My most recently view movie, "Red Eye", with Rachel McAdams fits the frame of a traditional three-act structure. The first act being the entire time McAdams is trying to get on the plane, the second act being the time she is on the plane, and the third being the time off the plane.
In the first act, the main character is introduced, Rachel McAdams, along with the rest of the main characters, her father, her co-worker, and the antagonist. The audience finds out all their basic information about Rachel McAdams within the first act. You find out that her grandmother just passed away, she has a close relationship with her father, she’s great at her job, and she is a very important person in her field. You meet the antagonist, although you don’t know yet that he is the villain. The inciting incident occurs when you discover that the man is the antagonist and is trying to use her to carry out an assassination.
In the second act, you follow Rachel McAdams and her struggle to find a way out of helping the antagonist. She reaches her low point when she finally is able to make the call to her co-worker to move the politician to the room where the antagonist wants him to be. The protagonist and the audience are supposed to believe that Rachel McAdams has failed. At the end of act two, she stabs the antagonist and is able to escape and the third act begins.
In the third act, Rachel McAdams is able to fairly quickly warn and save the politician, and then she has to go to her father to make sure he’s safe. She has a highpoint when she reaches her father and kills the man that was about to kill him, but then the antagonist returns and continues to chase her. In the end, you think she might be defeated, but then her father kills the antagonist, and everyone is happy.
1 comment:
Katie,
A solid overview of how Red Eye follows conventional three-act structure.
However, I'd like to see you assert something more interpretive for the next blog entry.
Try to think about something unique or noteworthy the film is doing with mise en scene (this will be the focus for next week), some novel way that the mise en scene works within the film. Or, if you view it as conventional, maybe talk about those conventions in the broader context of that style/school of filmmaking.
The whole task of these blog posts is to practice making an interpretive claim, to write a critical essay (not simply a report or film review).
Keep at it.
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