Atonement (2007, Joe Wright) [Archive]

Bosco B Thug

12-13-2007, 09:15 PM

i don't like the way briony looks. it's not how i pictured her in my mind. she was shorter and had dark hair dammit. Haha, yes! I heard Kiera Knightly was in this, then I read the book, and I spent the whole book imagining Briony as Kiera Knightly (well, her at the age of 13 for the first part of the book)! Then I finished and found out I was wrong and they made her a blonde. :frustrated:

Now I realize Knightly is pretty much perfect for Cecelia, but I would've liked it if Cecelia and Briony looked more alike. Perhaps even acted alike (which might be the case, I haven't seen the movie yet). I know the dynamic I had in my head while reading the book was that Briony and Cecelia were temperamentally similar, so ideally an actress that issues the same sense of pouty pride and haughtiness as Knightly would play the shamed and remorseful Briony - which I think amps up the tension of their conflict.

I'm also starting to think that the long tracking shot is becoming a modern cliche. The long sequence on the beach is technically impressive I suppose, but for me the film just stopped dead in its tracks as we were made to sit and watch Wright's showmanship. It doesn't really take the film anywhere and it feels like we've seen this sort of thing many times now. Yeah, I'm not liking what I hear about this shot. And I still have to stop reading reviews of movies I want to see. I feel since I know the source material, I don't have to worry about being spoiled. A misconceived notion!

This was part of my relative dissatisfaction with Children of Men. Long tracking shots that are showy for the sake of showy and do little to deepen or clarify what the movie is about. I liked it, but I agree with you: you'd better have a reason beyond your awesome new dolly equipment to take me up in a long take. Children of Men, though, was all long tracking shots, so it's formalized as the vision of the piece. Here it seems to come out of nowhere, apparently.

But as you can see, I also was underwhelmed by Children of Men. :)

Sven

12-13-2007, 09:19 PM

I completely disagree on Children of Men. I thought those particular tracking shots were extraordinary in the way they provided action and information alongside the technical bravado.

I didn't mind the end one so much, as it has a pretty harrowing and immersive effect of trying to escape when bullets are flying all around, and the one of them escaping the "safe house" and trying to get the car to start was technically exciting (though I don't think it was any more effective than playing 5 minutes of Metal Gear, which isn't necessarily a compliment). But the car one, with the Julianne thing, felt like technical self-gratification.

Which is also to say that I don't think that the bravado worked for, in fact, I think most of the time it went against, what I perceived to be the main thrust of the film's central concerns. Namely, the idea that I'm supposed to be dazzled with Cuaron's craft while disgusted with what its presenting. It's a delicate line, but ultimately I guess what I'm saying is that Cuaron's expressions weren't strong enough to justify such a conceit. Schindler's List is an example of a film that uses its style and expression to magnify the horror of evil and frailty of life when confronted with a bullet in the brain.

Silencio

12-13-2007, 09:20 PM

I've read some interesting defenses and interpretations of the tracking shot in Atonement. Most recently from the poster Beau over at RT who had this to say about it:

That tracking shot had a fairly clear significance. The whole film is about the interconnectedness of things - personal tragedies and national tragedies are united by a common thread, as are the lives of several characters, all entangled in the aftermath of a single lie.

The camera, then, visually demonstrates this theme, weaving in and out of rooms, across the hospital, and all over the beach at Dunkirk. The camera is performing the theme of interconnectedness - uniting spaces with other spaces, and characters with other characters. We start seeing the relationship between people and their spatial situations through the movements of the camera. I thought it was all rather profound.

I haven't seen the film yet, but that sounds quite interesting.

Spinal

12-13-2007, 09:22 PM

Want to keep this an Atonement thread, so I'll just say ... I hear ya. :)

Spinal

12-13-2007, 09:23 PM

I've read some interesting defenses and interpretations of the tracking shot in Atonement. Most recently from the poster Beau over at RT who had this to say about it:

I haven't seen the film yet, but that sounds quite interesting.

That is really a huge stretch. I don't see how the shot expresses that idea at all.

Rowland

12-13-2007, 09:31 PM

But the car one, with the Julianne thing, felt like technical self-gratification. I thought that was the most terrifying scene in the movie.

The tracking shots have plenty of thematic significance, if you wish to approach them looking for such.

Sven

12-13-2007, 09:36 PM

I thought that was the most terrifying scene in the movie.

It wasn't fluid enough. Meaning it was too fluid. The whole time, from the beginning to the end, it was like OMG, how are they making it look that fluid?! And that, to me, is a distraction that goes against the film's textual intent. It was Cuaron directing a slick movie. Which is fine. It just seemed like he was trying to pretend not to. Which is annoying.

Rowland

12-13-2007, 09:37 PM

kamran

12-13-2007, 10:42 PM

***SPOILERS***

There's something sinister at work in the opening frame of Wright's Atonement. The shot reveals a large house, with the title "England" resting beneath it. This is instead seen to be a doll house, and curiously enough, there are a line of toys leading from it. The camera shifts, and enter Briony Tallis- aged 13 years.

I like that you bring this up, because I feel it hints at the "unreliable narrator" theme/structure right off the bat (a good thing, for sure, rather than not referencing it at all for the purposes of maximizing shock value at the end.) The small-scale model of the mansion seems to suggest a microcosm of the film's setting, but the immediate shift to the young Briony typing away at her play opens up the possibility that we cannot take what we are shown at face value. The ongoing revisiting of key moments through different perspectives is expertly done, and it is for these reasons that these scenes represent Atonement's better section.

It also helps that this act features the film's best performance - Ronan definitely deserves the recent awards mentions.

But what follows is definitely less successful in execution, the much-discussed "look at me" tracking shot on the beach being the absolute low point in the proceedings (Spinal has covered this very well.) The transitions become more and more abrupt, and I don't think the film allows us much well-needed time to "invest" in the lie (that is, Robbie will be vindicated and that he and Cee will live happily ever after) in order to make the ending as devastating as it's intended to be. Or the filmmakers want it to be.

I suppose the glossy detachment of the film's second half is intentional (in order to mirror Briony's narrative manipulation of the events), but it becomes increasingly more difficult to feel anything. For example, the war sequences are so polished and overshot that it's hard to see them as anything more than elaborate set pieces and organized movie set chaos. The only scene that made much of an impact in this section is Briony interacting with the dying French solider.

Anyways... I'm really looking forward to reading the book and seeing how it impacts my evaluation of the film.

Spinal

12-14-2007, 01:09 AM

I love how they mirrored the way Briony walked through the house at the beginning with the way the nurses walked through the hospital later. The same determination and purposeful stride.

Raiders

12-14-2007, 12:53 PM

So we've tired of overly edited, shaky-cam films... and now we've tired of long tracking shots.

Damn stylistic extremes. Stick to over one two shots, dammit!

origami_mustache

12-14-2007, 01:16 PM

It wasn't fluid enough. Meaning it was too fluid. The whole time, from the beginning to the end, it was like OMG, how are they making it look that fluid?! And that, to me, is a distraction that goes against the film's textual intent. It was Cuaron directing a slick movie. Which is fine. It just seemed like he was trying to pretend not to. Which is annoying.

I had some minor qualms with Children of Men, however the technical and stylistic elements were where the film really shined. In my opinion, by not cutting away during those scenes, the audience becomes really drawn into the moment. You feel like you are in the car, or dodging bullets, which raises the tension ante and increases the emotional investment in the characters.

Spinal

12-14-2007, 02:52 PM

So we've tired of overly edited, shaky-cam films... and now we've tired of long tracking shots.

Damn stylistic extremes. Stick to over one two shots, dammit!

I am tired of long tracking shots that scream out "Look at me! I'm a long tracking shot!" I'm not joining in with the cries of 'virtuoso!' that inevitably accompany any such shot. This one did not serve the film well and it felt like to me that it was there simply because it is in fashion. I think that's a legit criticism.

KK2.0

12-14-2007, 04:14 PM

I guess it's hard not to notice a long tracking shot, even on films where there isn't much camera trickery, there's something strangely disturbing yet engaging to long scenes. maybe that's why most advertising and blockbusters use quick cuts, it's easier to grab the audience perhaps, giving their eyes a lot to play with.

That said, i loved Pride and Prejudice and i can't wait to watch Atonement.

Rowland

12-14-2007, 04:50 PM

I had some minor qualms with Children of Men, however the technical and stylistic elements were where the film really shined. In my opinion, by not cutting away during those scenes, the audience becomes really drawn into the moment. You feel like you are in the car, or dodging bullets, which raises the tension ante and increases the emotional investment in the characters.The movie is about perseverance and hope against impossible odds, which the long tracking shots reflect very well. And yes, they make the scenes they're used during tense as fuck, blood splatter or no blood splatter.

Spinal

12-14-2007, 06:14 PM

The movie is about perseverance and hope against impossible odds, which the long tracking shots reflect very well.

That's a really good point. Hadn't thought of it that way before.

Ezee E

12-14-2007, 09:12 PM

So we've tired of overly edited, shaky-cam films... and now we've tired of long tracking shots.

Damn stylistic extremes. Stick to over one two shots, dammit!
But then it's a Sidney Lumet or Clint Eastwood movie and gets labeled as "boring" direction.

Ezee E

12-15-2007, 04:29 AM

Meh. I agree here with Spinal that the first act was quite masterful as it stayed within the house and the people involved. I wonder if Joe Wright has some theater experience because I really like how he blocks and stages his talent. Each actor worked really well, especially the young Ronan.

Then things changed, the characters and themes seemed rushed, forced, and didn't interest me. Blegh. This does make me want to see Pride & Prejudice in which I assume it's mostly the first act stretched into an entire movie.

As for the "five-minute" shot. It goes with what Iosos said about Children of Men, only it can actually be applied to this movie. I'm not sure what's trying to be shown, it does not advance plot, and simply seems like a bigger version of the shot in Gone with the Wind where we see all the dead soldiers.

The last scene is pretty effective, but still, meh.

Sven

12-15-2007, 04:49 AM

and simply seems like a bigger version of the shot in Gone with the Wind where we see all the dead soldiers.

That shot is a pretty powerful graphic, though. I don't like the movie, but there's no erasing that image.

Ezee E

12-15-2007, 04:55 AM

That shot is a pretty powerful graphic, though. I don't like the movie, but there's no erasing that image.
Yes. I should've mentioned that the shot in that movie is powerful as it actually does advance the story. It does work with the theme of the movie.

For Atonement it's just a long way of getting our guy to the bar.

Spinal

12-15-2007, 05:02 AM

Ezee E

12-15-2007, 05:05 AM

Yeah, that was the moment where the pacing of the film went wonky for me. Everything up to that is so captivating and so tight and then the film just comes to a halt.

After letting the film settle in, I feel like my initial three-star impression was correct. I like the ending OK, but I still think that middle section feels empty, like we're waiting for the resolution rather than going anywhere new.
And despite it being about the guilt from Ronan's character, I feel that there's too much of the second act dedicated to Knightley and McAvoy. It almost seems cheated when we go back to her.

NickGlass

12-16-2007, 03:51 PM

Yeah, that was the moment where the pacing of the film went wonky for me. Everything up to that is so captivating and so tight and then the film just comes to a halt.

Definitely, even if I believe the beginning is a little rushed. I enjoyed the long takes, but I would never say this is a film that conveyed a sense of them to me; the film doesn't breathe--it jumps.

Does anyone else think the film was shot like a perfume commercial?

Sven

12-16-2007, 03:59 PM

Does anyone else think the film was shot like a perfume commercial?

I haven't seen it yet, but from the trailers, I think this movie has the exact kind of cinematography that I've come to expect and loathe from prestige pictures. I like what Anthony Lane says here:

I didn’t believe in the force of his love for Cecilia, or of hers for him; when they are sundered on a London street, it should be a sickening wrench, as it is in the novel, but here it passes off lightly, and, instead of weeping, you ask yourself whether the bus bearing Cecilia away would really have been that shiny.

Nick, gimme your thoughts on Romance and Cigarettes in the FDT.

Spinal

12-16-2007, 05:12 PM

Does anyone else think the film was shot like a perfume commercial?

I sorta kinda know what you mean, but to be honest, I didn't think it was necessarily a bad thing.

NickGlass

12-16-2007, 07:48 PM

I sorta kinda know what you mean, but to be honest, I didn't think it was necessarily a bad thing.

No, it's not. It is, however, representative of something that bothered me about the film. I can deal with ostentatious, ultra-soft and shiny cinematography, but I kept wondering if it was glossing over the shallowness of the film. Beyond its meta-tricks, which are moderately interesting but not particularly insightful on the nature of writing (valid, yes, but Woody Allen served up the same thesis in a single line in Annie Hall), there's not much there. I wasn't enthralled by any of the war scenes at all and Wright seems more concerned with capturing the light on McAvoy and Knightley's face than cinematically developing the chemistry between them.

And the phrase "much ado about nothing" that you attached to the film keeps ringing in my head when I think about the film. That's a really appropriate way to describe it. The problem there, of course, is that the film only function on the "much ado" function. Its self-reflexivity is the only substance. It didn't work on a pure narrative level as well.

Also, I'm pretty sure the series finale of Rosanne is extremely similar to the film's coda with Vanessa Redgrave.

Raiders

12-17-2007, 03:34 AM

The film is definitely a little overproduced in terms of visual elegance and shine, but it really does manage to capture a lot of the book. I'm confused why a lack of chemistry between Robbie and Cecelia is scoffed at here while the lack of any love or romance in Days of Heaven is praised. What is this film if not an outsider's, a child's, view of a romance. The film makes it pretty clear from the beginning we know only what Briony knows about their romance and attraction. I do agree that there could have been more made out of their emotional scenes together, but I thought the image of Robbie in front of the cinema screen, while a little ostentatious (like most of the film), was a gorgeous and emotional shot, showing how large and beautiful the dream is and how minute his chances of achieving it really are.

The Dunkirk beach scene plays out as it does in the book. I think to the end, when elder Briony is mentioning how much research she put into the authenticity, and then I think of how McEwan details the absurd chaos of the beach. It is a bizarre mass exodus, a flowing, single shot that gets lost amongst the humanity trying to cope and escape from a personal hell. It dwarfs Robbie into the thousands of other stories and presents a nearly impossible set of circumstances to overcome.

The film's failing is in the second to last act with Briony as an 18 year-old. Nothing ever really happens in here that moves the plot forward until she meets Cecelia and Robbie. There's a lot of ugliness and injuries, but the film doesn't make evident that Briony is doing all these nasty chores and is caring for the wounded soldiers as penance for what she has done, an almost masochistic desire to punish herself. The scene with the delirious French soldier plays out well, but it is isolated and seems almost to be the only reason that string of scenes even exists. I also found it peculiar the film added a scene of Briony spelling out her book which in the context of the meta-narrative seems very peculiar.

