You asked for more and we're delivering, let's spend some more time vivisecting
film form in our quest for cinema knowledge.
These are five more unranked, brilliant moments in film.
(Music)
Let's start with another decision moment and see where it takes us.
This time from No Country For Old Men.
Anton Chigurh, aka World Champion Ball Cut Javier, Javier Bardem,
is a bounty hunter tracking down a whole metric butt load of stolen cartel money.
But it turns out he's better at random killing than scavenger hunts.
So the cartel boss hires Carson Wells, aka Woody Harrelson in a cowboy hat,
to go take care of Anton, clean the mess up, and bring the money back quietly.
But Anton gets the jump on him, and this is what happens next.
>> You don't have to do this, I'm a day trader, I could just go home.
>> Are you good?
>> I know this actually is.
>> If you knew, you would have it with you.
>> I find it from the riverbank, I'll know where it is.
>> I know something better.
>> What's that?
>> I know what it's going to be.
>> You can have the money Anton.
(Sound)
>> Let's focus on the last four shots,
because something cool is definitely happening here.
First, Carson jumps in a way that's more dynamic than
any of the previous conversations, so we know something is gotta be happening.
Then we watch Anton grin and back to Woody for
a look of grim realization, and Anton smiles.
This quickly queues us into the fact that there's something for him to realize,
without it, maybe the scene just goes back to the way it was before.
But that's not what's going to happen, and clearly, Carson knows it, so
we pick up on it, too, and in our favorite shot of the sequence, we cut here.
Barring Anton's establishing shot,
the entire conversation plays out in alternating, clean singles.
No variation in scale, movement, or angle whatsoever, just two medium close-ups.
But right here, the Coen brothers specifically decide to break that pattern,
signaling an important shift.
Visually, it does two things, first, it puts the shotgun back into the picture
after a long hiatus, bringing the threat of violence back to the mental forefront.
(Sound) But
what's most brilliant about this shot is that it excludes Carson entirely,
it removes him from the screen, the conversation, and the plot.
What was a conversation becomes a monologue,
what was an exchange becomes an inevitability.
By removing him from the frame,
the Coen's camera effectively kills Carson before Chigurh does.
But this raises another interesting question,
if we're ending right where we started, what changed between here and here?
Why is there a conversation in the first place?
Why is there an exchange?
It would make sense if Chigurh was trying to get information out of Carson, but
he explicitly doesn't, he declines the information, he doesn't want it.
And if we're operating under the reasonable assumption that these
characters are representative of real humans with real human behavior
and motives.
And we resist the ad hoc explanation that Chigurh is sitting there as
a contrivance of plot intense dialog, why the hell is he doing this?
The answer of course lies in the subtext,
which in dramatic terms is about as simple as this.
Somebody wants something and they're trying to get it.
The subtext is what they're actually trying to accomplish.
The text, the words that they're saying is just the strategy or
strategies they're using to get it.
And you can absolutely dig through their dialog to find subtext clues.
And you should do it and post about it in the comments.
But our favorite way to really figure out what's happening in a scene is to go
backward.
It's simple, start at a moment you understand, and
then step back moment by moment, beat by beat, and
use what you know will happen to deduce what's happening then.
Based on the assumption that the characters, like real human beings,
are subject to an internally consistent logic of emotions that operates on
cause and effect, check it out.
We know here that Chigurh kills Carson, so we know that right before that
he must decide to kill him, otherwise, he would have done it already.
So we step back and here it is, of course, knowing that, we know that something must
have caused him to make that decision, so step back, it's right here.
And while it could have been either the phone call or
Carson's reaction to cause this decision, watch his eyes,
they don't even flip towards the phone, they're all on Carson.
And since Chigurh will only kill Carson only when he's gotten everything he wanted
out of him, we know that this is what we wanted.
Not the money, not information, not a bargain but a flinch, an acknowledgement
that the conclusion is foregone and that Carson is awaiting his death.
And here, Chigurh gets it.
(Sound) Okay cool, maybe that was a whole lot of
time dedicated to something you pretty immediately understood.
You watch this sequence and your brain is like,
yeah, Carson's afraid, Chigurh decided he just wanted to see him flinch,
he's going to kill him, and yep, there it is.
But that's kind of the point, isn't it,
the Coen brothers figured out how to make this complex interaction seem obvious.
And really,
that's a pretty good explanation of what the hell a director actually does.
A director dives into the script, figures out what the hell is really happening
beneath all the words, and lies, and deceptions, and subtexts.
And distills it into a visual and
sonic medium that is immediately comprehensible on a deeply emotionally
resonant level where the underlying story is laid bare for all to see.
And beyond shot composition and editing,
another important way to do this is to block it.
