you're kind of awake, so the dream isn't really a dream any more, but if you like the dream, or if you care about where it's going, you'll do whatever you can to stay in that dream world just a little longer.
So, when it comes to Sean Quinn's experience of "Marathon Man", I think something very sad happened. Whereas most people who saw that film found the experience engrossing enough to lose themselves in it despite the plot holes, Quinn couldn't overcome the realization that the story doesn't come together enough. It's sad because ultimately, we're all looking for that transportive experience. Sometimes, if you watch films too closely, too analytically, they can lose their magic.
And what about "Skyfall"? I think I was lucky. I caught the silly moment in the plot, and I considered letting it bother me, but I really wanted to enjoy this film, and so much of it had thrilled me already, so I let it go. On the drive home from the theater, I mulled the possibility of writing about the cinematography, or the unusually "artsy" action set-pieces, or any of a number of other topics. The "plot hole" was far from my mind minutes after the scene ended, and wouldn't have re-entered my thoughts had Sean Quinn not gone on about plot holes.
-AzS
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)