It's not a great film unfortunately, but it is successful in many ways. The final section is handled very well for a literary section I deemed nearly impossible to pull off. Even then though, the film's over zealous presentation gets in the way. The shot of Briony addressing the camera and spilling why she created the book would have been a haunting capper (similar in form to the Coens' superior effort this year), but Wright has to go one father and detail a relatively happy, if still bittersweet piece of fiction, image of Robbie and Cecelia on the beach. The book, and to some extent the film, are very much critiques of the gap that exists between reality and fiction and image and perception. The last scene to the coda seems like a filmmaker trying to force bittersweet emotion instead of giving us the sad, haunting final image we deserve.

It's good, but a little more control, and perhaps a little more editing, could have made it a great film.

Spinal

12-17-2007, 04:04 AM

Good thoughts and I mostly agree. I actually enjoyed the interplay between Robbie and Cecelia very much. Definitely agree that the section in France lacks thrust.

Bosco B Thug

12-17-2007, 04:28 AM

Sigh. I hate to agree with everyone, but quite frankly the movie was a disappointment. :( There are some particularly effective moments where it captures the psychology of the book or where Wright recaptures his deft directorial touch, but they are missing from chunks of it for some strange, unfortunate reason.

Maybe it's the "Too attached to the source material" effect, but the problems began for me from the very beginning. I actually think the first act is the most problematic (while the war section is the flat-out least engaging). The movie is breathless and the only character whose psychological state it successfully internalizes in any striking way is Briony. In its breathless pace, the Cecilia and Robbie characters and the deep-seated laboriousness of their adulthood hardly register. Briony's aggressive, desperate quest for an adult understanding of the world is established satisfactorally, and its interesting how the film emphasizes primal human sexual passion as the object of the intellectually blossoming Briony's coveting (the awkwardness of Briony's revelation in the library was quite good), but it too is lost in the shuffle of major events that is the first act. Again, having read the book of course I'd find the film "rushed," but I'm pretty confident the film clumsily goes from big moment to big moment without a sense of continuity, and so the scenario which I bought into fully when reading I question now.

Scenes that should speak volumes about the discontent of Cecilia and Robbie and Briony with their complacent little lives (scenes like Cecilia and Briony's relationship with their older brother! The dinner scene!) seem awfully curt and unimpactful. Emphasis seemed strangely placed on less important things, like the scene between the cousins and the chocolate entrepreneur guy. Due to this "portentous event to portentous event" nature that the film has (the presentation of Briony's "drowning" act seemed really broad, not to mention the "OMG OF COURSE!" wedding scene, bleh...), the film becomes melodrama or takes on an unfortunate flippancy with these character's mentalities and relationships with each other instead of revealing much about the workings of their mind.

The film picks up with 18-year-old Briony, and while I agree with Raiders that so much more could've been communicated with meticulously detailing her acts of self-punishment (instead we get a montage - I hate montages, another sign of the film's superficial attentions), at least in this act of the film we finally see the weight of her act instead of getting over-staged snippets of police hauling, mother-umbrella attacks, and Briony's empty stare. The French soldier scene is particularly effective, and I think Ramola Garai (with McAvoy actually) gives the best performance in the film, but that's probably because the film finally decides to give their performances breathing room with their extended scenes (the French soldier, the war scenes).

5-minute Dunkirk take - meeehhh. Wright's still impressive, and like Cauron in Children of Men, he creates elegance from chaos and imperfection (the sweaty laziness of the summer day, the random play of the bored cousins, the chaos of Dunkirk, etc.), but that Dunkirk scene really does serve little purpose. And so did all the war scenes - what's with the "Gone With the Wind" shot? Robbie's physical pain also hardly registers and I think it should've and would've made this section more engaging.

I liked the film a little more than I sound like I did - the last third with 18-year-old Briony and up still packs quite an emotional punch, as does the Redgrave scene (that could've been more, though argghh!!!) and I'm holding out for Wright (and feel compelled to see Pride and Prejudice again to see how that holds up now), but man, this film fell short.

lovejuice

12-17-2007, 04:09 PM

i like it more than you guys do, but only because the book is such a disappointment, and at least the movie takes only two hours. after all those praises the novel receives, i start wondering if i should take a second shot at it. the movie, fortunately, reminds me why i shouldn't bother. it feels exactly the same. a masterful first act, a sort of pointless war narrative, and a redeeming epilogue that, imo, comes to late.

i fail to see how people who like the book can dislike the film though. it's a neat adaptation and very faithful. only major difference is the battle in the novel is much more gruesome which better serves thematic purpose. and raiders is right. the 18 year old briony needs to be punished more. in the movie she sorta glides along.

this reminds me of the criticism against the book; briony seems to get off too easily. and let's face it. auto-biography, no matter for which purpose, is self-celebrating. put her dying aside, it seems like another way of cashing on past tragedy of other people. i always think McEwan should make briony a failed writer instead of a famous one.

Spinal

12-17-2007, 05:03 PM

this reminds me of the criticism against the book; briony seems to get off too easily.

Oh, I don't agree with this at all. She made a mistake as a child when she didn't understand the weight of her actions and nonetheless has to live a lifetime of knowing that she will never be able to rectify her mistake.

I don't think we're supposed to see Briony as a villain. My impression was that she was supposed to be sympathetic, someone who was flawed like most of us and who allowed her impassioned notions of right and wrong get in the way of her better judgment.

Kurosawa Fan

12-17-2007, 05:10 PM

Spinal, have you read the novel?

Sycophant

12-17-2007, 05:11 PM

I should take a crack at this book. The devotion to each other that Robbie and Cecilia had was a little hollow and naively pure for me and I gather that that was handled better overall in the novel. The first act really worked well for me, but I'll agree that the second act just wasn't as engaging. I'm not sure all the jumping around the story did really worked, as I think those ideas could well have been communicated better and benefited from a more linear telling. Just a thought.

I liked the movie quite a bit, but it certainly had its shortcomings. While I'm impressed by the technical finesse of the already-discussed long take on the beach, I think it ran a little too long. It could have been trimmed by 40% and been more potent, methinks, as I don't object to what it was trying to do, but especially once our characters wander off screen, it loses a lot.

The music deserves special mention as I think it was used to fantastic effect.

Spinal

12-17-2007, 05:24 PM

Spinal, have you read the novel?

Nope.

Spinal

12-17-2007, 05:26 PM

The music deserves special mention as I think it was used to fantastic effect.

Yes, I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but I liked the score quite a bit.

Kurosawa Fan

12-17-2007, 05:31 PM

Nope.

Hmm. I had recommended On Chesil Beach to you when you mentioned wanting to read more McEwan, but Atonement is also fantastic, though I'm sure you heard that many times before.

Spinal

12-17-2007, 05:33 PM

Hmm. I had recommended On Chesil Beach to you when you mentioned wanting to read more McEwan, but Atonement is also fantastic, though I'm sure you heard that many times before.

I'll try to check them out. Most of my reading time has been consumed by a couple of projects I'm working on, but I do have airplane time coming up soon. :)

Kurosawa Fan

12-17-2007, 05:34 PM

I'll try to check them out. Most of my reading time has been consumed by a couple of projects I'm working on, but I do have airplane time coming up soon. :)

On Chesil Beach is very short, more a novella than a novel. I think you would really like it. Seems up your alley.

Spinal

12-17-2007, 05:35 PM

On Chesil Beach is very short, more a novella than a novel. I think you would really like it. Seems up your alley.

I have reserved it from the library.

lovejuice

12-17-2007, 07:24 PM

Oh, I don't agree with this at all. She made a mistake as a child when she didn't understand the weight of her actions and nonetheless has to live a lifetime of knowing that she will never be able to rectify her mistake.

oh, you'll love the book since it suggests what sort of personal hell she has to go through all these years.

perhaps this is me, as a writer, but i can't quite feel sympatized for a woman who has published, not one, or two, or three, but twenty novels during her life time, and then appeared on national television.

Spinal

12-17-2007, 07:49 PM

But I don't see how literary success makes the past any less painful.

Sycophant

12-17-2007, 07:51 PM

perhaps this is me, as a writer, but i can't quite feel sympatized for a woman who has published, not one, or two, or three, but twenty novels during her life time, and then appeared on national television.Yeah... I really can't see your point here. The wealthy and successful can carry guilt and have... y'know, complex human emotions, pain, and self-loathing, too.

lovejuice

12-17-2007, 08:08 PM

Yeah... I really can't see your point here. The wealthy and successful can carry guilt and have... y'know, complex human emotions, pain, and self-loathing, too.

as said, i guess it's a jealousy on my part. :P

really i always have this issue, and 'tis why biopics never hit me. i can not quite sympatize with successful person.

Watashi

12-22-2007, 08:35 AM

I'll never understand bad-mouthing "long tracking shots". The long-take in Atonement was masterful and one of the very best scenes of the year. All of you are a bunch of loonies.

Then again, I bet when Welles decided to point his camera at an angle in Citizen Kane, people threw up their arms and criticized him for "showing off".

Ezee E

12-22-2007, 02:56 PM

Spinal

12-22-2007, 04:40 PM

Izzy Black

12-25-2007, 01:04 AM

Atonement is one of the better films of the year.

Boner M

12-26-2007, 09:14 AM

It's an engaging piece of cinema, certainly not the stuffy Masterpiece Theatre-style prestige film it could've been. However, much like Pride and Prejudice, I can't help but feel that Wright is trying so hard to keep the film from being just that, and in effect the pacing and overall shape of the film feels just a bit off - too rushed in places, too langorous in others. I found the tracking shot impressive on its own, but it also breaks up the rhythm of the film so badly that it feels awkward when the film moves to the next scene (a bit like the bathhouse fight in Eastern Promises). Ending was kinda unsatisfying... seems like it'd work better in the book with a greater amount of psychological detail to go with it.

Pretty good altogether, though. Glad I read the reactions here beforehand to keep my expectations down.

baby doll

12-26-2007, 03:47 PM

Yeah, I actually avoided reading any reviews before seeing it, and after writing my own little blurb for the ol' blog, I was surprised how close my reaction was to some other reviewers (particularly, A.O. Scott when he appeared on Ebert and Roeper, although I liked the score, personally).

transmogrifier

12-27-2007, 11:08 PM

It doesn't serve the film. Welles' shots invariably do.

I haven't seen Atonement, so I'll withhold judgement on that, but tracking shots absolutely do work best when they serve the story. For me, the absolute best example is actually in Boogie Nights, which has three key tracking shots, two which bookend the film and one slap-bang in the middle that signals the transition between the late 70s excess and the early 80s hangover (Little Bill at the New Year's party).

The first is the infamous swoop into the nightclub, which many took as show-offy, but which in fact quickly and neatly sets up a cohesive community, shows there interaction, and then cuts on our first view of the one person who is not part of that community (Dirk).

Boner M

12-27-2007, 11:49 PM

I don't think the tracking shot in Atonement is gratuitous because it doesn't serve the story; I think it has a similar function to the tracking shots in Children of Men in relation to what McAvoy and Owen's characters are both going through in their respective films (ie, emphasising perseverance, hope etc.), especially since in the former's case the camera keeps losing and finding him again in the span of that 5 minute scene (echoing the repeated "come back to me"). So it's impressive on it's own, both serving the story and to a lesser extent the film's theme, but it just feels awkward and ill-fitting as far as the whole visual plan of the film goes, and thus sticks out like a sore thumb.

Trans' example of the TS's in Boogie Nights is a good example of shots that serve the story/theme in the same way as the aforementioned, but also with respect to the film's rhythm (and the shots have the right to be show-offy in a film that's partly about excess).

transmogrifier

12-27-2007, 11:53 PM

I wasn't wowed by the tracking shots in Children of Men. They were to me the very definition of pointless technical trickery.

Rowland

12-28-2007, 12:34 AM

When I think of a recent example of pointless technical trickery in the realm of artificial long takes, what springs to mind is the car-on-the-highway shot from War of the Worlds. You know the one, where the camera is flying in and out of the windows and around the inside of the car. It's ridiculously fake and show-offy... thankfully, Children of Men never succumbs to that. As far as I'm concerned, the beauty of its form expresses its themes and essential humanism with such forceful eloquence that the sheer technical virtuosity of its realization leaves a minor impression by comparison.

Ezee E

12-28-2007, 03:19 AM

What do you guys think of the one-shots in Irreversible? Or... Russian Ark (haven't seen this one)

Morris Schæffer

12-28-2007, 02:47 PM

Russian Ark didn't do it for me. Unless I'm mistaken, it wants to evoke the past by way of walking through a museum, but it's every bit as boring as that sounds. Its evocative powers are virtually nil and so I really didn't care at all about Buttner's lensing, impressive feat or not.

Benny Profane

12-28-2007, 02:52 PM

Best tracking shot: Goodfellas. Henry and Karen walk through the kitchen entrance all the way to their table in the front of the club. Poetry. You don't even get the sense that it's one long shot, it's so organic.

And I agree completely with Morris re: Russian Ark.

Ezee E

12-28-2007, 03:24 PM

Izzy Black

12-28-2007, 05:34 PM

I loved the film. And I don't see how the tracking-shot was pointless.

Of course the tracking shot was not pointless. You are precisely correct in saying that it has received criticism because the critics had already hyped it as displaying virtuosity. This is the tragedy of film criticism and its influence on the cognitive impact of great cinema. It is not as though Wright employs the long-take shot as if it were something unique and groundbreaking. If one considers this then a suggested complete misunderstanding of his aesthetic is in order. This has surely come up in part because of Wright's own dubious statement at the Cannes premiere where he said: "Basically, I just like showing off". After this, an entire swarm of critics have noted this point and done well to ensure that it is just technical virtuosity on display here rather than a technique in service to the film. Yet, this of course was likely an off-handed statement more in jest than in seriousness, because the claim is both inconsistent with the way it came about in the production process, and with the general aesthetic of his previous two films, which contain extended Steadicam tracking shots in a very similar fashion. It is important to understand that spatiality in both blocking and framing is central to understanding Wright's budding aesthetic. His photography in this film is consistent with the photography in the wonderful Pride And Prejudice. The latter film is certainly more balanced and even, but is also considerably less ambitious. The Steadicam single-take shot in the opening of Pride And Prejudice was not some vacuous show attempt at technical virtuosity, but magnificently captured the naturalism and business of the manor at morning. As the scene starts with a tracking shot of Keria Knightly bringing us into the house, the camera eventually breaks free of her point-of-view as characters weave in and out of the frame while attending to their fleeting exchanges and duties, then after sufficient attention on other areas of business, Knightly casually reenters the frame again, effectively capturing the sense of the lived reality that is the family life. The audience is invited almost as a guest in the house to observe them as they are, moving fluidly in and out of the frame rather than fragmented by cuts, which would conversely indicate a sense of chronology and single authoritarian perspective. It captures a sense of time as it spans out, a temporal moment in the lives of a family. Yet, most people probably do not remember this scene terribly, but this is likely because, the scene is less massive in scope as the one in Atonement, it was an opening shot rather than a centerpiece, and most importantly, critics did not make a fuss about it in all of their reviews.

