Film Essay

Btw, in case anybody noticed that there are suddenly "two authors," there aren't. It's just me. On two different accounts. Because I started this blog AGES ago, back when I only had Hotmail. and Blogger REFUSES to let me make my gmail account the primary. Sooooo.... I just made my gmail account "another author" with admin power...?  I guess. Either way, both are me. hahaha.

So here's the deal. I write movie reviews sometimes, right? It's rare, but they happen. Anyway. So I've been taking ENGL 225, which is Intro to Film this semester, and I've been doing REALLY well in it. I seriously haven't gotten anything less than an A on any of my papers or tests. I  have another test tomorrow, but I'm not concerned about it.

So here's what I'ma do. Because I actually LIKE my film papers. I'm gonna post them! Because they're actually pretty informative. And they're interesting. At least I think so. (Jacobs seemed to think so. lol)

This is the most recent one. As in... the one I just got done writing... hahaha. There's only three. Unless I decide to share some of the weekly response papers...? Don't count on it. Unless you want to read them? Then sure. I'd be happy to oblige.

So here you are (it doesn't look like a 3 page paper when posted here. But it is. So there ya go.):

Cinematography Employed by ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’

Game of Shadows was produced in 2011, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. Though it was a follow-up to Sherlock Holmes (2009), it was created to be a stand-alone film, requiring no existing knowledge of the previous film.

Approximately halfway through the film, Holmes, Watson, Simza and a few gypsies follow Professor Moriarty to Germany, where they uncover his plot to start a world war in order to make a fortune. Holmes is captured, tortured and interrogated; Watson is under fire from Moran. The group makes an escape from the warehouse, however, and flee through the forest under fire. Thus begins the discussion of what I may consider the best scene of any film I have ever seen to date.

The subsequent four minutes are shot in slow motion, time lapse and sped up cinematography styles (courtesy of Gavin Free). Cameras follow individuals in profile, keeping perfectly level with their heads while the environment around them moves—defined in technical terms as “sequence shots on Phantom Flex”—and then instantly switch to speeding up actions, immediately returning to stop-motion photography and back to sequence shots in varying orders, setting no pattern and no giving the viewer no opportunity to predict the next motion.

Our heroes, Holmes and Watson and Simza, are shown in alternating shots with the Germans firing upon them and Moran, who takes off in pursuit to kill them himself. Suddenly the Big Guns are brought out, and trees are exploding around people in slow motion—until suddenly time returns to normal speed, which seems fast because of the dedicatedly discombobulating manipulation of the very short time that passes.

To add a further layer to the scene, Hanz Zimmer creates a sound environment that lends itself to the innate drama of wounded heroes evading death. The beat is precise—adding to the addling time manipulation of these four short minutes that seem much longer than they are. The pulse of the brass instruments coupled with the intensity of the stringed instruments beneath them creates chords that are proven to invoke a certain sense of suspense in listeners (with or without any visuals to accompany them).

Interrupting the score are exaggerated air movements and the muted sound of wood shattering around bullets and cannons. The addition of surround sound takes these sounds which come from one finite point and place them all around you in order to swath you in the thrill of their panic, the suspense of their potential success or failure.

Displaying the miniscule and precise mechanical motions of the cannon, Little Hanzel, used by the Germans in order to hopefully destroy Holmes and his party, has a relatively similar effect. It draws the focus into the very small, very specific, simple motions that in themselves are perfectly innocuous but come together with the right final step to create mass chaos and destruction.

In this manner, this scene manages to metaphorically embody a major theme of the entire film in question: Mass chaos is generated by taking a series of innocuous, arbitrary, simple events and pulling them from the Jenga tower until the final move brings the entire game crashing to the ground. Sherlock Holmes has an extremely heightened logical capability that allows him to foresee events before they happen based on tiny, innocuous details that, in themselves, mean little to nothing at all. Together, however, these things add up to create something large, something indelibly complex, as life always is when most inopportune.

Cue the French horns and the first trumpets, who take turns playing two notes at a time as the world around us explodes into shards of splintery death should you be so unlucky as to be in the wrong spot at the wrong tenth of that second. We now move on Moran, who is still in pursuit, but shot by Watson with the aid of Holmes.

The music again begins to mount in intensity, creating a tension that is nigh tangible, until Moran leans against the tree and all falls silent, save for the sound of three deep breaths, depicted in slow motion, before the instant that he recollects his composure and, back to normal speed, loads a shell, raises his gun and shoots the only individual not yet in the train car.

A Game of Shadows introduced a method of cinematography that was hitherto largely unutilized, at least in the case of major film. Guy Ritchie, Gavin Free and Hans Zimmer together created a cinematic environment that was all-encompassing in its drama and suspense, but also highly illustrative of psychological patterns that chaos produces. The mind has a tendency to slow the world to a crawl and/or speed it up past comprehension in the midst of disarray; this notion is visually demonstrated so flawlessly that the need for an explanation of its mirroring effect is superfluous. The effects of continuous, methodical rhythm and beat of background music interspersed with the encompassing silence of the moment between fire and explosion creates just as much of that psychological involvement for the viewer, thereby making fully effectual the purpose of the scene individually and cohesively as a small piece of a much larger, beautiful, complex puzzle.