🎬 #132 The Impact Of Unceremonious.

Sadness, violence, brutality - these things in real life aren’t accompanied by the dramatic swelling of an orchestral score, not preempted by the movement of the camera, not tee’d up by what happened in the first act, they just happen. Suddenly, unexpectedly, emptily. And the people involved are left to deal with what just happened, usually in a state of shock. Like the final line in A Farewell to Arms, ‘after a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.’ There’s nothing much more to do after a life changing event rather than to get back to existing, left numb by the experience.

This week’s two films are great and both have scenes that have this kind of astonishing power. Scenes of tragedy and violence that are unadorned by the usual emotional mechanisms of filmmaking. We’re just left to observe them, accept them and be stunned with how unceremonious it all is.

Happy choosing, happy viewing

Bry

---

FILM ONE: THE VILLAGE

2004 Dir M.Night Shyamalan
1 hr 48 mins

I apologise if you have’t seen it as I’m about to spoil the best scene in the film. So don’t read any more if you haven’t watched it. Thank you to my friend Pete for reminding me just how incredible this scene is. Maybe M. Night’s best scene in my opinion. I still remember seeing it in the cinema and it’s maybe the most powerful scene I’ve seen with an audience. Everyone gasped in shock, not once, but twice.

It’s a brilliant bit of staging, a masterful articulation of the idea of getting in early in a scene. Here Adrien Brody’s character, Noah, a mentally impaired man - walks up to Jacquin Pheonix’s Lucious and stabs him. Sounds simple, but the way Night pulls it off is really incredible. We never see the knife enter. We only realise he’s been stabbed when the knife is pulled out. There’s no big music sting, no violin shrieks to emphasis the moment. Nothing, just the empty sound of a windswept village.

When we see the knife in his chest from the POV of Lucius, we’re still not really sure what we’re seeing because it’s such a shock because there’s no threat of violence at all - Noah just looks upset like he needs to be consoled. And this is what was so good about seeing it with an audience. We were all trying to figure out what had just happened, then he starts to pull the blade out, that’s when everyone gasped. Then Lucious hits the floor. Night cuts to a low angle wide of the scene, a simple side profile. Noah, in shock, doesn’t really know what to do. He puts the knife down, picks it up. Looks out the door. All the while Lucius isn’t screaming, he’s just groaning and writhing slightly on the floor. Then, when you think Noah might be regretting what he just did and going to check on Lucius - he takes the knife and stabs him again - another gasp from the audience. Virtual silence. Again no screams from the victim or music queues. Then the camera pans slightly over and zooms in, giving us a respite from the scene. It’s an excellent piece of filmmaking.

TL;DR: Have a second look or first look, if you read this despite the spoilers, at Night’s most under-appreciated film.

*Available to stream for free and for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the US and Apple, Amazon and Disney Plus in the UK.

Fact: The teaser trailer for the film features music by David Julyan for the film Memento.

---

FILM TWO: ROMA

2018 Dir Alfonso Cuarón
2 hrs 15 mins

Similarly to the above spoiler alert, please don’t read the rest if you haven’t seen the film, please go watch it now - it’s wonderful.

There are multiple scenes in Roma that have that ‘just happen’ observed quality and they’re all the more powerful because of it. But the scene that I’ll talk about is so heartbreaking because it’s so ‘nothing.’ After giving birth, the central character, Cleo, pictured above, and we as an audience soon realise that something isn’t right. The reality that her child is still born slowly sets in. Cleo is in the foreground and her baby undergoing CPR is slightly out of focus in the background. Again there is no melodramatic score to hammer home the point.

After they stop CPR, the nurses simply hand her dead child back and tell her to say goodbye. While still crying and getting to grips with the reality of what’s happened - her baby is quickly taken away from her and then ‘prepared’ on the same table they tried to save it’s life on a few seconds later. Soundtracked purely by the perfunctory descriptions of the medical staff and Cleo’s gentle sobs, they proceed to wrap the baby up like a mummy. A package to be sent off to some unseen backroom in the hospital. It’s a quietly evocative scene.

TL;DR: A beautiful, big and tragic tale of a maid in an upper class neighbourhood of Mexico City.

*Available to stream for free on Netflix in the US and the UK.

Fact: The above mentioned scene was only shot once and the medical staff were all real doctors and nurses to add to the authenticity.