Thus, to assume the technique was employed in Atonement for mere technical showiness is to undermine the aim of Wright's aesthetic in general. The sense of people living in a fluid motion in time is what provides his films with the aesthetic of moving images populated by individuals that live interdependently. The melodrama is able to transcend conventional storytelling due to the cinematic emphasis on staging, movement, and interaction. The first act emphasizes the same sense of grandiose staging as the Steadicam shot, but by providing point of view to the younger child we see her wander through the home as a spectator of others. There have been comparisons to Altman for his long takes, theatrical staging techniques, and themes of class differences, but it is a tall order to be compared to the giant, and hopefully it should not overshadow his career. It does, however, provide some context to understanding Wright's approach. He is more conventional than Altman, as he is not afraid of shooting dialogue through normal shot/counter shot methods (it should be noted his emphasis on close-ups and 1.85:1 ratio, however, so the technique may be more than practical as indicative of the long-angle lens subjective close-up of Knightly looking in the mirror, for example) or using a lush score to emphasize emotion. In this sense, he still has a ways to go to carve out a name for himself, but the flairs of originality are evident in the young director's work and should suggest something more to anticipate, but he has a mature aesthetic no less. The most valuable interest is that he is not afraid to let the camera linger on an image. The use of Primo zoom lenses allowed the photographer to spend more time on images and scenes by focusing and refocusing on different characters in the frame, maintaining the integrity of both depth and close-ups in slightly longer takes. The considerably wide-angle 40 mm fixed lens made for the deep field of view of Wright's consistently beautiful wide shots.

Another director that Wright should more appropriately be compared to is David Lean. First because he has cited him as one of his largest influences, and because much like Wright, the director has been widely derided by critics as being nothing more than a mainstream big-budget formalist who lacks true auteuristic sensibilities. Yet, while it would be entirely incorrect to say that Lean did not devote himself to story, he no doubt put his images first as the method in which to elucidate the story or its themes. In one respect, Wright is not afraid to stray from the literal emphasis on the story, such as Lean, but it is not to switch to a purely technical emphasis, but a cinematic one devoted to the film's themes. Lean is a director who broke convention to casually play around with traditional perspectives, points-of-views, and authoritarian objectivism, or as Alain Silver at Senses of Cinema writes:

In his general theory, André Bazin divided filmic reality into three conceivable forms: “[1] A purely logical and descriptive analysis. [2] A psychological analysis, from within the film, namely one that fits the point of view of one of the protagonists in a given situation. [3] A psychological analysis from the point of view of the spectator” (6). To simplify these types, one might call them objective, subjective, or ironic respectively. As a director Lean dealt with all these “realities,” often within a given film, moved freely in a way few others have between these conventional modes and defined his vision through them.

One of the immediately recognizable traits about Wright's cinema, specifically with Atonement, is that he casually changes from subjective points-of-views to objective observation. The tracking shot exemplifies an example of the spectator's gaze merging with the subjective dreamscape reality of Robbie's experience. Unafraid to break from the plot-action progression of the story and linger on thematic imagery, Wright, in another instance, focuses on the horribleness of the men's wounds. The function in these two sequences seems to play into the characters' psychology, but I think the lingering is more cinematic than that. The director seems more interested in capturing the sense of milieu and reality of war's destruction (rather than its exploitative action -- no cathartic violent sequences to be found here for the male gaze) to emphasize the film's theme of interdependence, injustice, and perseverance. In the hospital scene, the film breaks from the focus on the single character (though significant in bringing her elitist class perceptions down to a human level of understanding others) and exemplifies the broader pictorial interest in the theme. Robbie's walk with his group during the war was actually supposed to be much longer at the director's wish to further explore the despair and environment, but I believe producers wanted it cut down.

If my arguments here have been sound, the visual devices used in Wright's cinema is not superficial as many have suggested, and demands to be reconsidered in light of the film's themes with conventional criticism suppressed. The sequences are atypical insofar as they do not follow a linear perspective or narrative function, but I do not think the scenes lack intellectual merit, and as such, if understood, could lead to a more emotional connection with the film. Is the tracking shot in Touch of Evil any less self-aware and distinctly remote? Children of Men, Russian Ark, and War of the Worlds are all a victim of a supposed "gimmick". Yes, these well-crafted films that depend so heavily on their extended take sequence(s) drew so much outside attention that their visual merits becomes divorced from the narrative context of the film, and the cognitive viewer seems unable to subjectively view the film in light of so much talk of the film's technical "virtuosity" prior. Yet, while yes, technically difficult, these sequences are not necessarily more difficult than some other elaborately constructed montage technique, but critics do well to notice the extended take in light of maintaining a cinema that has become increasingly shorter by the take. Yet, too quick and consistent of a cut, as with experimental directors such as Tony Scott and James Tolback, is too much for the eye to follow, and equal critical attention will be brought too such "pointless formalism", effectively throwing these directors off to the side, while once again, Hollywood emphasizes that sequences must not be too technically nonidentical, none too long or too short, and fit in a nice proximity with one another, else you are divorcing the content from the visual. Yet, decidedly self-aware directors such as Greenaway, Tarr, Truffaut, and Antonioni ensure that technique is not just some conventional conflict theory narrative device, but a tool to explore the story's thematic possibilities purely through the cinematic language.

Watashi

12-28-2007, 06:17 PM

Awesome stuff.

That's more than I wrote in college.

There's no way I'm not repping this.

jesse

12-28-2007, 07:18 PM

Originally Posted by Alain Silver
In his general theory, André Bazin divided filmic reality into three conceivable forms: “[1] A purely logical and descriptive analysis. [2] A psychological analysis, from within the film, namely one that fits the point of view of one of the protagonists in a given situation. [3] A psychological analysis from the point of view of the spectator” (6). To simplify these types, one might call them objective, subjective, or ironic respectively. As a director Lean dealt with all these “realities,” often within a given film, moved freely in a way few others have between these conventional modes and defined his vision through them. Nice. I was going to invoke Bazin as well in defense of Atonement's tracking shot, though I was going to refer to his analysis of montage vs tracking shot, and how (if I'm remembering correctly--I'm at work and don't have my book to refer back to) the tracking shot is used to emphasize reality or a sense of realism, something which he did so beautifully in Pride and Prejudice (I loved that opening shot you mention, I also love how he does the same thing later at the party), and also does in many of the domestic scenes in Atonement. Even if they weren't as noticable, a number of tracking shots are used in the first third of the film and so I didn't find it to be an incongruous stylistic decision on Wright's part.

And as for my own take, I thought the Dunkirk beach tracking shot fit thematically as well--if the entire first third of the film is a depiction of the unnecessary destruction of one man's life through the breakdown of a moral system (or perhaps more accurately in this situation, one that had yet to be fully formed), then the Dunkirk sequence takes it one step further and depicts an entire civilazation being unneccessarily destroyed by a series of moral decisions that were out of the control of 99.5% of the individuals affected. It's the same moral situation Robbie experienced back home, only this time multiplied by 1000.

baby doll

12-28-2007, 07:41 PM

What do you guys think of the one-shots in Irreversible? Or... Russian Ark (haven't seen this one)Russian Ark didn't end with an anti-climatic vista showing us the entire museum in the same frame.

Melville

12-28-2007, 10:14 PM

Nice. I was going to invoke Bazin as well in defense of Atonement's tracking shot, though I was going to refer to his analysis of montage vs tracking shot, and how (if I'm remembering correctly--I'm at work and don't have my book to refer back to) the tracking shot is used to emphasize reality or a sense of realism
This seems pretty questionable to me. I'd say that a tracking shot typically (though not always) emphasizes reality as the metaphysical construct of an objective world that exists outside our experience of it, though it sometimes emphasizes reality as objective, empirical reality (i.e. just the facts). But either way, it actually takes us further from our own experience and hence reduces the sense of reality as living experience. (Although, again, this isn't always the case; Children of Men, with its less "sweeping" cinematography definitely uses its long takes to create a sense of "being there".) I think something like Denis' Friday Night is much better at creating the latter sense of realism. I haven't seen Atonement, but from what I've read, it doesn't try to create a sense of realism as in "being there", but instead tries to create a sense of historical reality: reality as an enveloping event experienced by others (and oneself only in hindsight). Maybe I'm way off in this particular case, but I think the distinction between the two goals is important.

Edit: I guess I'm distinguishing between the goals of a tracking shot and that of other forms of long takes.

Izzy Black

12-29-2007, 02:03 AM

This seems pretty questionable to me. I'd say that a tracking shot typically (though not always) emphasizes reality as the metaphysical construct of an objective world that exists outside our experience of it, though it sometimes emphasizes reality as objective, empirical reality (i.e. just the facts). But either way, it actually takes us further from our own experience and hence reduces the sense of reality as living experience. (Although, again, this isn't always the case; Children of Men, with its less "sweeping" cinematography definitely uses its long takes to create a sense of "being there".) I think something like Denis' Friday Night is much better at creating the latter sense of realism. I haven't seen Atonement, but from what I've read, it doesn't try to create a sense of realism as in "being there", but instead tries to create a sense of historical reality: reality as an enveloping event experienced by others (and oneself only in hindsight). Maybe I'm way off in this particular case, but I think the distinction between the two goals is important.

Edit: I guess I'm distinguishing between the goals of a tracking shot and that of other forms of long takes.

You are absolutely correct, Melville. The tracking shot, as I noted in my essay, is not used to construct a sense of realism, but as an omniscient narrative device that allows us to enter the film experience as the objective spectator looking in, or as I wrote of its use in Pride And Prejudice:

As the scene starts with a tracking shot of Keira Knightly bringing us into the house, the camera eventually breaks free of her point-of-view as characters weave in and out of the frame while attending to their fleeting exchanges and duties, then after sufficient attention on other areas of business, Knightly casually reenters the frame again, effectively capturing the sense of the lived reality that is the family life. The audience is invited almost as a guest in the house to observe them as they are, moving fluidly in and out of the frame rather than fragmented by cuts, which would conversely indicate a sense of chronology and single authoritarian perspective.

Instead of a single subjective perspective, the film ignores this tradition to allow our eye to wonder across the screen freely, so that we can observe the action as a third person party as it occurs.

This is precisely why Atonement is an advancement on the tracking shot from the Welles tradition used in Pride And Prejudice and his first feature-length BBC film. This is why I reference Lean and Bazin, because Wright takes an eclectic approach by applying the subjective dreamscape reality of Robbie's experience to the objective world view of the third person observer. In this sense, the expressionistic photography is synthesized with the objective or omniscient spectator, thus creating a sense of other worldly understanding between the observer and the protagonist.

I should note, however, the distinction between the tracking shot in this film and Children of Men, or a film like Gus Vant Sant's Elephant, is contingent to the type of camera rig used. The Steadicam, as most excellently demonstrated by Terrence Malick in Days of Heaven, is used as a distant observer, contra the handheld, which is to create a sense of realism and subjective anxiety or intimacy. In Days of Heaven, the Steadicam rig allows the camera to be taken out into the middle of water without much movement or shake, which creates a sense of floating or omniscience, despite the character's experience. The film is notably famous for its distance and objectivity. In Children of Men or Elephant, however, the tracking shots are used to establish first person point-of-view, typically following a single character from behind for long stretches of time. The result is a sense of walking with the character or being as the character, thus subjectivity and "realism" (but not quite) is to be assumed in the position of the character's experience. This creates for a more personal, anxious, and dramatic intensity, or even a sense of dread or personal curiosity and exploration, where we can only see what the character sees as things present themselves to the lens. The Steadicam long-take shots are tracking shots to the extent that they are used by a tracking vehicle to move with the characters as they walk in and out of the frame, but the handheld tracking shot is can most literally be called a tracking shot as it tracks the footsteps with the single perspective of a character's subjective point-of-view.

Izzy Black

12-29-2007, 02:06 AM

I also love how he does the same thing later at the party), and also does in many of the domestic scenes in Atonement. Even if they weren't as noticable, a number of tracking shots are used in the first third of the film and so I didn't find it to be an incongruous stylistic decision on Wright's part

Indeed, jesse. There are many other tracking sequences and long takes throughout the film, and as I noted in my post, most of this is made possible through full use of the Primo zoom lenses, which allow for more relative framing of action.

I also agree with your observations on the thematic notions emphasized by the film's beach sequence, which transcends the personal narrative to explore themes cinematically as they arise in the content itself.

transmogrifier

12-29-2007, 02:30 AM

Boner M

12-29-2007, 02:39 AM

Yeah, well, it just didn't work for me.

*wins*

Duncan

12-29-2007, 05:00 AM

So I, uh, haven't seen the film and sort of skimmed the thread, but I thought I'd comment anyway.

You are absolutely correct, Melville. The tracking shot, as I noted in my essay, is not used to construct a sense of realism, but as an omniscient narrative device that allows us to enter the film experience as the objective spectator looking in...

I take issue with the "objective spectator" part. This objectivity/subjectivity thing is tricky, but here's how I understand it, and I believe it is similar to how Bazin understood it.

You are certainly correct that not all tracking shots accomplish the same thing. Children of Men is a good example of the sort of hyper-subjectivity that can be achieved. I think you can give the same impression with Steadicam work, but that's another story. In any case, the effect we're talking about is the same.

What I'm more interested in is these Days of Heaven type shots. We are not forced by cuts to focus on what Malick finds important, and thus we are not forced to accept Malick's point of view. Our eye is not directed by clarity of focus either, as often the depth of field is very high. The cinematography grants the viewer a distance from which to view the action. In this sense, there is a certain degree of objectivity. We are separate from the main events, and, maybe, not even emotionally involved in them. However, I believe what this shooting style emphasizes in the objectivity of the camera as a recording instrument. Somewhat paradoxically, the objectivity of the images themselves emphasizes our own subjective experience of them.

