Kill Bill Vol. 1 by Amber S. Palmer -Third Post

Kill Bill Vol. 1

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Screenwriter: Quentin Tarantino

Quentin is the director that everybody loves too hate by I love him because he breaks the rules and tells stories in an unorthodox style that most directors wouldn’t be able to do. Tarantino is obviously an avid lover of mise en scene. He uses this filmmaking technique in most of his films like his first big hit Reservoir Dogs, the groundbreaking Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, From Dusk Till’ Dawn, and the sexy thriller Jackie Brown. Mise en scene has a variation of different meanings when it comes to most critics of theater. The French term means “putting on stage”. In cinema, everything happens in one shot and everything happens with little camera movement, if not none at all.
In Kill Bill Volume 1, Tarantino takes us on the journey of Beatrix Kiddo a.k.a. Black Mamba played by Uma Thurman. Beatrix is a bitter assassin murdered by her boss, killed after seconds before being shot in the head, revealing she was having Bill’s baby. The first scene Tarantino entails the scene with a close up of Beatrix beaten and battered to a bloody pulp as her voice trembles, a baritone voice creeps in while clicking a gun. The mystery man is Bill, even though his face is never seen. Bill tells her he’s being his most “masochistic”. Beatrix’s eyes are filled with terror and betrayal as she says, “Bill it’s your baby.” Boom! Blood spatters out of her head. The credits appear and Tarantino has caught the audience is his web. The entire shot focuses on her in black and white. In this moment, the audience wants to know more about Beatrix Kiddo and we also sympathize with her knowing she was shot in the head while with child.
Beatrix has a list of those she wants bloody revenge on and her second victim is Vernita Green a.k.a Copperhead (Played by Vivica A. Fox). Beatrix and Vernita engage in a bloody and entertaining fight in her living room. The place turns into shambles as the two women fight. Before the women tear each other into shreds, the camera focuses on a school bus pulling in front of the house. A little girl steps out and Vernita opens the door for her daughter. Vernita introduces Beatrix and tells her that the dog tore up the living room. She sternly tells her daughter to go to her room. This whole entire scene took place in the living room and not once was I bored or lost. Tarantino uses the technique in an incredibly powerful way.
Tarantino moves the story into the kitchen where he gives the audience backstory of the two women’s business relationship. They both worked for Bill and Vernita was one of the women that beat the crap out of Beatrix. Vernita tries to be sneaky and shoot Beatrix but she pulls out a knife and stabs Vernita right in the heart. The daughter comes into the kitchen and Beatrix advises her she’ll be ready if the little girl ever wants to avenge her mother’s death. One scene: the kitchen and it’s engaging to the very end.
Tarantino takes the audience back to when she was in the hospital coming out of a four year coma. During this entire time in the hospital, the audience knows: A male nurse had sex with her (during the coma) and Elle Driver (one of the women who brutally beat her) tried to kill her while Beatrix was sleeping but the mission was aborted after Bill felt like that was a “sneaky” way to kill someone. Beatrix gets out of the hospital after the male nurse (Buck) hooks up a disgusting truck driver to have sex with her. She bites the man’s bottom lip off and Buck steps in. Beatrix cuts Buck’s ankle and slams the door into his head killing him.
The scene moves into Beatrix getting into Buck’s truck after taking his keys and trying to make her paralyzed legs move. The voiceover of Beatrix tells the story of Oren-Ishii (played by Lucy Liu), a woman who took part of beating her up too. At the end of Oren’s story, Beatrix’s legs restore back to normality. Tarantino brings a sense of unrealism to this part of the film but is only overlooked because it’s the story of a modern day “warrior”.
Tarantino takes one scene to show how brutal and coldhearted Oren-Ishii, her council, and her gang The Crazy 88’s truly is. Boss Tanaka sits impatiently and obviously upset that a Chinese-Japanese woman could lead a criminal organization. Oren immediately jumps on the table in her kimono, whips out her sword and cuts off Boss Tanaka’s head. She tells her council that if anyone has a problem with her that now was the time, while holding Boss Tanaka’s head, of course.
Tarantino makes a grand introduction with background music and slow motion editing as Oren Ishii and the Crazy 88’s make their way into a club. The camera follows into the club while it also focuses on the band playing. While in the club, we see Beatrix following Oren-Ishii and her crew as a shot that’s following her very move, almost documentary like. Oren-Ishii hears something outside of their room and throws a dagger. She orders her bodyguard (a 17 year old girl) to see whose outside. Beatrix is on top of the wall looking down on the bodyguard. While in the club, Beatrix calls Oren Ishii out. Basically, Beatrix kills Oren Ishii’s entire crew. Her lieutenants, bodyguard, and the Crazy 88’s. The most spectacular thing about this scene is that it’s long and the music changes according to the actions going on the scene. Tarantino did an extremely well job of constructing this scene.
Tarantino takes the audience to the next scene where Beatrix faces Oren-Ishii in the snow. The music changes once again and it’s actually a dance song but the mood shifts into a grand finale of an ongoing battle that’ll finally end. Tarantino does a masterful job of putting together a film that completely throws out the three act structure and instead tells the story the way he feels it needs to be told. All the scenes happened in one location and focused on the main character for the entirety of the film. This technique allowed the audience to feel like they were actually following the journey of a scorned woman and this is what makes Tarantino’s films accentuate a new spin on filmmaking through mise en scene.

