Final Critique-Sleeping With the Enemy

            Sleeping With the Enemy, staring Julia Roberts as Laura and Patrick Bergin as Martin, is an atypical love story as Laura tries to make a new life for herself, which happens to include a new man named Ben.  Laura and Martin were married for four years during which Martin constantly beat her for not being the perfect wife in his eyes. She decides she must do whatever it takes to escape and begin a new life in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The story line in itself is worth watching the movie for, but it is enhanced with the use of different film techniques such as sound, cinematography, and color.

            Sound plays an enormous role in creating moods for the audience in this film. Through mainly orchestral pieces, the audience is more or less forced to feel certain ways.  The first example of this is when Laura and Martin are on the sailboat and the storm comes as Laura secretly jumps overboard for her escape to a new life. During that scene, there is fast pace, high pitch non-diegetic music for the audience that instills feelings of anxiety and suspense. In addition, when Martin first figured out that his wife escaped by receiving a phone call from a woman Laura new from the YWCA and finding her wedding ring in the toilet, that music that the audience experienced was high pitch and anxiety producing. The filmmakers used sound differently in a couple of scenes as well. They used a low pitch, somber sounding track to emphasize Laura’s words as she said, “…that was the night that I died, and someone else was saved…” Also, the song Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz acted as symbol throughout the film for the danger that Laura faced with her husband. The first time we heard this song was in the beginning right after we see Martin beat Laura for the first time. The last two times it was played was near the end when Laura suspects Martin of being in her new house in Iowa. The song is played for the last time when the boom box is placed in front of the door and we see Martin come up behind Laura and embrace her.

            The cinematography used if fairly minimal to keep the film looking realistic, but it creates very meaningful nuances. The most drastic and noticeable technique was the use of low angles while filming Martin. Throughout the film, Martin always seems very tall and domineering because of the low angles on him. Especially in the scene where Martin first finds Laura’s mother in her new nursing home, Martin appears to be towering over her mother as she sits unaware crocheting in her wheelchair. From the angle alone, we interpret that Martin has total control and power in their relationship. The two primary shots used to infer that scenes were meaningful were extreme long shots and close up shots. Extreme long shots were used while she was in the ocean swimming to shore, on the bus passing through numerous states, and as she arrived in Cedar Falls. These moments were all major steps in the transition to her new life, and it is clear that they are highlighted by these extreme long shots. Close up shots were used a lot to show intense emotions on the characters faces. In the beginning there were close up shots exposing Laura’s pain and sadness when Martin touched her, then as she told her story on the bus close up shots were used to clearly show the agony on both of the women’s faces.

            Lastly, color was used on a purely symbolic level during the film. Most noticeably, the color red kept resurfacing and seemed to symbolize danger. The first time the color red came up was after their first big fight that we saw; Martin came home with a bouquet of red roses and a red teddy. After, the color red highlighted danger as Laura was cast under red light when she was swimming to freedom by a buoy, and Martin was under a red light when he was stalking her at the carnival. The contrast of dull and bright colors also added to the film by only using dull colors such as black and white when Laura was with Martin and using bright colors when she was living her new life with Ben in Cedar Falls.

            This film has always been one of my favorites, and by digging deeper into it through analysis I have had the opportunity to appreciate it more for its techniques not only its storyline. I highly recommend this movie, but proceed with caution…it is a bit creepy!

Movement In "Three Kings" and "Hero"

Our film class looked into two films, Three Kings and Hero, to uncover the secrets behind the use of movement in film. After all, movement is the basis for all films, which becomes apparent upon considering what they are also called…motion pictures. These two films are on opposite sides of the spectrum when considering the type of motion used, and therefore were interesting to watch in comparison to each other.

Judging from a purely entertainment level, I liked Three Kings much better because it was more fast-passed and easier to follow. But, that also may be because I just do not like subtitled films because I find it very difficult to keep up with as I try to watch the characters movements and interactions while I am reading the story on the bottom of the screen. In addition, I found the story line of Three kings to be more relatable and attention-grabbing.

Studying Three Kings from a movement point of view gives you a look at the concrete and literal aspect. This is where the camera is literally moving in various ways to produce different effects. The most predominant camera techniques used to express movement were pan, swish-pan, and handheld. The examples of each of these techniques show the meaning and importance of the varying shots. In the beginning of the movie, after the U.S. soldiers first discover the map from the man’s “backside” George Clooney’s character enters a tent where they are trying to decipher the map, and the whole conversation he has with the solders in the tent is shot in a single shot using panning to change from one character to another. Maintaining the continuity of the shot creates suspense and anticipation of what is going to happen next as well as preserves the cause and effect relationship between the characters parts in the conversation. For similar reasons, a swish-pan is used in several scenes throughout the movie. My favorite scene that it is used in is during a gunfire fight between the small group of U.S. soldiers and the villagers. The camera rapidly panned back and forth following bullets between the two groups emphasizing the magnitude of this event (braking the ceasefire agreement between the two armies). As with the regular pan, it created in enormous amount of anticipation to see whom the bullet would hit if anyone. Lastly, and in my opinion the most intense, the use of handheld filming made many aspects of the movie seem very realistic, and allowed you as the audience to feel like you were part of the excitement and adrenaline-pumping action. It is apparent that simply moving the camera in different directions at different speeds and add to the message of the film and how it is delivered, but it is not the only way to use movement.

Hero uses highly lyrical movement that is produced by the characters’ choreographed movement, instead of the camera’s, conveying symbolic messages. In Hero, choreographed fight scenes were the primary way of expressing the emotions of the characters. They were either intense and fast-paced or very flowy and ballet-like which usually matched an either angry or sad character respectively.

These two movies, although extremely different, allowed me to fully understand the multitude of ways movement can be used in films. For that reason alone, I highly recommend these films, especially Three Kings! Not to mention that they are both genuinely entertaining movies!