I forget precisely what Bazin had to say about tracking shots (it's been awhile), but I'm fairly certain I remember his general points on depth of field and long takes. When combined, as they are in Malick's film, they convey a sense of objective reality - not of objective observance. Especially in a theatre experience, the image is inevitably too much to process. Our eyes flutter about the screen trying to absorb everything, but we're still going to miss the worker in the background. The forward momentum of time further destabilizes any sense of objectivity we may have. It's important to remember that Days of Heaven is told from someone's (Linda's) subjective perspective. And it's not even an immediate illustration of that perspective. It's memories.

Well, I could write thousands of words here, but you're probably a smart enough guy to flesh those ideas out on your own. I should warn you in advance that I probably won't get back to you in any depth if you respond. Not much free time now that Christmas is over.

Izzy Black

12-29-2007, 07:17 AM

So I, uh, haven't seen the film and sort of skimmed the thread, but I thought I'd comment anyway.

I take issue with the "objective spectator" part. This objectivity/subjectivity thing is tricky, but here's how I understand it, and I believe it is similar to how Bazin understood it.

You are certainly correct that not all tracking shots accomplish the same thing. Children of Men is a good example of the sort of hyper-subjectivity that can be achieved. I think you can give the same impression with Steadicam work, but that's another story. In any case, the effect we're talking about is the same.

Yes, the Steadicam can accomplish this aesthetic as well. The distinction I was making was mostly on the power of the handheld tracking shot in the subjective response. The Steadicam point-of-view tracking shot (as opposed to the free-observing one of Atonement or Touch of Evil) is used to immense effect in the works of Béla Tarr. It works in his cinema as an interesting dynamic. Its effect is almost a deconstruction on Bazinian ontology, insofar as Tarr's cinema captures the sense of realism of spatiality, depth, and temporality that was essential in Bazin's objective theory, but is infused by very impressionistic sequences, blocking, music, technique, character point-of-view, and movement, which suggests a sense of reality that has been created by Tarr on his own. The effect here is something other worldly, where the objective criteria captures the sense of a real world verity, but when merged with the subjective and Tarr's impressionism, it becomes a world of its own pure cinema – no less believable than our own, but decidedly different.

What I'm more interested in is these Days of Heaven type shots. We are not forced by cuts to focus on what Malick finds important, and thus we are not forced to accept Malick's point of view.

This is not entirely true. While Malick does not intensively use close-ups or long lens shooting, he does do so in regards to his gaze on nature, and especially on the locusts. The emphasis here is necessary for Malick to establish in order for the earth to rise as its own character function in the cinema.

Our eye is not directed by clarity of focus either, as often the depth of field is very high. The cinematography grants the viewer a distance from which to view the action. In this sense, there is a certain degree of objectivity. We are separate from the main events, and, maybe, not even emotionally involved in them. However, I believe what this shooting style emphasizes in the objectivity of the camera as a recording instrument. Somewhat paradoxically, the objectivity of the images themselves emphasizes our own subjective experience of them.

I agree with everything you have written except for this last sentence. I am not so sure what to make of this. The objective image emphasizes our subjective experience? It is certainly true the objectivity emphasized here is still grounded in the camera and the director's gaze, but I do not think the emphasis suggests that an objective image necessitates our subjective experience. I do believe our experience of the images is subjective, and the camera captures a sense of objective imagery, but I do not think one is the causation of the other. I am thinking there is a bit of misunderstanding, perhaps, in Bazin's theory, but I will withhold my thoughts for a moment to see if I can more accurately address it in the points below.

Our eyes flutter about the screen trying to absorb everything, but we're still going to miss the worker in the background.

Is it that we did not see the worker because our eye is overwhelmed by the freedom, or because the worker is out of focus? Malick, I am pretty sure, uses a pretty wide lens to ensure everything is in focus within the frame, which is in line with Bazinian aesthetic. The foreground is obviously more pronounced than the background, but necessarily so, else such a distinction could not be made (as with the flattened egalitarian field of view of the telephoto lens).

I forget precisely what Bazin had to say about tracking shots (it's been awhile), but I'm fairly certain I remember his general points on depth of field and long takes. When combined, as they are in Malick's film, they convey a sense of objective reality - not of objective observance. Especially in a theatre experience, the image is inevitably too much to process.

....

The forward momentum of time further destabilizes any sense of objectivity we may have. It's important to remember that Days of Heaven is told from someone's (Linda's) subjective perspective. And it's not even an immediate illustration of that perspective. It's memories.

In my reference to Days of Heaven, it was not my attempt to exonerate the film from all subjective or impressionistic composition. The emphasis was merely on the sense of objectivity captured by the camera throughout the film as unrelated to other subjective cues (or juxtaposed with them, as it creates a sense of dissonance or ambivalence). It was not my intention to put forth an analysis on the viewer's ultimate cognitive experience of the film Days of Heaven, but to focus specifically on the feat accomplished by the Steadicam-shooting technique (and this film in particular as it was one of the first films to really pioneer its power in new 70s cinema), independent of the subjective devices used in the film made by the montage, jump-cutting, and voice-overs as you have noted. Bazin emphasized wide-angle photography for a deep field of view, which allows for our eye to wander. His notion of the tracking shot and extended take would ensure this objective emphasis through capturing time as it occurs, and preserving spatiality within the deep frame. In the Bazinian philosophy, I do not think it is incorrect to say that he thought of the camera as an objective observer divorced from the subjective feelings of the character. This is why he felt the Italian neorealism movement to be the pinnacle achievement of an ontological cinema. I am also uncertain as to what distinction you are making between the objective reality captured by the camera and an objective observance. I do not find them mutually exclusive, especially as you have pointed out in your post that the technique augments the objectivity of the camera, thus reality as it is observed. An important point must be made here, however. Bazin did not exclude or discount the filmmaker's gaze from his theory and aesthetics. The sense of reality we see is through the filmmaker's gaze. Bazin took issue with the director's desire to use lighting, montage, impressionism, or other editing techniques to de-emphasize the sense of verisimilitude in a pure cinema, not the sense of the spectator or observer. In fact, I am pretty sure Bazin considered the viewer something of a silent observer, as it were.

Izzy Black

12-29-2007, 07:34 AM

As I alluded to above, I think tracking shots work best as a way of describing and commenting on one character's (or many) relationship to the environment around them, to give us a sense of how this character interacts and fits in with what and who is around them. To take the GoodFellas example in the restaurant, it denotes how easily and comfortably Hill has taken to the gangster life, and how he has reached some form of respect - he's literally going places. In Boogie Nights, with the Little Bill tracking shot, we get a sense of his complete isolation from everyone else, the soul-crushing effects of the line of work he has been in, all through the camera following him through a party.

It's definitely not a technique for realism - as opposed to say a stationary long take, or a documentary-type long type (characters don't really go anywhere, but the hand-held camera uses pans and zoom to try to keep whoever is talking in frame) - and I don't think it works as a way to put the "audience" into the movie, which I think is a misguided goal to begin with, espeically seeing as a long tracking shot has the precise opposite effect for anyone with a glancing interest in film technique, as it sets off the "wow, tracking shot!" part of our consciousness.

It seems your take on the tracking shot is just as limited as those you have attempted to call into question. The notion of highlighting the experience of the protagonist in the shots you point out are all examples of point-of-view tracking shots, and are not the free-flowing, observing tracking shots found in a film like Touch of Evil or the shot used in Atonement or Pride and Prejudice (where point-of-view is liberally considered and characters weave in and out of the frame). The tracking shot can certainly be a self-aware or self-reflexive, distancing and objective technique, just as it can be a subjective one (as you are clearly partial to here), or a vie at realism.

transmogrifier

12-29-2007, 10:12 AM

It seems your take on the tracking shot is just as limited as those you have attempted to call into question. The notion of highlighting the experience of the protagonist in the shots you point out are all examples of point-of-view tracking shots, and are not the free-flowing, observing tracking shots found in a film like Touch of Evil or the shot used in Atonement or Pride and Prejudice (where point-of-view is liberally considered and characters weave in and out of the frame). The tracking shot can certainly be a self-aware or self-reflexive, distancing and objective technique, just as it can be a subjective one (as you are clearly partial to here), or a vie at realism.

I put (or many) in brackets to illustrate that I wasn't only referring to as single character, but could be mentioning a group of characters. Take the opening shot of The Player, which quickly sketches how all of the characters live and breathe movies, and how they bounce off each other using movies as airbags. It's certainly not used to put the audience on some studio backlot. Of course, it has an inherent in-joke attached to it, but that is a secondary layer to the characterization and environment that it brings to life.

I don't think I'm being limited at all, and I'm surprised you'd take my personal preference of when tracking shots work best so combatively.

Izzy Black

12-29-2007, 02:19 PM

I put (or many) in brackets to illustrate that I wasn't only referring to as single character, but could be mentioning a group of characters. Take the opening shot of The Player, which quickly sketches how all of the characters live and breathe movies, and how they bounce off each other using movies as airbags. It's certainly not used to put the audience on some studio backlot. Of course, it has an inherent in-joke attached to it, but that is a secondary layer to the characterization and environment that it brings to life.

I don't think I'm being limited at all, and I'm surprised you'd take my personal preference of when tracking shots work best so combatively.

I do not think I am taking issue with your personal preference here. I am calling into question your singular view of the tracking shot and its general function, just as I have done so with my analysis of Atonement versus the conventional opinion and my responses to others. I mean no disrespect or personal ill-will in this position. I simply enjoy a critical discussion, and I think your position is entirely relevant to the discussion and my initial analysis. Secondly, the examples you used did not include multiple perspectives, so I thought you were speaking specifically about POV shots.

As for The Player, how are you so sure the intention is not to put us on the studio back-lot? (Ironically, I think that was precisely Robert Altman's intention with this shot, and possibly the film.) You seem to think that characterization and environment are thrown out the window in this endeavor, but this is certainly the opposite. An objective camera is still interested in telling the story, but one divorced of a particular perspective or subjective lens, in theory. The weaving shots in Gosford Park (when not following POV of Kelly Macdonald's character), or the vignette juxtapositions at the very beginning of Short Cuts, seems to demonstrate a very objective view of its characters. This is primarily Altman's aesthetic. He is more of an objective observer than a personal narrator. Of course characterization is an interest, as we are seeing the characters going about their lives, and developing a sense of their personality and milieu. The tracking shot as used in Pride And Prejudice, and well, of any film accomplishes this. But how exactly would we not get the same sense of characterization as a mere observer on the back-lot, walking through the crowd and liberally watching different characters interact and go about their lives? There are no major POV shots and almost never any close-ups. The montage is excluded so there are no editing cues, at best their is music, but applied to the general view of all the characters. The intention here is certainly more an observational one and less a subjective one, but this is not to imply something so austere that we have no connection with the characters. It is a technique or an approach to be contrast with other techniques, and as such, it is more objective in concept than others.

Duncan

12-29-2007, 09:51 PM

Yes, the Steadicam can accomplish this aesthetic as well. The distinction I was making was mostly on the power of the handheld tracking shot in the subjective response. The Steadicam point-of-view tracking shot (as opposed to the free-observing one of Atonement or Touch of Evil) is used to immense effect in the works of Béla Tarr. It works in his cinema as an interesting dynamic. Its effect is almost a deconstruction on Bazinian ontology, insofar as Tarr's cinema captures the sense of realism of spatiality, depth, and temporality that was essential in Bazin's objective theory, but is infused by very impressionistic sequences, blocking, music, technique, character point-of-view, and movement, which suggests a sense of reality that has been created by Tarr on his own. The effect here is something other worldly, where the objective criteria captures the sense of a real world verity, but when merged with the subjective and Tarr's impressionism, it becomes a world of its own pure cinema – no less believable than our own, but decidedly different. Dig Tarr. Think he's doing great things for cinema. A plastic philosopher in his own right.

This is not entirely true. While Malick does not intensively use close-ups or long lens shooting, he does do so in regards to his gaze on nature, and especially on the locusts. The emphasis here is necessary for Malick to establish in order for the earth to rise as its own character function in the cinema. Sure, I should have put some modifiers in there like "mostly" and "almost".

I agree with everything you have written except for this last sentence. I am not so sure what to make of this. The objective image emphasizes our subjective experience? It is certainly true the objectivity emphasized here is still grounded in the camera and the director's gaze, but I do not think the emphasis suggests that an objective image necessitates our subjective experience. I do believe our experience of the images is subjective, and the camera captures a sense of objective imagery, but I do not think one is the causation of the other. I am thinking there is a bit of misunderstanding, perhaps, in Bazin's theory, but I will withhold my thoughts for a moment to see if I can more accurately address it in the points below.
I don't think I'm misunderstanding him, though my wording could have been clearer. I should have said something like "the objective realism" emphasizes our own subjectivity. Hmm, I keep trying to think of ways to not write at length, but I guess I'll have to spend some time doing so. Bazin illustrates what I'm talking about by discussing the Kuleshov effect. Cutting from a face to a bowl is a very objective move for a filmmaker. There is very little to be drawn from the cut, other than that the man is hungry. Now, there are complications, as the shot could be from the man's POV, etc. But allow me to forgo examining every permutation. The cut also detracts from Bazin's sense of realism, because it disrupts the flow of time. So, the shot has a heightened sense of objectivity to it (there is little room for ambiguity), which in turn suppresses the subjective interpretation of the viewer. Cause and effect.

Now, Bazin also discusses deep field photography as combined with the long take. This, to obviously simplify, is his ideal aesthetic. It imbues the image with what he calls an objective realism. Because of this, the ambiguities of reality are more likely to appear on the screen. The viewer is ambivalent. Where does one look? What objects are important? What can be disregarded? What does a certain facial expression mean? Perhaps instead of just a cut from a man's face to a bowl, we have both face and bowl in frame. Now the man could be hungry, but he could also be musing about something else. The viewer is unsure, though the camera has recorded an objective image. It is the objective realism of the image as recorded by the camera that causes the viewer's own subjective experience.

I'll throw a bunch of quotes at you later.

Is it that we did not see the worker because our eye is overwhelmed by the freedom, or because the worker is out of focus? Malick, I am pretty sure, uses a pretty wide lens to ensure everything is in focus within the frame, which is in line with Bazinian aesthetic. The foreground is obviously more pronounced than the background, but necessarily so, else such a distinction could not be made (as with the flattened egalitarian field of view of the telephoto lens). We don't see him because the eye is overwhelmed by the freedom. The workers are generally in focus. You're right about the wide lens use. Pretty sure that's what I said originally.

