Sometimes, ranking things is tricky.
So when counting backwards from 10 gets us down.
Sometimes we take a page out of our hippy kindergarten teacher's playbook.
And declare that nothing is better than anything else, and
everything is special in its very own special way.
So here, for no real reason or in any particular order,
are another five brilliant moments in film.
(Sound) Kicking us off at number one.
We're taking a look at a little moment we like towards the end of
Catch Me If You Can.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Frank Abagnale Jr., a famous check forger and lawyer,
doctor, pilot, cos-player who's defrauded millions of dollars by age 18.
Tom Hanks plays FBI agent, Hanratty.
By this point in the movie after nearly two hours and a few years of cat and
mousery, he's finally apprehended him.
After a few years in jail, Abagnale is released way early under Hanratty's
supervision in order to work a nine to five for the FBI bank fraud division.
Abagnale, a legendary escape artist,
doesn't much enjoy the salary man life which leads us here.
- (Sound) Yeah.
- Hey Carl.
What are you doing?
- It's not a good time, Frank.
Clearing my desk for the week.
(Sound) - Carl,
you mind if I come to work with you tomorrow?
- Tomorrow, it's Saturday.
I'm flying to Chicago to see my daughter.
I'll be back to work on Monday.
- You're going to see Grace?
- Well that's the plan.
(Sound) - So what should I do until Monday?
- I'm sorry kid, I can't help you there, excuse me.
(Noise) - We're all pretty sure Frankie's up
to something at this point,
but the scene, which seems like it might as well be over, doesn't stop here.
- This is Hanratty, yeah, put him on.
(Noise) - Mrs.
Sawyer, how are you?
I have a half a dozen more checks on that tour operator on The BVI.
- And we think it's this last little bit that changes everything.
It transforms the scene from a one dimensional plot-point
to the beginning of a two-sided conflict.
Cutting away early tells us something.
Frank Abagnale Jr. slips away, but holding here asks us something.
Does Agent Hanratty suspect Frank Abagnale Jr.?
Will he try to stop him?
Will he slip away?
It introduces uncertainty with nothing more than this last subtle moment of
a pause, a look, a double-take, and a linger.
And because we know, as always, that the camera only shows us what we need to see.
It's the simple fact that it chooses to hold on a scene we think is over that
flags our attention.
And asks us to consider what's going on behind these little nuances.
It actually ups its emphasis with a push.
This part is extra important the camera move says,
that part before was just prologue.
And it's not just extra emphasis intention in a vacuum.
It fits into the greater dramatic context of the scene.
Consider how it was blocked,
how the characters move with respect to each other.
DiCaprio practically chases Tom Hanks around his office.
Trying to catch his attention but never succeeding.
But then we get this little seemingly unimportant button that flips it on
its head.
When Abagnale slips off, Hanks engages.
You have to run away to get chased and it works.
What's more, it slots in perfectly to the entire theme of the film.
The story of a boy who wants to run and by doing so wants to be chased.
Right here, embedded in the quiet dead space of a walk out the door.
(Sound) It is an immense challenge to walk the line between unnoticed and obvious.
To make us suspect something, but not believe it.
To give us a thought, but not the certainty.
It's like a ping to the subconscious, planting little sleeper
cells in our awareness to awaken later for greater effect.
Another film we think does this brilliantly is, Everest.
Our second moment comes early into the film as a group of climbers prepare for
an Everest summit bid during the very beginning of its commercial guiding era.
Crowds on the mountain have already very nearly resulted in disaster.
So Rob Hall, our expedition leader played by Jason Clarke,
decides to team up with a rival expedition Jake Gyllenhaal's Scott Fischer.
- Well, if I say I'll do, it will be done.
(Foreign) - We have to work
(Inaudible) because we are working together now.
(Foreign) - Whoa, whoa, whoa.
(Foreign) - We're all professionals here.
We'll work together and we'll get the job done.
Yes?
All right.
- Yeah.
(Foreign) - Well, my
idea is that we work together and we fixed ropes together, we share the duties, okay?
- Mm-hm, sounds good.
- Okay, you and (Inaudible) maybe get together and
talk about who wants to fix what and where, okay?
- Only essentials, I'm not going to tell you what to pack, but be brutal.
- How do you feel at the end of that last scene?
If you're like us,
you hardly had time to register more than just a slight sense of something.
We're not sure what, before being rushed along to the next.
But while that sense of something maybe doesn't have time to get processed.
It sits there in the back of our head like a landmine until
later when this sets it off.
- Hey, where are the ropes?
- There is no rope, no rope.
- Yeah, this should have been fixed.
- Do you have more in your pack?
- Not so, get the rope, he's not here.
