Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Edward Scissorhands Ice Dance Scene \\\ Mise-en-Scene ///

The white, pure clothes traditionally associated with angels (What Edward Scissorhands is making) and a wedding dress represents the beauty of Kim in Edward's eyes. Throughout the film, people have been trying to change Edward, but as this all starts to unravel his clothes get ripped apart while carving the statue of Kim. He now has a hybrid costume of his original clothes and his new clothes. This could represent how his obsession with Kim has both made him and broken him.

Kim's hair is large and puffy, almost as if it's floating. It moves slowly with Kim's movement and could be a sign of her elegance. Her makeup is not very obvious, it's only used to make her skin look smoother, whereas Edward has this pale, abrasive makeup applied with huge crazy hair, very representative of his strange character and creates sharp contrast between the two characters and subtly makes the audience be more interested in their love story as two polar opposite personalities in a difficult situation.

There's a strong use of green and red in the natural and peaceful surroundings, covered by fake snow and Christmas lights that gently bring out the nice surroundings. It may be worth noting that the only real snow is Edward's, showing that although he is the strangest person in the town, he may also be the most real person in touch with himself. (Even if he's not in touch with others) When Anthony Hall (Jim) arrives and aggressively demands for Winona Ryder (Kim), the background is dark and sinister in usual Tim Burton style.

Edward's sharp, deadly knife fingers carve a beautiful statue, Tim Burton is once again creating contrast with this idea. Piling on to the avalanche of contrast, Kim and Edward's hands are vastly different, and during the scene, Edward's hands are pointing to the right with and are framed on the left hand side of the screen, with loads of negative space on the right, which according to the cinematography law-book, is typically a technique for somebody staring and directing their attention to the area with negative space. Then a sharp cut to Winona Ryder's hand on the right hand of the screen, with negative space on the left hand of the frame. This shows that Johnny Depp is looking at Winona Ryder, and yet carving a statue, as if he's modeling it off of her. Kim's hand then drifts to the left towards Edward, and though they cant hold hands, it's a good use of visual storytelling to build their bond.

As Kim steps out of her comfort zone, or, house, the orange glow on her face turns to a natural white light from the moon beaming down to her face, creating a rim light around her head as if she has a halo. She's lit very angelically where-as Edward is lit devilishly with a hint of light showering him, a beam of purity. Outside, all the lights come from street lamps and the Christmas lights plastered around the town, giving the world a magical , fun feeling to it.

Edward is concentrating purely on his sculpture seemingly, but his eyes are slightly off kilter, as if he's focusing more on Winona Ryder than his sculpture, creating art from life. He's got a very distressed, concentrated expression plastered across his face, and moves with precise yet sweeping motions of his arms, carving away at the ice, creating snow that Kim is moving slowly and elegantly to, with a slightly bent backwards hand like she's from a renaissance era painting in a big cathedral, suiting the angel vibes. She makes almost ballerina-like movements, very precise and slow with sweeping movements.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Kes

Kes (1969) is known as a classic, innovate film that was a huge experiment at the time and was met to critical acclaim.

How does it hold up in 2018?

First, I'll discuss the structure of the film, which has some issues purely because of the time it was released and the lack of technology that would usually be utilized to fix these things today. 
Act 1 is structured differently to the others and is kind of messy. This can be due to the poor audio and thick accents stopping some from being able to understand cues and dialogue vital to the story. Also, most of the scenes are very varied in length that leads to a kind of confusing struggle to understand the plot. This all picks up after Act 1, when the scenes are more consistent and easier to follow.

This film's plot is simple, a boy has a bird and it dies, but it suits the hyper-realistic vibe it aspires to achieve. It's one of those "nothing happens" films along the lines of "Boy" by Taika Wattiti. It's infused with politics, messaging of the middle to upper class ignoring the lower class British people. The messaging isn't forced into the movie either, it's more of an insight in to their lives to spread awareness.

The character's are for the most part pretty complex, with the exception of a few less interesting people. The protagonist himself is at first a pretty unlikable kid, but as we find out more about him his personality unravels and we see the deeper side of him. His brother is a bully, he ends up killing Kes. His character is kind of unsatisfactory, it's not bad, but it's underdeveloped slightly. He's kind of an evil slate, not unrealistic, but mean.


Kes and the boy's relationship is interesting, the idea of a young child so interested in something he knows is completely unattached to him but still he cares for it so much. This concept peaked my interest the most when the relationship with the boy and his English teacher emerges. I was hoping for more development on this, as since the kid never had a real father, it could have been a nice father figure situation, but it never went anywhere. The more I think about it, it's probably for the better. The film is harsh and real, and life doesn't always work out like a movie.
 

 The ending of Kes is a strange one. Kes is buried in the mud, and you're expecting another scene to wrap up all the loose ends in the movie, but it never comes. The movie just ends. This makes me think that maybe, despite the film focusing on the boy, it's about the boy and bird's relationship. Sure the film is named after the bird, but the bird is in the film for probably 20 minutes of it's almost 2 hour run time. When the bird dies, so does the relationship, and the film ends. It's jarring and interesting.

So how does the film hold up in 2018?
It still holds up as a good movie. Sure it's flawed in quite a few areas, but it's interesting story-line and intriguing premises really propels it to be something special.  
8/10