And this one goes all the way back to the theater,
where directors didn't have cameras for multiple angles and editing for
clever juxtaposition, all they had were spatial relationships.
So let's turn to the second installment in the Godfather trilogy for
a master class in blocking and the subtext it reveals.
Very early in the film, Michael sits down for
a business conversation with his sister and her new fling, Merle.
They tell him they want to get married, and Michael does this.
>> Connie, Connie, Connie, Connie, Connie.
I want to be reasonable with you.
Now, why don't you stay with us, or the family?
You can live here on the estate with your kids, you won't be deprived of anything,
you can have everything you want.
I don't know this Merle, I don't know what he does, I don't know what he lives on.
Now, why don't you tell him marriage is out of the question and
you don't want to see him anymore?
He'll understand, believe me.
>> Although, Michael words, his text seems to suggest that he is trying to
reason with his sister using words like, why don't you,
and, I want to be reasonable with you.
His body is all about controlling the scene, check it out.
One of the most powerful effects of blocking is the ability to create
meaningful spatial relations.
Even though on screen we can't always see the whole space,
we're actually pretty good at reconstructing it in our heads,
as long as the director helps us out a little bit.
So when Michael decides to walk over to Connie and
reason with her, he doesn't walk straight towards her.
No, instead, he wanders around her, and puts himself smack dab between her and
her beau, cutting him off from the conversation and controlling the dynamic.
Coppola cues us into this too, with the shot prior, where he re-establishes
Merle's position with with a quick POV motivated by Michael's look.
This specifically tells us that Merle is to Michael's right,
immediately before Michael points his back in that direction.
Now, look at this next encounter between Michael and Connie,
it's a traditional shot reverse shot.
But there are two ways Coppola could have shot this,
over the two shoulders we see here or over their respective other shoulders.
And those options correspond to cameras positioned here or here.
And look at what Coppola chooses, he puts the back of one camera towards Merle and
blocks Merle in the other with Michael's body.
Eliminating him from the screen, he mirrors the scenes action with his camera.
So yes, the spatial relationships created through blocking carries serious
importance.
But film blocking can do something that theater can't,
it can also create pictures.
The actors create relationships between each other but
they also create relationships with respect to the camera.
While on stage,
all of these visual relationships are with respect to the audience.
Films can switch and change and alter the perspective from which this visual
relationship is created to suit its changing needs.
So when Michael asks his sister to break up with Merle he walks away,
spatially allowing Connie to re-engage with Merle.
But based on where Coppola places the camera his movements also function
visually by creating a picture that is emotionally evocative of
the scene's dynamic.
Michael, placing himself between the two of them, standing above them and
chaperoning their interaction.
While they defy him and connect despite his interference,
which is exactly the subtext of the scene.
Now, there's another moment that perfectly exemplifies the use of camera to enhance
the blocking of the scene, it's our next one from Chinatown.
Jake Gittes,
AKA Jack Nicholson with a terrible nose job, is a private investigator that's
gotten caught up investigating a Los Angeles Water Department conspiracy.
That includes the murder of Chief Engineer of the city's water department,
Evelyn Mulwray's late husband.
So when Jake is hired by Evelyn to investigate her husband's murder,
he uncovers some evidence that nearly gets him shot.
And only narrowly escapes, thanks to her NASCAR training, so
they head back to her estate for a few drinks.
>> To you, Mrs Mulwray, frankly tonight you saved my neck.
>> (Laugh) Tell me, Mr.
Gittes, does this often happen to you?
>> What's that?
>> Well, I'm judging only on the basis of one afternoon and an evening, but if this
is how you go about your work I'd say you'd be lucky to get through a whole day.
>> So first thing's first, Polanski establishes a distance between Jake and
Evelyn, he puts a table in between them.
And even though he never shows it, he uses it to separate them along the z-axis and
then he takes the subtext and rubs it in her face.
>> Let's look at the text here, on the surface, Evelyn hides her smile and
takes a serious scolding tone, questioning Jake's safety.
Beneath the surface, it's pretty obvious she's teasing it.
But she used a serious,
less intimate tone to move the conversation to a more intimate place.
She moves away from the goal to get towards it,
which is the definition of coy.
And what about the blocking, how does it reveal our subtext?
Well, pretty obviously really,
she increases the distance between them before closing the gap.
Such that their spatial relationship mirrors their emotional relationship,
which would be good directing on its own.
But play this moment in a wide shot and
it's just another functional moment in a great film.
But in a stroke of genius, just as how the dialog is coy,
just as how the blocking is coy, Polanski employs a camera that is coy.
He increases the visual distance between them enough to completely exclude
Jake from the frame.
But when Evelyn leads the frame back towards him suddenly without a cut.