- And while after the first clip you probably didn't say to yourself,
they're going to forget to fix those ropes.
After the second one, you might have said,
I knew it, which seems to contradict itself.
But it's because you kind of did and you kind of didn't.
Because what really happened was, you were inceptive.
Because there was something in that first scene that you gave
you just a little ping.
Not a piece of concrete information but a flag, it stuck out.
It didn't jibe, and even if you didn't know how or
why just like the extra link at the end of Catch Me If You Can.
It's stuck with you somewhere and made you suspect.
How does it do this?
By yet again focussing us on something we didn't expect, and
sending the scene in two conflicting directions.
On the surface, if you take the dialogue literally, this scene is about two arguing
Sherpas who bring their conflict to their bosses, where it gets resolved.
But the last two shots of the scene, played over the dialogue of Rob Hall and
Scott Fischer resolving the conflict, do not show the resolution.
Instead, we focus on the Sherpas looking very much unresolved.
Because while the dialogue of the scene has arced from disagreement to compromise.
The visuals end up exactly where they started.
Where they hover for
just a little longer than we might expect before rushing us off to the next scene.
Emotionally unsettled,
having drawn no full conclusion, leaving just the slightest mark on your memory.
So when we get to the southeast ridge, see the tattered ropes and
the frustrated entergy.
Not only is it no surprise, but
it feels like it should have been foreseeable if not foreseen.
The whole film is riddled with little moments like this that stick in
our craw imperceptibly only to rear their ugly heads later in a big way.
They each contribute to the story of a tragedy built on the back of many,
tiny seemingly preventable mistakes.
Each one just beyond noticeable at the time of their making but
impossible to forget when their consequences come to bear.
In both of these moments and
in fact most of our brilliant moments to date we're marvelling and drooling.
And obsessing over directors who find artful ways to film the unfilmable,
of communicating abstract concepts and thoughts.
And feelings like suspicion or miscommunication on screen through
the clever arrangement of concrete objects in time.
Of transcending the physical, of getting past the limitations of the photographic
medium, using the way it looks and sounds to reach towards how it feels.
And we think one of the absolute best examples of that comes from
the movie, Room.
Now we're about to spoil just about half the movie, and Room is
absolutely we're seeing spoiler free and with three boxes of tissues on hand.
So if you haven't and they think you want to, go ahead and
skip ahead to our next section where we spoil The Godfather for the 1100 time.
And come back ones you've cried your tear ducts raw, fair warning.
Okay for the rest of you survivors and or say this.
We have met Jack and his Ma learn about the room, that is their entire world.
That they being imprisoned in for the entirety of Jack's life, and
then watched them escape.
They're
taken by
the police
to the
hospital
and wake
up here.
Never before has an image made us see something in such a way that we could
practically feel it in all its detail too.
Watching this shot here,
it's almost as if we experience cold concrete on our bare feet with Jack.
Briefly, a child again tiptoeing along on some hard floor in a distant memory.
And while it's easy to just write this off as a relatable image that's well
photographed.
That would be a huge disservice to the mass amount of work that filmmakers
do to earn this moment.
Consider from its very first shots,
Room dedicates itself to creating a mode of viewership.
That replicates that of a curious child experiencing the world around him with
fascination for its every detail.
Our first introduction to him is him waking up and
saying good morning to every corner of his tiny world.
And the film in all its macro camera work and closeup sound introduces it to us too.
This visual style signalling us that it is Jack's experience we are meant
to see things from.
It retreats from this intense visual style in its more
third person narrative moments and tells us much of a story.
But when Jack escapes, something massive happens, his world explodes.
Here is a child who has only ever known a 10 foot by 10 foot shed.
And known it with an obsessive dedication to detail suddenly unleashed into
the world.
It is an assault, it is overwhelming, it is a rush of fragmented image and sound.
To him and through the camera, to us, suffering the same deluge of
new experience as a newborn being brought into the world.
So, our next sequence is our hospital sequence.
And it is very deliberately structured around these ideas.
It is a scene about Jack exploring his new world, seeing and hearing and
feeling new things in detail back in the Jack point of experience mode of shooting.
First, he sees, the light blooms with the brightness of the daytime sun.
A ring in our ears suggests it's intensity, and
then he touches using his fingers to probe the new items attached to him.
And then he smells, sniffing the hospital bed with it's distinctive hospital smell
we all know but he is just discovering.
And then finally after all this, he steps down onto the floor.
Slowly, gingerly, with toes that test the water before planting one foot and
then the next.
Each successive encounter priming us for the next, drawing us
into Jacks exploratory world until we too, encounter it vicariously with him.
