Shame

Shame

              Brilliant. McQueen starts to use scene transitions as an opportunity to establish character queues. For instance, we’ve established that Brandon often goes to the bathroom to masturbate. Now as a way to transition from scene to scene, we see Brandon simply going through the men’s bathroom doors,  portraying his frequent need and addiction while simultaneously providing a smooth transition from scene to scene.

Director: Steve McQueen
Writer(s): Steve McQueen, Abi Morgan
Cinematography: Sean Bobbit
Year: 2011

Inside Llewyn Davis

"What are you doing?"

Elephant

Gus Van Sant's film Elephant is based on the events of the Columbine school shooting.
He anchors his film by one moment, which is when the shooters begin their planned assault. He also centers the film on multiple characters and follows their journeys separately as each go through the routines of their day before the event of the massacre. He understands that the audience is probably aware of the subject of the film, and therefore takes the liberty to move through time freely to upset the predictability of the film, but to also keep the interest of the audience. For instance, we start as one kid gets to school dealing with his drunk father, and then we cut to another kid who is taking pictures of kids walking through a park. We aren’t given the information that both of these events took place at the same time until Gus Van Sant shows us how and when their paths cross. As more and more of the routines of these kids are explored we begin to not get an idea of a script, but we begin to draw a map of the school and the paths taken by each character. With this kept in mind, Gus Van Sant brilliantly keeps the inevitable event of the massacre in suspension. He shows us where and how the massacre starts, and then cuts back in time to the beginning of another kid’s day. This way we know when the event will happen relative to where we are in the day, but we don’t know when it will happen relative to the timeline of the film.

American Psycho

It's Hip To Be Square

Most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should!

Dead Man

Dead Man

Do You Know My Poetry?