In my reference to Days of Heaven, it was not my attempt to exonerate the film from all subjective or impressionistic composition. The emphasis was merely on the sense of objectivity captured by the camera throughout the film as unrelated to other subjective cues (or juxtaposed with them, as it creates a sense of dissonance or ambivalence). It was not my intention to put forth an analysis on the viewer's ultimate cognitive experience of the film Days of Heaven, but to focus specifically on the feat accomplished by the Steadicam-shooting technique (and this film in particular as it was one of the first films to really pioneer its power in new 70s cinema), independent of the subjective devices used in the film made by the montage, jump-cutting, and voice-overs as you have noted.
Alright. I think I took issue because you explicitly said the film is noted for its objectivity, which I found false, or at least drastically incomplete.

Bazin emphasized wide-angle photography for a deep field of view, which allows for our eye to wander. His notion of the tracking shot and extended take would ensure this objective emphasis through capturing time as it occurs, and preserving spatiality within the deep frame. In the Bazinian philosophy, I do not think it is incorrect to say that he thought of the camera as an objective observer divorced from the subjective feelings of the character. This is why he felt the Italian neorealism movement to be the pinnacle achievement of an ontological cinema. Yep, got all that.

I am also uncertain as to what distinction you are making between the objective reality captured by the camera and an objective observance. I do not find them mutually exclusive, especially as you have pointed out in your post that the technique augments the objectivity of the camera, thus reality as it is observed. Perhaps the distinction should have been made clearer. The camera captures the objective reality, and with "objective observance" I was talking about the viewer's observance of events. So, basically all I was saying is that the state of objectivity/subjectivity of the camera and viewer are not always equal, and are very often the opposite of one another. Naturally, as in the face-bowl cut, there are also times when both camera and viewer assume the same state.

An important point must be made here, however. Bazin did not exclude or discount the filmmaker's gaze from his theory and aesthetics. The sense of reality we see is through the filmmaker's gaze. Bazin took issue with the director's desire to use lighting, montage, impressionism, or other editing techniques to de-emphasize the sense of verisimilitude in a pure cinema, not the sense of the spectator or observer. In fact, I am pretty sure Bazin considered the viewer something of a silent observer, as it were.

Yeah, I realize that, and of course we can never deal in absolutes. As much as I think Malick tries to step aside and grant Linda all perspective, we're still in Malick's perspective. And we're also still in ours. I'm just speaking in relative terms.

Anyway, I went back and reread some of Bazin's stuff because I find this an interesting topic, and here are a couple quotes from What is Cinema?.

On deep field photography:

In addition to affecting the structure of the film language, it also affects the relationships of the minds of the spectators of the image, and in consequence it influences the interpretation of the spectacle.
On depth of field, and the viewer as more than "silent observer":

It implies, consequently, both a more active mental attitude on the part of the spectator and a more positive contribution on his part to the action in progress.
...
It is from his action and his will that the meaning of the image in part derives.

transmogrifier

12-29-2007, 11:22 PM

I do not think I am taking issue with your personal preference here. I am calling into question your singular view of the tracking shot and its general function, just as I have done so with my analysis of Atonement versus the conventional opinion and my responses to others. I mean no disrespect or personal ill-will in this position. I simply enjoy a critical discussion, and I think your position is entirely relevant to the discussion and my initial analysis. Secondly, the examples you used did not include multiple perspectives, so I thought you were speaking specifically about POV shots.

As for The Player, how are you so sure the intention is not to put us on the studio back-lot? (Ironically, I think that was precisely Robert Altman's intention with this shot, and possibly the film.) .

To tell the truth, I don't really understand what you are arguing with the rest of the paragraph, as it seems sometimes you were disagreeing with me, only to agree in the very next sentence. But I would argue that it wasn't Altman's intention to realistically place the audience onto a studio backlot, if only because the tracking shot starts with a clapperboard with "The Player" written on it being snaped shut, and the cry of "Action" being used. Realism, it is not.

Izzy Black

12-30-2007, 07:28 PM

Dig Tarr. Think he's doing great things for cinema. A plastic philosopher in his own right.

It is interesting that you find his philosophy mutually exclusive with his cinema, but we will leave that for another day.

I don't think I'm misunderstanding him, though my wording could have been clearer. I should have said something like "the objective realism" emphasizes our own subjectivity. Hmm, I keep trying to think of ways to not write at length, but I guess I'll have to spend some time doing so. Bazin illustrates what I'm talking about by discussing the Kuleshov effect. Cutting from a face to a bowl is a very objective move for a filmmaker. There is very little to be drawn from the cut, other than that the man is hungry. Now, there are complications, as the shot could be from the man's POV, etc. But allow me to forgo examining every permutation. The cut also detracts from Bazin's sense of realism, because it disrupts the flow of time. So, the shot has a heightened sense of objectivity to it (there is little room for ambiguity), which in turn suppresses the subjective interpretation of the viewer. Cause and effect.

The shot you reference is a montage sequence that underscores the power of cinema's control and juxtaposition. Similarly, a director like Eisenstein, of course, embodies the very opposite of Bazinian theory. His montage brings forth a sense of certainty, artificial mood, emphasis, and control that is the antithesis to Bazinian realism. It is subjective insofar as Eisenstein is distorting reality. The use of terms like 'reality' and 'objective' are almost always for talking about the filmmaker’s subjective point-of-view versus the objective realism of a disinterested camera.

Now, Bazin also discusses deep field photography as combined with the long take. This, to obviously simplify, is his ideal aesthetic. It imbues the image with what he calls an objective realism. Because of this, the ambiguities of reality are more likely to appear on the screen. The viewer is ambivalent. Where does one look? What objects are important? What can be disregarded? What does a certain facial expression mean? Perhaps instead of just a cut from a man's face to a bowl, we have both face and bowl in frame. Now the man could be hungry, but he could also be musing about something else. The viewer is unsure, though the camera has recorded an objective image. It is the objective realism of the image as recorded by the camera that causes the viewer's own subjective experience.

I see where you are going with this. It seems you are emphasizing another point that really does not contest with my original thesis. The freedom of the eye to wander seems more relative than a more controlled cinema, but Bazin's antithesis to a subjective cinema was not based on the viewer's subjective experience. He was for destroying a subjective emphasis on a particular character or the director's point-of-view that would decide for us what to think, see, and feel. This is called subjective because it is a subjective portrait of reality. In Bazinian cinema, the idea of depth-of-field and extended takes would capture reality as it is, and thus, the subjective experience of the observer necessarily entails that our eye can wander across the frame and make sense of things as they are important. In Bazin's view, he very likely thought that we would treat action in the frame as we do action in reality. We cognitively make sense of what is important and what is not, and how each thing relates to the other.

We don't see him because the eye is overwhelmed by the freedom. The workers are generally in focus. You're right about the wide lens use. Pretty sure that's what I said originally.

I do not think we are quite overwhelmed by the freedom. In Bazin's cinema, he offers for a controlled anthropomorphization mise-en-scene and use of close-ups, and he assumes that we should treat the frame just as we treat reality. We are not overwhelmed by our daily lens, but we do have the freedom to look around and let it resonate. It is rare, I think, that I have watched a cinema where I missed out on the important action due to the wide-lens. Now, I am not saying the experience is not subjective or that there is just as much freedom in a controlled cinema, but that it is not quite overwhelming as you imply.

Alright. I think I took issue because you explicitly said the film is noted for its objectivity, which I found false, or at least drastically incomplete.

Well, I specifically said that the effect "creates a sense of floating or omniscience, despite the character's experience." The objective reality is emphasized rather than the authoritarian point-of-view of a specific character. This has been my thesis since the beginning on the objectivity of the tracking shot.

Perhaps the distinction should have been made clearer. The camera captures the objective reality, and with "objective observance" I was talking about the viewer's observance of events. So, basically all I was saying is that the state of objectivity/subjectivity of the camera and viewer are not always equal, and are very often the opposite of one another. Naturally, as in the face-bowl cut, there are also times when both camera and viewer assume the same state.

Yes, when I say objective observer I refer to the objectivity of the camera that divorces us from a specific point-of-view. It observes objectivity without specific interest. The cognitive viewer observes subjectivity insofar as it is their own experience, but they are still the distant observer invited into the frame. The experience of the curious and observational individual is preserved in the objective portrait of reality. If it was destroyed, then realism is lost. I take no issue with that.

Anyway, I went back and reread some of Bazin's stuff because I find this an interesting topic, and here are a couple quotes from What is Cinema?.

On deep field photography:

On depth of field, and the viewer as more than "silent observer"

I do not take any major contention with the quotes, despite the obvious contextual use. The notion of a silent observer is not to destroy the experience of the individual, but that we are a third party observing the action as it goes on rather than being forced into the point-of-view or perspective of a specific character in the film. If you walk into a party and you do not participate in the action but observe it, there is still certainly a personal experience in your observation. The observer, or to observe, connotes the experience and freedom of the individual.

Duncan

12-31-2007, 12:54 AM

It is interesting that you find his philosophy mutually exclusive with his cinema, but we will leave that for another day. Condescending remarks are not necessary. Obviously I'm not stupid enough to say that his philosophy and cinema are mutually exclusive, so why suggest it?

The shot you reference is a montage sequence that underscores the power of cinema's control and juxtaposition. Similarly, a director like Eisenstein, of course, embodies the very opposite of Bazinian theory. His montage brings forth a sense of certainty, artificial mood, emphasis, and control that is the antithesis to Bazinian realism. It is subjective insofar as Eisenstein is distorting reality. The use of terms like 'reality' and 'objective' are almost always for talking about the filmmaker’s subjective point-of-view versus the objective realism of a disinterested camera. Right, and I'm saying there's more complexity to those terms than that, and using them so rigidly restricts the discussion.

I see where you are going with this. It seems you are emphasizing another point that really does not contest with my original thesis. The freedom of the eye to wander seems more relative than a more controlled cinema, but Bazin's antithesis to a subjective cinema was not based on the viewer's subjective experience. He was for destroying a subjective emphasis on a particular character or the director's point-of-view that would decide for us what to think, see, and feel. This is called subjective because it is a subjective portrait of reality. In Bazinian cinema, the idea of depth-of-field and extended takes would capture reality as it is, and thus, the subjective experience of the observer necessarily entails that our eye can wander across the frame and make sense of things as they are important. In Bazin's view, he very likely thought that we would treat action in the frame as we do action in reality. We cognitively make sense of what is important and what is not, and how each thing relates to the other. I don't actually remember what you're original thesis was, but yeah, you are correctly summarizing some of the man's thoughts.

I do not think we are quite overwhelmed by the freedom. In Bazin's cinema, he offers for a controlled anthropomorphization mise-en-scene and use of close-ups, and he assumes that we should treat the frame just as we treat reality. We are not overwhelmed by our daily lens, but we do have the freedom to look around and let it resonate. It is rare, I think, that I have watched a cinema where I missed out on the important action due to the wide-lens. Now, I am not saying the experience is not subjective or that there is just as much freedom in a controlled cinema, but that it is not quite overwhelming as you imply. Pretty sure we're saying the same thing here. A semantic disagreement. Consider this exchange from Il Deserto Rosso.

Giuliana: I feel my eyes tearing up. What should I do with my eyes? What should I watch?
Corrado Zeller: You ask what you should watch. I ask how I should live. It's the same thing.

Those are loaded statements, but suffice to say I would consider Giuliana overwhelmed. Anyway, not that important to me.

Well, I specifically said that the effect "creates a sense of floating or omniscience, despite the character's experience." The objective reality is emphasized rather than the authoritarian point-of-view of a specific character. This has been my thesis since the beginning on the objectivity of the tracking shot. I still think you're oversimplifying the interplay of subjectivity and objectivity in this particular film. It uses something similar to a Bazinian aesthetic to create an objective reality, but the film is definitely from the subjective POV of one character (though I would not go so far as to call it "authoritarian"). The film does not emphasize the objective reality over the subjective observance of that reality. Both are essential. In describing this phenomenon I find what I have read of Bazin, at the risk of opening a can of worms, somewhat insufficient.

Yes, when I say objective observer I refer to the objectivity of the camera that divorces us from a specific point-of-view. It observes objectivity without specific interest. The cognitive viewer observes subjectivity insofar as it is their own experience, but they are still the distant observer invited into the frame. The experience of the curious and observational individual is preserved in the objective portrait of reality. If it was destroyed, then realism is lost. I take no issue with that.
OK. I would also add, then, that the camera's POV is not necessarily the film's POV. I consider the camera a separate and intermediate strata of subjectivity/objectivity. To use Days of Heaven as an example once again, the film is shot largely in the Bazinian aesthetic (showing an objective reality), but through other narrative elements it assumes a subjective point of view. The voice over, the elegiac score, the hushed, remembered tones of conversations, the persistent use of the past tense, the lack of sexuality, the final photo in the opening credits - all suggest that the film is from Linda's perspective. I agree with Bazin that the aesthetic he describes comes closest to an objective reality, but I do not agree that this aesthetic serves to "[destroy] a subjective emphasis on a particular character." In fact, it can have the exact opposite effect as in the case of Days of Heaven where the filmed objective reality serves to further our immersion in a particular character's subjective experience of it.

I do not take any major contention with the quotes, despite the obvious contextual use. The notion of a silent observer is not to destroy the experience of the individual, but that we are a third party observing the action as it goes on rather than being forced into the point-of-view or perspective of a specific character in the film. If you walk into a party and you do not participate in the action but observe it, there is still certainly a personal experience in your observation. The observer, or to observe, connotes the experience and freedom of the individual.
OK.

Izzy Black

12-31-2007, 02:51 AM

Condescending remarks are not necessary. Obviously I'm not stupid enough to say that his philosophy and cinema are mutually exclusive, so why suggest it?

I think I mistook the intent of the equivocal use of "plastic" in this sentence. I responded under the assumption that by plastic philosopher you meant a superficial one, but I understand you may have been using plastic in its alternate adjective form to praise him.

Right, and I'm saying there's more complexity to those terms than that, and using them so rigidly restricts the discussion.

The mistake I am sure you are making here is claiming that I have somehow used these terms rigidly. It seems, by your own admission, you came into this thread in media res and, as I would presume, taken a particular passage out of the context of my original argument. If you read the supported examples in all of my posts you would see I never suggested the use of objectivity and subjectivity to connote the spectator's personal experience, but in the context of the cinematic point-of-view of the character's experience. I have emphasized this many times over. I do not deny the use of these words with their variable meanings, but I am extracting them from a specific critical context that should only be understood within that context of this analysis and discussion. The terms in themselves imply very little without their respective context.

I don't actually remember what you're original thesis was, but yeah, you are correctly summarizing some of the man's thoughts.

The most of which is probably best gathered form my original post.

Pretty sure we're saying the same thing here. A semantic disagreement. Consider this exchange from Il Deserto Rosso.

Giuliana: I feel my eyes tearing up. What should I do with my eyes? What should I watch?
Corrado Zeller: You ask what you should watch. I ask how I should live. It's the same thing.