(Sound) We are constantly impressed by shots that mirror the experience of
the on-screen characters onto our experience as an audience member.
They make us feel how a character is feeling just in how
they're framed and shot.
And like we said, our next pick comes from the end of The Godfather,
a seemingly inexhaustible source of brilliant moments.
Where after Michael has secured power as the new Don by murdering
every single one of his enemies.
We catch up with his capo regime, Tessio,
the man we know he knows tried to betray him.
- We're on our way to Brooklyn.
(Sound) I hope Mike can get us a good deal tonight.
- I'm sure he will.
Sal, Tom, the boss says he'll come in a separate car.
He says for you two to go on ahead.
- Harry can't do that, it screws up all my arrangements.
- Well, that's what he said.
- I can't go either, Sal.
- (Sound) God isn't that shot spectacular,
a perfect representation of being surrounded.
And it isn't just showing us what it looks like but making us feel how it feels.
It's a visual track closing in on a visual field as it closes on Tessio.
Slowly and suddenly enough that we realize what's happening only when it's too late.
The offscreen space is used brilliantly with each new goon slipping on in
a different way.
One running up with an innocent message.
Another picked up in the pan already, waiting, facing directly towards us,
looming ominously a little too presently in the background.
It pings on our subconscious just below our threshold of awareness until two more
close in and the trap is sprung.
But is doesn't feel contrived or forced.
If this were done with cuts with individual shots with each arrival,
it would overplay its hand.
We would recognize the conceit for what it was and
attempts to communicate a sense of entrapment.
Because cutting to a shot is like turning towards something.
And you don't see a trap coming.
It closes in from behind, from out of your periphery and Coppola knew this
which is why he used the blocking and the space to direct our attention.
Because in a surprise the world moves faster that your guess just like in this
scene where the actors move faster than the lens.
(Sound) And finally, at our fifth and final slide,
we're going to turn to another moment of interplay between camera and blocking.
This time from a relatively obscure film called,
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
And it's not exactly what we'd call an unreservedly great movie.
By and large, it's just simply bizarre.
It has an iguana cam and a breakdancing soul and
a Nick Cage's performance under the directorial guidance of Werner Herzog.
So yeah, it's definitely worth seeing.
We're going to spoil this one too, but it's so much more about the ride and
where it goes that we don't think you'll mind.
Mostly, what you need to know now is that Nick Cage is a very corrupt cop.
And by the end of the movie, he's pissed off a gangster's son.
Gotten deeply into gambling debt, and tangled up with the heroin
dealer from the murder's case he's investigating, but cannot close.
It all seems like he's screwed until this.
- Listen, first off, this thing between us, it's gotten way outta hand my man.
It got way outta hand, okay?
And my father got in touch with his guy and
he told to let whoever it is know that that complaint has been withdrawn.
Finished, yeah, okay?
(Laugh) - Okay.
- That's the way out.
- Yeah.
- No, look, Ned.
If you'd called first I would have saved you the trip.
I don't have the money.
- I'm guessing, that you didn't see the game.
(Noise) - How did this happen?
- Louisiana, by three.
- (Laugh) Excellent.
- It's $10,000, sure you don't want to count it?
- I trust you.
- All right, man, you take care of yourself.
- All right.
- Great news.
- What? - Arman came up with this at the crime
scene at Josephine.
- I just got lucky.
- Lab found Godshaw's DNA on it.
(Laugh)
- Yes.
- Bizarre, right?
Like, really a strange sequence of events, shot in an even stranger way.
And what we think is happening here is that Herzog is taking the piss
out of the narrative neatness of a redemption drama of happy endings and
tidy storylines.
And he's doing it both structurally and visually.
Where most films would make a clever, third act last stand that has
the protagonist solve all their problems at once by playing them off each other.
While concealing the storytelling artifice involved, Herzog does the opposite.
He sits Cage down and parades three deus ex machinas
in a row in front of him to solve his problems for him.
But he doesn't just work at the story level,
his filmmaking style engages with the artifice and over convenience.
The characters move with the obvious choreography of a musical.
One walking in the door just as the other one leaves
appearing just as another disappears and the camera dances with it.
Picking one up with ran or move at just the right moment.
It's all so evidently planned with all the scenes showing that we're supposed to
squint our eyes in suspicion at its too, too convenient manner.
These are not pieces of little information sent down to our subconscious by
gentle sleight of hand.
These are conspicuous and bald face lies pulling us out instead of in.
But making us think feel and react all the same, so
that we may engage with both the story and how it's told exactly as Herzog intended.
So what do you think?
Have a different take on our analysis?
Any other little moments that strike you as particularly brilliant?
Let us know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe for
more CINEFIX movie lists.