They move from a conversational distance to an intimate distance with the kind of
immediacy that makes you skip breath.
And this works so well, because the movie creates an expectation, and
then withholds it for just a little while.
We know she is walking around to him, but first,
we have to wait, we'll get to see them close but first we have to see them far.
And when she does close the gap, it's even better than we hope,
they're even closer than we thought.
Jake has taken an extra step towards her and the camera, and their closeness
exceeds even our expectation, that's what you call a payout.
(Sound) Okay, number four, In the Mood for Love begins with neighbors,
Chow and Su finding themselves frequently alone in their cramped apartment building
with both of their spouses gone.
What follows is a series of brief encounters between the two of them,
going about their every day in solitude.
Along the way, when both Chow and Su head to lunch at the same time, we get this.
(Music)
In contrast to the typical quiet static moments of the film,
this one is different, the camera is constantly moving and in slow motion.
There's no diegetic sound, only a simple violin playing, and
we've seen all this before in the film by now.
Always associated with moments of near intimacy between Chow and Su.
So when the stylistic shift recurs we're ready and wondering how they will connect.
We're like Pavlovian dogs,
trained to drool in expectation of a wistful moment when a violin theme plays.
And as we wait for our moment, the camera pan slows, here it comes,
we say to ourselves, sure that the camera is settling for their approaching brush.
But instead, the camera stops and Su keeps going, we weren't given what we expected.
The shot holds on nothing, it holds on a plain cement wall, a few
unimportant posters and a street light, for a strangely long time the shot hold.
But we know when a good director shows us something, even if it's nothing,
if we're invested in the movie, we trust that director.
So that instead of assuming he is messed up and what we're looking at is a mistake.
We subconsciously figure out that we just haven't seen the whole picture yet, and
then our question will be answered.
So our minds race to fill in the blanks, and it's exciting, it's tantalizing,
it's the same kind of sexy withholding suspense we find in the Chinatown shot.
So by the time Chow enters the frame, walking the opposite direction,
as if they've just passed off screen.
We have no choice, but to take all those fantasies we've worked up in our head, and
apply them in retrospect to the very encounter to which we were deprived.
Turning an everyday moment, we didn't even see into one of maximum impact.
Finally, for a little more withholding, we're looking at Reservoir Dogs.
When a jewelry heist goes bad, the robbers hole up in a warehouse to try to
nurse their wounds, regroup, recover, and figure out who ratted them out.
When one of the robbers, Mr.
Blonde, reveals that he captured a police officer in the getaway, they try to
creatively extract some information from him, but he's not talking.
And eventually, Mr. Blonde is left alone with him, and
it turns out Blonde doesn't really care about who the snitch is,
he's just a bit of a sadist, so he does what sadists do.
And after Michael Madsen's boogie, you'd think our last pick for
a brilliant moment would be this one because.
Well, it's a brilliant little moment and it definitely fits in with our withholding
theme, but actually, we want to focus on what happens next.
>> Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back.
(Music)
>> Remember what we said about trusting that a director wasn't just showing us
stuff for no good reason?
The same thing is happening here, all of a sudden we go from a fast-paced musical
torture scene to a painfully slow long take of a character just walking.
And Tarantino sets this up by establishing the stylistic rules of the scene,
smooth camera, snappy dialog, moderately cutty, clear attention,
and then flipping it on its head.
He picks the camera up off the tripod and goes handheld,
walks out of his music at an incomplete moment, and slows us way down.
This moment doesn't work in a vacuum, it works in contrast, so
we know something is about to happen.
He's walking outside, is he about to get capped, caught, seen,
what is in the trunk?
What did he mean when he said I'll be right back?
Our brains responded to this void by filling it in with all the worst kinds of
anxiety, which is exactly what the police officer is doing in his chair.
And when he grabs the gasoline,
we know we've got a whole long shit, shit, shit walk back into the compound.
Where we're hoping he gets capped, caught for seeing something,
anything to stop him from immolating this poor hostage.
It's not what we know that scares us, it's what we don't,
we don't know where he's going or why, we don't know if the cop will survive.
It's not about what we're being told, it's about what's being withheld.
As we've seen, it's just as often about what you can't see or
hear as what you can.
Whether it's what's being excluded from the frame, what goes on set in the dialog,
or what actions go unexplained.
Cinema not only combines visuals and sounds to tell a story,
it hijacks our emotions and
our expectations to more deeply immerse us in the emotional experience.
So what do you think, any more thoughts on these moments,
any other moments you'd like to clue us into?
Give us a couple more weeks of regular top tens to gather up another handful of
brilliant moments.
But in the meantime, be sure to subscribe for more Cinefix movie lists.