Hi my name is Tony and[br]this is Every Frame a Painting.
When I say a film is poetic,[br]what pops into your head?
Do you think it's slow?[br]Pretentious? Plotless?
"Is she gonna wake up and do something?"
These are the clichés.[br]-"No."
But to me, poetry in cinema is when[br]I can ignore the plot
and just appreciate the picture and[br]the sound doing something unique.
Scorsese: "The films that I constantly[br]revisited or saw repeatedly...
...held up longer for me over the years[br]not because of plot...
...but because of character...
and a very different approach to story."
"The Wrong Man, for example. I talked[br]about the paranoid camera moves
the feelings of threat, the fear,[br]the anxiety, the paranoia
it’s all done through the camera[br]and the person’s face."
-"It is the same."
Lynne Ramsay’s work[br]has this same quality.
Everything is conveyed through the[br]camera, the person’s face & the details
"Some things I shoot are very controlled[br]I know exactly why I want them...
...I will spend ages to get that exactly[br]right and it’s because for me...
...the details in that are saying[br]everything about the scene."
But what can we learn from a detail?
Here’s an example. In this scene, a son[br]taunts his mother by misbehaving
just before his father…
-"Hey guys."
-"Hey dad, how was work?[br]Take any cool pictures?"
Notice that the father is placed[br]just on the edge of the frame,
because while he’s around,[br]he doesn’t really pay attention.
Later on,[br]when he tries to ignore her fears
-"He’s a sweet little boy.[br]That’s what boys do."
We still don't see his face.[br]Instead, we get this shot.
What does this detail tell us? Literally[br]they haven’t cleaned up the mess
and it's gotten worse.[br]But what about metaphorically?
What does this say about[br]them and their son?
What’s interesting about[br]Lynne Ramsay’s work
is that the entire story is implied[br]through these detail shots.
And she doesn’t get this effect[br]by putting lots of stuff in the frame
but by taking things out, so that[br]you focus on one detail at a time.
"I think that Robert Bresson had a[br]really good quote about that...
It was something like...
'When the image is doing everything,[br]don’t have any sound.'
“And when the sound’s doing everything,[br]don’t have any image."
I mean, don’t do something[br]too fancy with image."
This is one thing film is great at:[br]evoking a state of mind
purely through image and sound.
When you work like this[br]everything depends
on the framing, the person’s face,[br]and the repetition of details.
So let's go one by one.[br]First, the framing.
Ramsay often frames so that important[br]information is cut off from the viewer.
Notice here,[br]we never see the woman’s eyes.
Meanwhile here, we have a character[br]who’s literally cut in half by a door.
In all of these shots,[br]you can guess what someone is feeling
but the frame doesn’t let you[br]see them in full.
"There's no place like home.[br]No place like home."
So as an audience, you’re never told[br]what to feel about these people.
There’s something mysterious about them.
Which brings us to #2: faces.
I don’t know why, but some people just[br]look right when you put them onscreen.
Even when they aren’t professionals.
In most of her work, Ramsay mixes[br]professional and non-professional actors
until the two are indistinguishable.
"The best actors for me are the people[br]who are like non-professional actors...
...You can’t tell where the film[br]ends or begins...
...As if they were the same offscreen.[br]They just feel real."
And she picks people who can convey[br]what’s going on inside their head
without any dialogue.
"He's the double of my Ryan, innit he?[br]The same eyes."
And #3, there’s[br]the repetition of certain details.
When you’re watching one of these films,[br]pay attention how & when images repeat
For instance, notice how mother and son[br]imitate each other’s body language.
And in the next shot, they do the[br]exact same thing, ten years later.
At one point, the son[br]does this with his fingernails
While later in the film, his mother[br]does the same thing with eggshells.
A more conventional film might[br]explain the meaning of this
but here, all we get is one image.[br]And then another.
And we have to work out[br]the connection for ourselves.
So let’s consider all this over[br]the course of a single short film.
This is Gasman, made in 1997.
I’m not going to tell you the[br]big plot point. I’m just going to show
some details from before and after.[br]See if you can guess what’s happening.
"Gonna lift me up, daddy?"
At the beginning of the film, Lynne and[br]her father meet a girl on the tracks.
A girl she doesn't know.
Before the event, they bond over[br]her dress and hold hands.
Notice this shot chops off their heads.
After the event, we see them[br]holding hands again, but this time...
-"What’s the matter?"[br]-"She’s hurting me."
To appease them, Lynne’s father[br]picks them up and does this.
Which mirrors the beginning of the film,[br]when he did the same with just Lynne.
At the end, the other girl[br]rejoins her mother.
And we’re left on the tracks,[br]watching the back of Lynne’s head.
Can you infer what’s going on?
What if I showed you this?
Get it now?
A film like this is basically a before[br]and after portrait of one kid’s mind
presented through parallel images[br]and situations.
In other words, it’s indirect.[br]Poetic filmmaking.
It might not hit you while you watch it[br]but it can linger long afterwards.
-"So then what you're saying,[br]it's the eye that's going to captivate-"
-"The vision, the vision that he puts[br]on the film, which I… the vision...
meaning the actual picture in the frame[br]and what he puts in the film."
-"Which is, I imagine,[br]the way a painter would...
...in terms of his aesthetic."[br]-"Exactly."
-"Ow!"
-"For God's sake,[br]look at the state of my curtain."
-"Because it opens up every possibility[br]for sound, for sight, for form."
Exactly.[br]There aren’t many films like this
and they teach us a very[br]different way of making movies.
Instead of going big, they go small.
They focus on details.
They show us less instead of more.
And through simplicity,[br]they find poetry.
And if anybody ever asks you[br]what poetry means…
I don’t know, make something up.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community