Those are loaded statements, but suffice to say I would consider Giuliana overwhelmed. Anyway, not that important to me.

I am not precisely sure what to make of those comments as proper analogies to the discussion at hand, so I'll defer on that point, but one interesting, albeit trivial point is that Il Deserto rosso was Antonioni's first film shot on a telephoto lens, which allowed him to use shallow depth with a colored mise-en-scene to heighten the extremely subjective experience of the protagonist. I am aware this has nothing to do with the point you are attempting to establish from the quotes, but I find the dialectic ironically interesting to note.

I still think you're oversimplifying the interplay of subjectivity and objectivity in this particular film. It uses something similar to a Bazinian aesthetic to create an objective reality, but the film is definitely from the subjective POV of one character (though I would not go so far as to call it "authoritarian"). The film does not emphasize the objective reality over the subjective observance of that reality. Both are essential. In describing this phenomenon I find what I have read of Bazin, at the risk of opening a can of worms, somewhat insufficient.

It is somewhat frustrating you insist on emphasizing the film's subjective dynamic, one of which I never denied, since I even agreed with this aspect in the post to which you have responded. The POV in this film certainly is not authoritarian, because it is not defined by the specific technique I was referring to in terms of the distant Steadicam sequences. It is entirely a mistake to assume that I have discounted the subjective element of this film. It is clear to me that this film is of some personal interest of yours, and I suppose, as a result, you observed a single reference that I made briefly for establishing a larger point to kick off a discussion about the film's broader subjective element. I admire the persistence, but I think I clarified my position with this statement: "The emphasis was merely on the sense of objectivity captured by the camera throughout the film as unrelated to other subjective cues (or juxtaposed with them, as it creates a sense of dissonance or ambivalence)". Yes, the film contrasts the distant observations of the camera with the other subjective cues in the film to explore its themes, or perhaps it does something else entirely, I am not sure, nor terribly interested, since it was not the topic of my analysis.

OK. I would also add, then, that the camera's POV is not necessarily the film's POV. I consider the camera a separate and intermediate strata of subjectivity/objectivity. To use Days of Heaven as an example once again, the film is shot largely in the Bazinian aesthetic (showing an objective reality), but through other narrative elements it assumes a subjective point of view. The voice over, the elegiac score, the hushed, remembered tones of conversations, the persistent use of the past tense, the lack of sexuality, the final photo in the opening credits - all suggest that the film is from Linda's perspective. I agree with Bazin that the aesthetic he describes comes closest to an objective reality, but I do not agree that this aesthetic serves to "[destroy] a subjective emphasis on a particular character." In fact, it can have the exact opposite effect as in the case of Days of Heaven where the filmed objective reality serves to further our immersion in a particular character's subjective experience of it.

Again, read above. I respect Days of Heaven, it is a good film, but I was never calling into question its broader thematic and technical structure. If it was incorrect to use a technique in this film as an isolated example divorced from the rest of the film, then ignore the reference altogether. It makes no bearing on my argument whether Days of Heaven accomplishes this feat, as I was referencing the film very liberally.

Duncan

12-31-2007, 03:27 AM

I think I mistook the intent of the equivocal use of "plastic" in this sentence. I responded under the assumption that by plastic philosopher you meant a superficial one, but I understand you may have been using plastic in its alternate adjective form to praise him. I just meant that he uses the plastics of film to philosophize.

The mistake I am sure you are making here is claiming that I have somehow used these terms rigidly. It seems, by your own admission, you came into this thread in media res and, as I would presume, taken a particular passage out of the context of my original argument. If you read the supported examples in all of my posts you would see I never suggested the use of objectivity and subjectivity to connote the spectator's personal experience, but in the context of the cinematic point-of-view of the character's experience. I have emphasized this many times over. I do not deny the use of these words with their variable meanings, but I am extracting them from a specific critical context that should only be understood within that context of this analysis and discussion. The terms in themselves imply very little without their respective context. I think perhaps my problem is more with the context, then with how you use them. Like I said, I sometimes find Bazin's theories insufficient. But I have hardly read everything the man wrote.

The most of which is probably best gathered form my original post. Just fyi, I've read everything you've written in this thread. If I forget exactly what your original thesis is it's probably because 1) I read your original post a few days ago, 2) I haven't seen the film it primarily discusses.

I am not precisely sure what to make of those comments as proper analogies to the discussion at hand, so I'll defer on that point, but one interesting, albeit trivial point is that Il Deserto rosso was Antonioni's first film shot on a telephoto lens, which allowed him to use shallow depth with a colored mise-en-scene to heighten the extremely subjective experience of the protagonist. I am aware this has nothing to do with the point you are attempting to establish from the quotes, but I find the dialectic ironically interesting to note. I was not aware it was his first film shot with a telephoto lens, but I do enjoy the film's intense subjectivity. Especially that sex scene with the wild camera angles and clashing of colors.

It is somewhat frustrating you insist on emphasizing the film's subjective dynamic, one of which I never denied, since I even agreed with this aspect in the post to which you have responded. The POV in this film certainly is not authoritarian, because it is not defined by the specific technique I was referring to in terms of the distant Steadicam sequences. It is entirely a mistake to assume that I have discounted the subjective element of this film. It is clear to me that this film is of some personal interest of yours, and I suppose, as a result, you observed a single reference that I made briefly for establishing a larger point to kick off a discussion about the film's broader subjective element. I admire the persistence, but I think I clarified my position with this statement: "The emphasis was merely on the sense of objectivity captured by the camera throughout the film as unrelated to other subjective cues (or juxtaposed with them, as it creates a sense of dissonance or ambivalence)". Yes, the film contrasts the distant observations of the camera with the other subjective cues in the film to explore its themes, or perhaps it does something else entirely, I am not sure, nor terribly interested, since it was not the topic of my analysis.

Again, read above. I respect Days of Heaven, it is a good film, but I was never calling into question its broader thematic and technical structure. If it was incorrect to use a technique in this film as an isolated example divorced from the rest of the film, then ignore the reference altogether. It makes no bearing on my argument whether Days of Heaven accomplishes this feat, as I was referencing the film very liberally.

Days of Heaven is certainly one of my favorite films, so I do enjoy discussing it. At present, I am in the backwoods of Canada, and Atonement has not opened here. It might never open here. But when I do see it I'll reread your original post and let you know what I think.

Izzy Black

12-31-2007, 06:06 AM

I just meant that he uses the plastics of film to philosophize.

Ah.

I think perhaps my problem is more with the context, then with how you use them. Like I said, I sometimes find Bazin's theories insufficient. But I have hardly read everything the man wrote.

Bazin's theories are quite limited, especially since they are decades old and cinema has developed and changed so much. Imagine what Bazin would have thought of the French New Wave? A movement he heavily inspired but died a year or so just before Chabrol unveiled a new experimental aesthetic to the world. Bazin is best for deconstructive purposes. This is why my assessment of Atonement is based on this desconstructive understanding of a subjective/objective cinema.

Just fyi, I've read everything you've written in this thread. If I forget exactly what your original thesis is it's probably because 1) I read your original post a few days ago, 2) I haven't seen the film it primarily discusses.

No problem.

I was not aware it was his first film shot with a telephoto lens, but I do enjoy the film's intense subjectivity. Especially that sex scene with the wild camera angles and clashing of colors.

Indeed. Antonioni is actually my favorite director. I consider Il Deserto rosso a masterpiece. He even used paint to color the environment to capture a certain look and mood to the film, a tactic which he would employ again with Blow Up.

Days of Heaven is certainly one of my favorite films, so I do enjoy discussing it. At present, I am in the backwoods of Canada, and Atonement has not opened here. It might never open here. But when I do see it I'll reread your original post and let you know what I think.

I definitely look forward to your reflections. I imagine my position is probably more unconventional than most people's understanding, but I am sure you will have some new thoughts to add to the discussion.

Kurosawa Fan

01-13-2008, 04:11 PM

My wife and I traveled across many lands to find this film, and succeeded last night. The search was long and hard, but worth it.

I liked it a lot, more than most it would seem. It has its faults, particularly the disjointed feel of the war scenes, but the first and third act are so fantastic I didn't mind (and to be honest, I thought the war moments dragged a bit in the novel as well). McAvoy really impressed me, more so than anyone else in the picture. Between this and Last King of Scotland, he's become quite an impressive talent. I loved the score (especially the typewriter), loved the cinematography (even the perfume commercial scene that Nick was speaking of, as I'm sure that was Robbie fantasizing about Cee), and particularly loved the direction.

I know the tracking shot has been the subject of scrutiny, but viewing it as someone who knew the end of the film (having read the novel), I thought it was brilliant. Once you realize that this is the last place that Robbie will ever see, that he's going to die on that beach, I think it's incredibly powerful to take in those surroundings and see just how much damage Briony did. We don't get to see him in jail, don't get any battle scenes in war. Instead, Wright gives us the scope of his despair in that tracking shot.

It wasn't the best film of the year, but it still lived up to the novel, and to my expectations.

Sycophant

01-13-2008, 07:58 PM

I know the tracking shot has been the subject of scrutiny, but viewing it as someone who knew the end of the film (having read the novel), I thought it was brilliant. Once you realize that this is the last place that Robbie will ever see, that he's going to die on that beach, I think it's incredibly powerful to take in those surroundings and see just how much damage Briony did. We don't get to see him in jail, don't get any battle scenes in war. Instead, Wright gives us the scope of his despair in that tracking shot.
I largely agree with you on this. For me, the tracking shot was absolutely thrilling and harrowing and pretty expertly done. Really, my only qualm with it was the way it lingered at the end. It was a few frames or seconds too many, and I believe McAvoy's character had already wandered off screen. Perhaps I'm wrong and misread that last part, but it hung too long at the end with its big reveal.

Duncan

01-22-2008, 03:25 AM

After recently watching both this film and Once, I have come to the conclusion that directors should just avoid filming happy scenes on beaches. Not that the scene in question is entirely happy or anything, but still - enough playing with waves already.

Overall, I think my opinion is pretty standard. The first act was masterful, but things go awry from there. One moment that bothered me was the over emphasis on the line "I promise I won't make a sound ever again." That's not an exact quote, but it was one of those blatant foreshadowing! techniques. Even with that scene in Cecilia's apartment, I was still waiting for the narrative to come back to that moment and inform me that Robbie had died. Structurally, I just don't think the film holds up. The temporal leaps have a jarring staccato effect that are totally contrary to the film's shiny, fluid aesthetic. I think it's mostly an editing issue. The film can't dance. It's got no rhythm.

I suppose I'm also obliged to comment on that central long take. I certainly don't think it was pointless. I think it was trying to suggest a continuity of existence, and an inter-subjective relationship between Robbie, his two war pals, and the rest of the soldiers on the beach. The pov alternates fluidly, sometimes very specifically assuming a character's perspective, sometimes taking a broader perspective. The camera finally takes its place as another anonymous pub goer looking out on the chaos. It's like traveling down the spine of a coiled snake, each vertebrae being a different realm of emotion and relative reference frame. I think its problem is that it is too full of cues that actually give the effect of montage. For example, the shooting of the horses, the twirling on the merry-go-round, and the choir singing all feel vastly separate from one another. The shot is very quantified, and I think somewhat undermines its ambition by comparing different aspects of human existence in ways that do not wholly distinguish themselves from a cut. A movement or pan in this case is not so different from an Eisensteinian cut.

What the shot reminded me most of was the ending of Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. I think the themes are similar, if not identical. Kubrick, however, executes the scene much more successfully. There is the same interplay between intense subjectivity (Joker's narration) and anonymity (the soldiers are silhouetted); there is the same contrast between choral singing (Mickey Mouse song) and massive destruction (fires in the background); and, of course, it makes the same or similar comments on the difficulty of perseverance amidst the destruction and absurdity of war. There are actually a few cuts in Kubrick's scene, but the difference is that these do not disrupt the simultaneity of ideas whereas Wright's tracking does. Wright goes from one idea to the next. Kubrick does it all at once. I find this technique much more rewarding.

Now that I reflect a little more, I'm not so sure I liked the first act that much either. There are a lot of coincidences, which is something I usually dislike in films. The situation is too patly constructed in order to ensure the both Briony's and her family's misinterpretation of the situation. That might be McEwan's doing. I dunno. Haven't read the book.

DavidSeven

01-29-2008, 11:25 PM

Just saw this a couple of days ago, and it's settling nicely. I'm still unsure of how I'd rate it (probably around three stars), and I can't necessarily dispute the criticisms that I've read in this thread. The war section did seem tiresome even though it appears that Wright did his best to rush through it. The ending was mostly well done, but not as devastating as I would have hoped. I loved the aesthetic and the performances. The two actresses who played the younger versions of Briony were particularly strong. The criticism that I mostly take issue with is that the film is over-produced. To me, "over-produced" should be reserved for aesthetic styles similar to the Chris Nolans, Bryan Singers, Marc Forsters, and other successful Hollywood filmmakers of the world where the product, while shot nicely enough, looks totally sterile. Wright's style is completely alive.

I like what Josh Brolin said a couple days ago at the SAG awards about there being a number of films released this year that challenged storytelling principles and that are frightening the studio system. While Atonement is superficial in many respects, it still has to be admired for the original spin it put on its narrative. My three most anticipated films of 2007 were probably Atonement, There Will Be Blood, and No Country for Old Men. These were arguably the three most critically acclaimed releases of last year. Each film challenged conventional storytelling while simultaneously adhering to mostly traditional narrative structure. While I wasn't overwhelmed by any of these films, I like the direction they're steering the industry toward. The successes of all three is huge.

Cherish

02-01-2008, 12:34 PM

I know the tracking shot has been the subject of scrutiny, but viewing it as someone who knew the end of the film (having read the novel), I thought it was brilliant. Once you realize that this is the last place that Robbie will ever see, that he's going to die on that beach, I think it's incredibly powerful to take in those surroundings and see just how much damage Briony did. We don't get to see him in jail, don't get any battle scenes in war. Instead, Wright gives us the scope of his despair in that tracking shot. This is exactly what I thought! I don't know enough about filming techniques to get taken out of the movie by one. All I know is that I felt uneasy and disoriented in that scene, as Robbie must have.

Ezee E

02-01-2008, 04:50 PM

Y'know. The long tracking shot gets the most criticisms, but the shot that weirded me out the most, and I forgot about it until now, was the "reverse" shot. Hmm... Mmm'kay. What's the point of that?

DavidSeven

02-01-2008, 05:00 PM

Y'know. The long tracking shot gets the most criticisms, but the shot that weirded me out the most, and I forgot about it until now, was the "reverse" shot. Hmm... Mmm'kay. What's the point of that?

