It's the context stupid!

Hey guys,

Just updated my blog with a new post, this time about The Hurt Locker. In it I focus on the strength a shot can derive from a proper context. See my post for an extensive description about a shot from the Hurt Locker, but in general it's about how a shot gains meaning through careful setup in contextual shots/scenes.

The post made me start to brainstorm about great examples where context defines the potency of a single shot and/or scene, and I thought it interesting to ask you guys about great examples of this.

I just read TrixTrax's reply to my previous post where he talks about the context surrounding a single shot of a hand-removal from a recent Homeland episode, which is a similarly good example.

other examples:

-Most famously perhaps the burning of the Rosebud sled in Citizen Kane, gaining significance through the earlier use of flashbacks.

-The One Shot moment in the Deer Hunter (coincidentally also the name of my blog) where the single line of dialogue 'One Shot' signifies a whole emotional release of Christopher Walken's character in a split-second.

-also quite famously; the burned body of the red-coated girl in Schindler's List signifying the loss of innocence through it's repeated use and transforming the main character's position.

What do you guys think? Good examples? Are there better ones?

cheers!

Reinout
(refractionsfilm.wordpress.com)

Anything made in the 30's or 40's. I'm an addict.

Oh man, I love the discussion, but you've put me in a difficult position, Reinout. Having watched so many films over the years, the ones you mention, though iconic classics, are so far back in my cinematic memory that I can't recall the specific shots, scenes or context. Indeed they were all powerful films & hold the upper tier in my panavision pantheon, but perhaps a reviewing is necessary before comment.

Children on screen have always been seen as emotively provocative, thus eliciting the WC Fields quote. Their presence in Shindler's List was so moving, yet I don't recall ever seeing the little girl's body. Perhaps my psyche blocked the horror of such a scene. Though I can never forget the imagery of the red coat isolated amongst the gray, once full of a precious little life, then empty as a discarded husk. Tragic. Though the one shot with children I can still see so vividly after all these years, is when we see the tots hiding beneath the outhouse in the effluent. Even thinking about it makes my eyes water...

This past week as we approach Christmas, we've seen helpless children slaughtered like little lambs, followed by vitriolic rhetoric, interspersed with various angelic children's choir tributes. Beyond the politics, pontificates, opinions & excuses, one glaring thing remains; man is so easily able to commit the most heinous horrors. Beyond weapons, there is a terrible darkness of the soul & why aren't things getting better?

Having received a litany of tweets from Hollywood people about it's time to get rid of guns, I finally tweeted back, "Do you mean in the movies?"

Silence, or scoffing dismissal is all you'll hear.

As filmmakers, storytellers, imparting feelings & emotions along with ideas, don't we have any responsibility to edify man? As I've followed film & television for more years than many of you have been alive, I've seen the descent into callous cinema. Once unthinkable, it's now quite common to see violent bloody torture depicted so realistically it makes you cringe (are you still able?) during primetime network television!

The increasing realism in the new breed of bloodfest films spurred the rebranding of the genre as "torture porn."

It's all about choices, what we look for in the story, the lens, performance & production. In this thread I went into it a bit more.

Maybe, it's about what we look for in life...

BenB wrote: Anything made in the 30's or 40's. I'm an addict.

...and if you look at German directors, you can even add the 20's.

Hey Trix, good points made. Will filmmakers ever take up a cause against violence in their films? AIDS, divorce, homosexuality, racism, lots of our cultural/species issues have been addressed by Hollywood, except violence.

And like you, I was making my first indie film with a silent 8mm wind up brownie camera, a razor blade, and tape, before most of the folks here were born. There is a lot of world, domestic, and industry history I've watched that has long been forgotten or is overlooked. How far have we come? Well, if you want someone to play a minority character, you find someone from that minority to play it, unless it is an Indian, then you get a white guy in red-face to do it. What the hell is going on there? There is NO lack of amazingly talented and experienced Indian actors. But, we still use "black-face" while claiming we don't. Nope, we've not come very far culturally, only technologically.

But, one thing about humans as a species (there is no scientific distinction of race for the homo sapiens species), we came from ancestors who were heavy on aggression for survival. The human hand is unique amongst even other species with opposing thumbs. We're the only one's who can physically make a fist and use our hands as war clubs. No one has any evidence about "why" our hands became unique like that, but it is pretty obvious we evolved from a time when fighting was necessary. It is in our DNA. But we as a specific species of mammals are unique also in being able to consciously override our genetic per-dispositions. All amazing subjects for films dealing with violence, besides war machines causing mass destruction in action films (the only thing we value in them is the "action", nothing else).

But yes, when will Hollywood or indies make films dealing with these issues directly, and dealing with their own influence over kids?

The hands as clubs theory is a bit weak. Who would damage their hands as a club when a stick or stone works much better? Even animals know this.

Basically people espouse whichever "scientific theory" best backs their position. I've heard guys say they can't remain faithful to their wives because they're programmed by evolution to do otherwise.

I may indeed have a genetic propensity to want to smash someone, but I have an overriding level of self control, that's what separates us from animals.

The best films aren't devoid of any violence or immorality, accepting it's indeed part of human nature, but rather depict people conflicted under trying circumstances forced to make difficult decisions for the greater good.

BenB wrote: But yes, when will Hollywood or indies make films dealing with these issues directly, and dealing with their own influence over kids?

One of the best movies to deal with violence, and impact of the media on violence, was Oliver Stones 'Natural Born killers' ; a vastly underrated film that dealt with the vortex of media causing violence, that violence being covered by the media and on and on in a downward cycle - a self fulfilling prophecy of fame and blood. It was a clever parody on the escalation of violence in the media, as a result of the crop of post-modern ultra-violent movies that came about in the 90's (as a result of Tarantino and others).

Of course, the message was lost by the fact that 'Natural Born Killers was itself an over-the-top gore-fest of violence. At the time it was extremely controversial; but it is interesting to go back and have a look at that movie now; frankly the violence seems a bit tame these days, which just goes to show how far we have come as a society.

NBK did make the point that it was not just one thing to blame though; the access to firearms, the media, the need for fame, family abuse and mental health all played a part in the story. To this we can also add video games I guess these days.

There is no one 'smoking-gun', but rather it is a cumulative effect of different inputs that leads to these massacres.

Wait, what was this thread about?

@simonpwood Something completely different, yet immediately relevant to this discussion... context!

Which is my point exactly, violence in context is justifiable in a film, as long as the overall message is redemptive.

In the other thread where I spoke of motivating factors in scenes acting as filters for the actors, I cited Michael Mann's 1995 Heat. This film contains violence but at its core features characters driven by a deeper desire for significance & ultimately love. But as Simon has pointed out, the modern graphic bloodshed realism is escalating. Same in video games.

In Heat there's a scene where DeNiro's character comes upon the battered bloody shell of his friend, the guy asks about his wife (whom we briefly see as a lifeless corpse). After hearing she didn't make it, the guy says he can't live without his wife, asking his friend to provide him a merciful exit. The horror of this scene is not in what the director shows us here, but in what he doesn't show. The violence that preceded this scene must have been unthinkable, but by not showing it, there is actually greater impact. As a brilliant film technique, we go from that close-up intimate scene of the 2 men saying goodbye, to a long shot of the house, in the dark from below, there's the sound of a shot with a flash of light. Is that violence? Yes, but in the context, it's so much more.