Are you talking about a specific shot/reverse shot or the sequence that's played backwards?

Ezee E

02-01-2008, 05:14 PM

Are you talking about a specific shot/reverse shot or the sequence that's played backwards?
The sequence that goes backwards.

Bosco B Thug

02-01-2008, 05:41 PM

The sequence that goes backwards. Another of the film's hackneyed, possibly constructive but too uneven, attempts at subjective flourish. I think this scene works pretty well, though, I'd say it's more emotionally linked to Robbie's fading mind than the Dunkirk bit. It's a bit predictable, should've been mounted and integrated, I dunno, just better (which is just me telling myself again the movie as a whole should've been just better), but I recall welcoming it when it came up in the film.

Raiders

02-01-2008, 06:15 PM

I don't know if anyone has read (or posted) this interview, but the first page covers both of the complaints mentioned recently (the backwards scene and the beach one-shot).

http://www.orange.co.uk/entertainment/film/20853.htm?linkfrom=%3C!--linkfromvariable--%3E&link=link_2&article=entertainmentfilmclips atonement

The book is very visual so therefore I tried to make an almost literal adaptation of the book. When we got to a passage in the book like Robbie in the cellar, for instance, and there's this little sequence that talks about going back to before it all happened, we literally ran the film backwards!

I find this a little troublesome, but his explanation for the impetus of the beach scene is pretty revealing, I think. I really wish he could have had more of the monotonous tracking shots he apparently wanted. I think it could have added a more oppressive, hopeless atmosphere that the beach scene hit home.

Bosco B Thug

02-02-2008, 03:52 AM

I don't know if anyone has read (or posted) this interview, but the first page covers both of the complaints mentioned recently (the backwards scene and the beach one-shot).

http://www.orange.co.uk/entertainment/film/20853.htm?linkfrom=%3C!--linkfromvariable--%3E&link=link_2&article=entertainmentfilmclips atonement

I find this a little troublesome, but his explanation for the impetus of the beach scene is pretty revealing, I think. I really wish he could have had more of the monotonous tracking shots he apparently wanted. I think it could have added a more oppressive, hopeless atmosphere that the beach scene hit home. Yeah, this:
It's a scene about wastefulness – of human life, of animal life, of machines, of industry, of everything… even Bibles were being thrown on the fire so the Germans couldn't use them. is pretty cool. Makes me almost like the scene.

But then his answer to the 2nd question is filled with ehhhhs.

I really wish I liked this film, but it just seems more and more garrishly superficial and misguided whenever I think back on it. You know, I should experiment: read Pride & Prejudice and then re-watch his film version (which I thought was wonderful), to see if his approach to literary adaptation is similar and if P&P '05 can stand the test that 'Atonement' didn't.

Morris Schæffer

02-18-2008, 07:03 PM

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2007/07/25/atonement460.jpg

Two viewings and there's no doubt. My first 4-star movie of 2007 has finally arrived. Finally!! Unforgettable! All of it! For a dude who couldn't finish the novel - I think I gave up at around page 65 if you can believe that sort of thing - this was a whopper of an uppercut that I really hadn't anticipated. I dug the trailer a great deal so I wasn't really apprehensive, but Wright's second might be one of the most powerful romances I've ever had the pleasure to watch. Heck, it might sit lonely at the top even.

Difficult to put into words why exactly this had such a profound impact on me, bu I'll give it a shot. Certainly, I think the second half is just as mesmerizing as the first and perhaps even more so. Yeah, I recall something I said a few years ago to Father Barry about WW2 being my favorite kind of war, but this isn't war at its most brutally and triumphantly heroic, but at its most haunting and majestically sweeping. Even a sequence such as Robbie and cohorts stumbling onto a mass grave possesses an ethereal quality that left me in utter awe. The complaints about the second half, most of which I've read in this thread, have perplexed me a little. Is it wrong of Wright to expand the Celia/Robbie narrative beyond their mere romance? Was it a bad move to show the larger canvas? I would have agreed almost certainly if Wright had inserted a bunch of shootouts with German soldiers, but for my money there isn't a shot wasted if you ask me. Robbie's trek through European battlefields remains suffused with an ever-present sense of longing, of returning, of re-connecting with the love of his life. The scene at Dunkirk, one of the very best of the year, may have been about human waste as Wright claims, but I also sensed an unmistakable presence of unity, of connection, of camaraderie as the camera took it all in with beatific elegance. The choir at the chapel, the symbolic reconnection with the black soldier as Boner has said in this same thread, the odd sight of a functioning Ferris wheel perhaps conveying the idea that life will go on, that Robbie will persevere, that disconnection is only momentary in this case etc.. Eh guys, this is overhelmingly brilliant filmmaking. "Elegy for Dunkirk" is the name of track 10 on the soundtrack and that's not a misnomer.

I love the whole damn thing though, but particularly succesful is just how well all three time periods work. Sometimes a film will jump forward in time and the illusion of watching the same person isn't preserved to its fullest extent, but no such issues here. Romola Garai and finally Vanessa Redgrave are near-perfect matches to take the baton from Saoirse Ronan and it's these final moments, when the elderly Briony talks about her book, and reveals the tragic fates of Robbie and Cee, a denouement that for some reason came out of left field (blame the ferris wheel!), that left me totally devastated and sealed the proverbial deal.

Remarkable too: Marianelli's score, especially Briony's theme which is flighty, but also with a twinge of something foreboding, a sense that mischief is around the corner by way of the churning mind of a far-too precocious child.
I hope the Italian wins best score and I hope that Atonement wins best picture or I just might switch to the anti-Juno camp. Still, I'm seeing There will be Blood this weekend before the Oscars so that might pull an upset, but I'd be surprised if that happened. Man, I love this!

Izzy Black

02-18-2008, 10:51 PM

Overall, I think my opinion is pretty standard. The first act was masterful, but things go awry from there. One moment that bothered me was the over emphasis on the line "I promise I won't make a sound ever again." That's not an exact quote, but it was one of those blatant foreshadowing! techniques. Even with that scene in Cecilia's apartment, I was still waiting for the narrative to come back to that moment and inform me that Robbie had died. Structurally, I just don't think the film holds up. The temporal leaps have a jarring staccato effect that are totally contrary to the film's shiny, fluid aesthetic. I think it's mostly an editing issue. The film can't dance. It's got no rhythm.

I missed the foreshadowing there. As for the pace, I am always skeptical when I see a criticism of a film for lacking rhythm - in part because I am not sure what that should even mean (does improv Jazz lack rhythm?), but more importantly, why should a film need rhythm? Therefore, a few things must be considered. First, the film is cut up in three different eras of time. This necessarily requires jump-cuts that will invariably lead to a different tone in line with the corresponding acts. It sprawls more like a novel. A film like Hsiao-Hsien Hou's Three Times has an extremely fluid, smooth aesthetic, but it is cut up in three parts with slightly different change in tone; as a result, many critics write off the last two acts as being at odds with the more waif-life and languid first act. I think a negative criticism of this is problematic for several reasons, but primarily it adheres to a certain tradition of filmmaking that denies any real progression or change in tone. It is a type of authoritarian limitation that I do not think quite complements an artistic vision. It is true it would be problematic if the supposed staccato effect was functionless, but in the case of Atonement, the temporality and constant change is a core theme to the film's structural story dynamic.

I suppose I'm also obliged to comment on that central long take. I certainly don't think it was pointless. I think it was trying to suggest a continuity of existence, and an inter-subjective relationship between Robbie, his two war pals, and the rest of the soldiers on the beach. The pov alternates fluidly, sometimes very specifically assuming a character's perspective, sometimes taking a broader perspective. The camera finally takes its place as another anonymous pub goer looking out on the chaos. It's like traveling down the spine of a coiled snake, each vertebrae being a different realm of emotion and relative reference frame. I think its problem is that it is too full of cues that actually give the effect of montage. For example, the shooting of the horses, the twirling on the merry-go-round, and the choir singing all feel vastly separate from one another. The shot is very quantified, and I think somewhat undermines its ambition by comparing different aspects of human existence in ways that do not wholly distinguish themselves from a cut. A movement or pan in this case is not so different from an Eisensteinian cut.

I am not necessarily sure I consider a montage effect here a bad thing.

What the shot reminded me most of was the ending of Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. I think the themes are similar, if not identical. Kubrick, however, executes the scene much more successfully. There is the same interplay between intense subjectivity (Joker's narration) and anonymity (the soldiers are silhouetted); there is the same contrast between choral singing (Mickey Mouse song) and massive destruction (fires in the background); and, of course, it makes the same or similar comments on the difficulty of perseverance amidst the destruction and absurdity of war. There are actually a few cuts in Kubrick's scene, but the difference is that these do not disrupt the simultaneity of ideas whereas Wright's tracking does. Wright goes from one idea to the next. Kubrick does it all at once. I find this technique much more rewarding.

Kubrick's shot is at an advantage due to its vie at realism; Wright's shot is trying something else altogether - a kind of subjective dreamscape reality that scans the course aftermath in a single temporal engagement. Its staginess and theatricality is necessarily entailed in a single take - and the same approach is taken in the first act of the film with the cuts and counter-perspective; all of this underscores the dreamscape or the conception of a memory being recalled. The effect here, then, is not exclusive to the obvious theme as Kubrick's - the contextual lens must be considered; as Kubrick's realism underscores the dramatic intensity of his characterizations, Wright's expressionism underscores the subjectivity of his narrator.

Now that I reflect a little more, I'm not so sure I liked the first act that much either. There are a lot of coincidences, which is something I usually dislike in films. The situation is too patly constructed in order to ensure the both Briony's and her family's misinterpretation of the situation. That might be McEwan's doing. I dunno. Haven't read the book.

I am not sure about this idea of ensuring of misinterpretation. Did Briony's family really misinterpret what happened? Did Briony even? Yes, she did not quite comprehend what had occurred - but she knew what had actually happened and she lied. The entire tale seems to be compensating for this lie, where Briony envisions a reconceived world where everything is indebted to interconnectedness, responsibility, and atonement -- a self-assuring world, and more importantly, the tragedy and almost meaninglessness of a life-lived in the objective world. The shifting perspectives and points-of-view, the backtracking, revisionism, and lingering camera gives the film a slower, disjointed pace and challenges us to strongly consider the authenticity of what is on the screen. This is where the significance of the film's metafiction arises; thus, I am not of the opinion that the experiments in narrative here are for either superficial or accidental purposes - I find it an authentic postmodern tale of elderly regret.

Duncan

02-19-2008, 03:56 AM

I missed the foreshadowing there. As for the pace, I am always skeptical when I see a criticism of a film for lacking rhythm - in part because I am not sure what that should even mean (does improv Jazz lack rhythm?), but more importantly, why should a film need rhythm? Therefore, a few things must be considered. First, the film is cut up in three different eras of time. This necessarily requires jump-cuts that will invariably lead to a different tone in line with the corresponding acts. It sprawls more like a novel. A film like Hsiao-Hsien Hou's Three Times has an extremely fluid, smooth aesthetic, but it is cut up in three parts with slightly different change in tone; as a result, many critics write off the last two acts as being at odds with the more waif-life and languid first act. I think a negative criticism of this is problematic for several reasons, but primarily it adheres to a certain tradition of filmmaking that denies any real progression or change in tone. It is a type of authoritarian limitation that I do not think quite complements an artistic vision. It is true it would be problematic if the supposed staccato effect was functionless, but in the case of Atonement, the temporality and constant change is a core theme to the film's structural story dynamic. I've got nothing at all against changes in tone. The ending of There Will Be Blood, for example, leaps ahead in time and adopts a drastically different tone than much of the film. That sequence worked perfectly well for me. Atonement's leaps in time bring the film to a lurching halt that seems contradictory to its overall aesthetic. Perhaps this feeling is intended as some post-modern commentary on narrative drive, but I considered it a mild case of incompetence.

Kubrick's shot is at an advantage due to its vie at realism; Wright's shot is trying something else altogether - a kind of subjective dreamscape reality that scans the course aftermath in a single temporal engagement. Its staginess and theatricality is necessarily entailed in a single take - and the same approach is taken in the first act of the film with the cuts and counter-perspective; all of this underscores the dreamscape or the conception of a memory being recalled. The effect here, then, is not exclusive to the obvious theme as Kubrick's - the contextual lens must be considered; as Kubrick's realism underscores the dramatic intensity of his characterizations, Wright's expressionism underscores the subjectivity of his narrator. Disagree with most of this stuff. Kubrick's sequence (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmILOL55xP0) seems very much more like subjective dreamscape that you're describing. There are explicit references to childhood, sex, and death - all things strongly rooted in the unconscious. As for expressionism, it exists in an almost abstract landscape with deliberate interplay between light and dark. Don't think the scene is about underscoring dramatic intensity of characterizations at all. Odd that we have such completely different readings of that one.

Agree that the counter-perspective sequences earlier give the impression of memory, but I felt that the central long take had a sense of discovery to it as opposed to recollection. We're walking around with these three guys seeing and experiencing things right along with them. The lack of cuts suggests a continuity of experience and realism, whereas I would argue the successful portrayal of memory almost requires cuts and nonlinear time (Resnais' Muriel, for instance). Please note the "almost".

I am not sure about this idea of ensuring of misinterpretation. Did Briony's family really misinterpret what happened? Did Briony even? Yes, she did not quite comprehend what had occurred - but she knew what had actually happened and she lied. The entire tale seems to be compensating for this lie, where Briony envisions a reconceived world where everything is indebted to interconnectedness, responsibility, and atonement -- a self-assuring world, and more importantly, the tragedy and almost meaninglessness of a life-lived in the objective world. Briony misinterprets the letter, the incident with the vase, and the "rape" of her sister. A credit to the film, perhaps, is that we're never sure if she saw the face of the other girl's attacker/lover. Even afterwards when we see the other fellow's face we're not sure if she's manufacturing that memory.

The shifting perspectives and points-of-view, the backtracking, revisionism, and lingering camera gives the film a slower, disjointed pace and challenges us to strongly consider the authenticity of what is on the screen. This is where the significance of the film's metafiction arises; thus, I am not of the opinion that the experiments in narrative here are for either superficial or accidental purposes - I find it an authentic postmodern tale of elderly regret. Well, I think at least some of those narrative oddities were accidental. I've heard that Wright cut out a lot of the war scenes from the novel. You can feel that in the film. So we get things like the image of a bunch of dead school girls thrown in there, which is intended to evoke such and such feelings by shorthand. Or the central long take that tries so hard to sum up so much about the war. I could definitely feel the pains of adaptation throughout the film. Atonement is a long novel. Too long to include all of it in a 2 hour film. I think the result is a film made by a director interested in a fluid, languorous aesthetic, but unsure of how to handle the volume of material. And even improv jazz has its good moments and its bad moments. Sometimes the experiment works, other times it doesn't.

Rowland

02-19-2008, 08:14 PM

I'm a softie.

:cry:

Henry Gale

02-19-2008, 11:04 PM

I'm a softie.

:cry:

It would seem that I am as well.

This wasn't something I was really looking forward to seeing, but man, did it ever win me over and make me feel stupid for waiting as long as I did to see it.

dreamdead

03-08-2008, 03:01 AM

I think my feelings come closest to Raiders on this one. Wright and his cast achieve some interesting results in the adaptation, but things also go awry a few too many times. The first act feels good, though it could use more internal psychology of why Briony turns to writing (a sense of control that has been alienated from an absent father and hiding mother). There's an understanding that she mistakenly misinterprets, but again, the psychology of stories that she would have been exposed to is only given cursory, shorthand attention. The mother's resentment of Robbie is also a non-issue, when a few lines of dialogue could give her greater characterization. Also, Paul is too obviously an evil character in a film wherein narrative acts are shrunk, whereas the book allows him to creep up on the narrative much more effectively. That said, the parallelism in Robbie and Cee dressing for the evening party works quite well, and the visual ornateness here translates to a filmic approach to modernist literature rather effectively. Also, the recursive approach to filmic repetition does work quite well here.

I'm cool with the second act overall (aka willing to accept all filmic/camera explorations here as a self-indulgant postmodern approach to "literature"), and so, like Raiders, I remain stranded on the ineffectuality of the third act, where Briony remains in the hospital. Those scenes lack complexity and the masochism that is tantamount to granting Briony greater resonance than merely being a cipher for her atonement. There's more, or should be, to this role, and the book explores some of Briony's ineffectuality and failed masochism in its coda that gets shorted here simply because Briony cannot publish her writings until all parties are dead. That necessity mutes Briony's atonement and casts shades of gray over all of the discussions of "honesty" and attempts at justice. Here, those shades dissolve because the book is being published in Briony's lifetime, which renders the affair a much more wholesome and uplifting tone, even if it is being simultaneously subverted in the last frame. And so, to me, the film mutes McEwan's message and characterization of Briony, which is a detriment to the film.

So it's good and dazzling at points throughout, but thematically it feels a lot less challenging and "difficult".

Benny Profane

03-21-2008, 01:35 PM

Kurosawa Fan

03-21-2008, 07:51 PM

Great movie. Didn't think it could be adapted this well.One question though. I wasn't paying close attention to the dates of Robbie's and Cecelia's deaths. Do you think Cecilia knew of Robbie's demise before she herself perished in the subway?

My wife says that Cecelia died before Robbie in the book, and that she thinks it was the same in the film. I can't remember either way.

Silencio

03-21-2008, 09:19 PM

Great movie. Didn't think it could be adapted this well.One question though. I wasn't paying close attention to the dates of Robbie's and Cecelia's deaths. Do you think Cecilia knew of Robbie's demise before she herself perished in the subway?I can't quite remember how it is in the book, but Cecilia dies on October 15th, 1940, while Robbie died on June 1st, 1940. I don't think she would've known as the soldiers at Dunkirk had no way of communicating with anyone on the outside, apart from letters. And I believe the last letter Robbie writes to Cecilia is the one about their story being able to resume when he returns.

Yxklyx

12-02-2008, 03:01 PM

I just watched this and have also seen Pride and Prejudice. I like him as a director and he has a lot potential but I think these two scripts he had to work with are too weak. One day he'll get a very good script and then we'll have something excellent to watch.

Izzy Black

12-06-2008, 07:38 PM

Missed this one some how.

I've got nothing at all against changes in tone. The ending of There Will Be Blood, for example, leaps ahead in time and adopts a drastically different tone than much of the film. That sequence worked perfectly well for me. Atonement's leaps in time bring the film to a lurching halt that seems contradictory to its overall aesthetic. Perhaps this feeling is intended as some post-modern commentary on narrative drive, but I considered it a mild case of incompetence.

I don't follow it. The film works as a three act structure, and the acts are considerably different from each other. The aim here is no doubt an attempt to capture the expansiveness of the novel, so I am not quite convinced that these structuring dynamics are illustrative of incompetence. The stylistic differences between each section are not just clear but pronounced. The ubiquitous shifting perspectives in the first act are dropped out for a longer middle sequence that is more concerned with the dramatic effects of the war. It is clear that the first half of the film, much like Three Times, or better, Leos Carax's Pola X, is set-up to capture the naivety, innocence, and theatricality of the pre-war setting of the story. Or as American Cinematogrpher notes in an interview with the film's cinematographer Seamus McGravy:

For the first section of the film, set in 1935, the filmmakers sought to evoke the hottest day of the summer while introducing the Tallis family and its sizable estate. “We wanted to get a sense of the heat as well as the insouciance that a lot of the people in the aristocracy and in Britain in general felt about the war,” says McGarvey. “There was no sense of the horror brewing in Europe.” After this section, things go awry, and there not only is a dramatic shift in narrative tone, but also in color palette. Done away with are the brightly lit corridors, dramatic lens effects, sunny scenery, and in turn we are met with a darker environs, half-lit interiors in the hospital, and a general somber shift in narrative tone and visual with respect to the dramatic changes in the film. (Carax's film similarly contrasts a "bright" first act with a "dark" second act). It reflects a kind of visually realized downward spiral into shame from irrevocable repercussions. In the last act, the audience is faced with a radical shift from the dour and brooding middle section with a contemporary modern milieu. The color palette is more varied, the film is brighter again, and we see vacant rooms and sometimes claustrophobic framing as the camera emphasizes a new era. It is an ambitious film insofar as it really tries to bring us through an entire experience of a life lived with drastic narrative transitions and tonal contrasts, and it may not entirely be successful, but it is hardly illustrative of haphazard incompetence. I understand it didn't work for you, but that is not to say there was not a clear goal here to be had.

Disagree with most of this stuff. Kubrick's sequence (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmILOL55xP0) seems very much more like subjective dreamscape that you're describing. There are explicit references to childhood, sex, and death - all things strongly rooted in the unconscious. As for expressionism, it exists in an almost abstract landscape with deliberate interplay between light and dark. Don't think the scene is about underscoring dramatic intensity of characterizations at all. Odd that we have such completely different readings of that one.

This is like saying Malick's films are deeply subjective and rooted in the unconscious because the voice monologues mumbling on the soundtracks of his films. Not quite - it plays more like autobiography than expressionism. It might not be quite accurate to say the ultimate effect is either here nor there, but the hand held, tracking-shot nature of the second act of his film brings a cinéma vérité realism to the audience. The entire second half of the movie plays out more like a documentary than psychological expressionism with the obvious third-wall breaks and point-of-view of documentary filmmakers chronicling the war. The ending of the film - though haunting and ironic - does not strike me as strictly subjective or dream-like. I take into account that this scene is colored by the scenes before it. It is expressionism to an extent, with other moments as well such as the slow-motion sequence prior, but it works almost literally. The flaming fires around them is the realization of the darkest metaphor - Hell on earth. Yet, this scene was preceded by the infiltration of the sniper scene where red flames were all around them as they were struggling with their moral psyche. The voice over occurs to me more as an autobiographical commentary on the events, rather than a subjective literalization of scene. Kubrick seems to be trying to bring this one as close to home as possible.

Agree that the counter-perspective sequences earlier give the impression of memory, but I felt that the central long take had a sense of discovery to it as opposed to recollection. We're walking around with these three guys seeing and experiencing things right along with them. The lack of cuts suggests a continuity of experience and realism, whereas I would argue the successful portrayal of memory almost requires cuts and nonlinear time (Resnais' Muriel, for instance). Please note the "almost".

Can't say I agree. When talking of memory and time, things get complicated. Take for example Raoul Ruiz's Time Regained - a filmic adaptation of Proust's last volume of Remembrance of Things Past (À la recherche du temps perdu). The film is quite similar to Atonement in that Ruiz uses languid long-takes, soft focusing and filtering, and dreamlike digressions and shifting perspectives throughout the film. The memory need not be fragmented and disjointed, but indeed, quite fluid. The memories that are triggered in our mind from the touch of an object, or the smell of some scent, can be entirely transportive - though fleeting. What is more, in a dream, reality occurs to us in sleep as seamless, but in waking reflection, the dream often seem at odds with itself, incoherent, and implausible. It is true there is a sense of discovery in the tracking-shot sequence, but there is a sense of discovery throughout the entire film. It is also important to note that I am not saying the film is a memory per se, but rather that it is the recreated recollections of a woman grieving over her past and attempting to make amends with it. This would explain why the tracking shot on the beach is seamless and so comprehensive, even though the reality of war is nothing like this. It is a recreation of an event through idealization. Its dreamlike sensibility shows us it is not exactly realism we are seeing here. In other words, it is psychological revisionism - which can be at times entirely fluid, or at other times, constantly going back on itself and changing perspectives.

Briony misinterprets the letter, the incident with the vase, and the "rape" of her sister. A credit to the film, perhaps, is that we're never sure if she saw the face of the other girl's attacker/lover. Even afterwards when we see the other fellow's face we're not sure if she's manufacturing that memory.

It is true we cannot be absolutely sure of anything here, but the film makes it pretty clear that Briony discovers who was responsible. (Not to mention the other cues such as at the dinner table the other girl hiding her bruise). Briony had a good guess, but opted not to self-reflect. Moreover, it was not necessary that she saw anyone's face, the point was that she had a not so entirely self-delusional agenda to indict Robbie in her sexual immaturity and jealous emotional hangup.

Well, I think at least some of those narrative oddities were accidental. I've heard that Wright cut out a lot of the war scenes from the novel. You can feel that in the film. So we get things like the image of a bunch of dead school girls thrown in there, which is intended to evoke such and such feelings by shorthand. Or the central long take that tries so hard to sum up so much about the war. I could definitely feel the pains of adaptation throughout the film. Atonement is a long novel. Too long to include all of it in a 2 hour film. I think the result is a film made by a director interested in a fluid, languorous aesthetic, but unsure of how to handle the volume of material. And even improv jazz has its good moments and its bad moments. Sometimes the experiment works, other times it doesn't.

Wright cut some scenes at war, and he had preferred that he did not, but I am not sure we can stretch this to assume that the rest of the film was some haphazardly produced makeshift cut-and-paste, ill-conceived mess of ideas that resulted in a staccato pace, off-kilter rhythm, and fragmentation. No - the film makes the form's relation to content abundantly clear. It practically screams at the audience. I can grant that there might be a feeling of lopsidedness or lack of development in places, or the middle section should have developed longer, but I am not sure we can stretch this this argument too far and dock the film entirely for these things.

Melville

12-07-2008, 12:20 AM

Leos Carax's Pola X
On an unrelated subject, have you read Melville's Pierre, or the Ambiguities, on which Pola X is based? Pierre is one of my favorites, so I'm wondering how well Pola X captures the bizarre tonal and narrative shifts and half-satirical, half high-melodrama voice of the novel.

Izzy Black

12-07-2008, 12:05 PM

On an unrelated subject, have you read Melville's Pierre, or the Ambiguities, on which Pola X is based? Pierre is one of my favorites, so I'm wondering how well Pola X captures the bizarre tonal and narrative shifts and half-satirical, half high-melodrama voice of the novel.

Oh, yes! I forgot there was a Melville connoisseur on this forum. I have read Pierre, or the Ambiguities, which is an excellent novel. It was/is much unfairly maligned/overlooked is it not? A fascinating work. Pola X, in my view, captures these shifts and exaggerations excellently. It takes some liberties and certainly modernizes the work (i.e. Sonic Youth on the soundtrack with an industrial avant-garde art band in the second act; no memory of him reading the metaphysics of the acquainted philosopher, though he does read other things; events of the ending changed), but it rather faithfully keeps many of the awkward elements that baffled critics when it was released. (I thought the incest element would have been tossed out altogether, but it was not). Despite some alterations, the pre-existentialist/modernist degree zero fatalism is maintained. What is more, there is a great monologue in the book when Pierre first encounters Isabelle (played by the always marvelous Katerina Golubeva) that Carax (who says it is his favorite scene) kept completely and shot in a single take. I think he kept the spirit of the novel in tact, and also infused his own personal voice into the novel. ('Pola' as an acronym for the title of the book Pierre ou les ambiguities and the 'X' stands for the amount of drafts the screenplay went through. Ironically, the success and reception of this film - and its concerns as relevant to Carax - strikingly mirrors Melville's own relationship to the novel and Pierre's in the novel as well. Perhaps the postmodernist fragments appealed to Carax.) I am not sure if you will like what he did with it, but I would love to hear your thoughts. It also bears much in common with the cinematic texture of Carax's other works.

Melville

12-07-2008, 07:10 PM

Oh, yes! I forgot there was a Melville connoisseur on this forum. I have read Pierre, or the Ambiguities, which is an excellent novel. It was/is much unfairly maligned/overlooked is it not? A fascinating work. Pola X, in my view, captures these shifts and exaggerations excellently. It takes some liberties and certainly modernizes the work (i.e. Sonic Youth on the soundtrack with an industrial avant-garde art band in the second act; no memory of him reading the metaphysics of the acquainted philosopher, though he does read other things; events of the ending changed), but it rather faithfully keeps many of the awkward elements that baffled critics when it was released. (I thought the incest element would have been tossed out altogether, but it was not). Despite some alterations, the pre-existentialist/modernist degree zero fatalism is maintained. What is more, there is a great monologue in the book when Pierre first encounters Isabelle (played by the always marvelous Katerina Golubeva) that Carax (who says it is his favorite scene) kept completely and shot in a single take. I think he kept the spirit of the novel in tact, and also infused his own personal voice into the novel. ('Pola' as an acronym for the title of the book Pierre ou les ambiguities and the 'X' stands for the amount of drafts the screenplay went through. Ironically, the success and reception of this film - and its concerns as relevant to Carax - strikingly mirrors Melville's own relationship to the novel and Pierre's in the novel as well. Perhaps the postmodernist fragments appealed to Carax.) I am not sure if you will like what he did with it, but I would love to hear your thoughts. It also bears much in common with the cinematic texture of Carax's other works.
Sounds terrific. I can definitely see how the autobiographical elements of the novel would work for Carax, since if I'm not mistaken, Lovers on the Bridge almost ruined his reputation the same way Moby Dick ruined Melville's. Was Pola X as universally reviled by critics and audiences as Pierre was?