Reservoir Dogs: Review by Brian Herron

Reservoir Dogs

Quentin Tarantino

Released: 1991

Reservoir Dogs is a story about a group of criminals who are paid to rob a jewelry store, however, the robbery goes bad when they are encountered by the police very quickly during the robbery. A few of the criminals manage to escape; one of them shot really badly in the stomach. The survivors rendezvous at an abandoned warehouse where they realize that one of the men in the group set them up and is working with the police.

In the beginning of the film, the setting is based in a cheap restaurant and all the main characters, with the exception of two, are all dressed in black suits, black ties, and white shirts. The Mise en Scene so far in the film shows the viewer that these men are not rich white collar workers because the setting shows them at an average restaurant and most of them are wearing the same clothes. This tells the viewer that they either work for the government or are a group of gangsters. The filthy language and conversations that these characters have in this setting tell the viewer that these men are real hard asses, which in most people’s minds would tell them that they are most likely a group of gangsters.

The setting in the big empty warehouse is where most of the movie takes place. The lighting is one of the aspects of the Mise en Scene that gives this away to the viewer because you can see shadows of steel up holdings and pipelines. The light also tells the viewer that it is still daytime because of the shadows created as well as the amount of light in the warehouse. Because of this lighting effect, the viewer can assume that the warehouse isn’t too far from where the robbery took place because the time of day effect never changed. The setting also shows ladders, brooms, ramps, and other work equipment that tells the viewer that this was once a place of labor.

Tarantino likes to use a lot of loose framing, even during intense moments of a characters dialogue. This is to show the audience other characters reactions to anothers dialogue. It is also used to remind the viewer of the setting the characters are in which links to why the dialogue is so intense. For example, when Mr. White wants to leave the warehouse in fear of being caught by the police is stopped by Mr. Blonde, Mr. White yells at Mr. Blonde about how they need to leave and pulls out his gun to show how serious he is. The whole time Tarantino has a loose frame showing the viewer that they are still in the warehouse and that this is why Mr. White is so intense.

Brian Herron

High Fidelity

High Fidelity by Stephen Friars (2000)

Rob Gordon played by John Cusack is a lonely Record Store Owner struggling with the loss of his girlfriend Laura. Rob examines his top three break-up list in order to figure out why he acts the way he does. Dick played by Todd Louiso is the quiet, opinionated overachiever, and Barry played by Jack Black is the funny, obnoxious employee at the Record Store. The film follows Rob throughout his past relationships in order to deal with his Love of Laura.
Stephen Frears sets the mood of the characters in the Record Shop by having a wide-shot when Rob and Barry were arguing about Rob’s girlfriend Laura. They both walked out of the shot leaving only Dick in the middle out of control of the situation. All three characters contrast one another. For example, Rob is having female problems throughout the entire film. Dick the quiet clerk gets in a relationship with no problems and Barry doesn’t encounter being in a relationship.
Anyone is capable of understand what Rob is going through by the lines and diagonals of the film. At Rob’s job the records of formed of vertical and diagonal lines. In Rob’s personal office, it’s made out of horizontals, circles, all kind of shapes. Compared to Rob and Laura’s friend Liz, her lines are always identical. In Rob’s house, he has bottles thrown around all over the place, his living room is full of stuff, no order what so ever.
The scene when the two boys were stealing records was great because it showed how Rob thought he is not in control. Rob told Dick that he was going to sell five records but the boys distracted his mission. The scene following that one pushed Rob a little into having control of his relationship with Laura. He left the house feeling relieved.

---Anisha Payne

We Are The Strange

We Are The Strange
Dir. M. dot Strange
Released 2007

What a film. I first sat down to watch this movie with three other friends. We sat in a narrow room, using a projector to blow up the film so that it fit on a wall. There were multiple times when I just couldn't take how intense this movie got. So many things blew me away about this movie.
We Are The Strange uses stop motion, computer graphic artwork, and green screens to follow two characters. It’s a style M. dot Strange has dubbed “Str8nime” (pronounced Stray-knee-may) It includes "Strange", "8 bit", and "Anime". One is a living doll, the other is a woman named Bleu who was abused by, I think her boss or boyfriend. Bleu also has some kind of degenerative disease. The plot is the two of them trying to find the perfect ice cream store, while running into various monsters on the way. A third character, Rain, is on a spree to avenge his son. He basically comes in and destroys all the monsters. There’s a final battle between good and evil, Rain dies, but something ends up coming out of the ground to finally defeat the “source of all that is evil in Stopmo City”.
Each scene is full of wild detail. You could look at each frame as if it’s a stand lone photograph. Every pixel seems to have meaning. Dot Strange uses programming language itself as a way to show certain qualities in the characters. Blue’s disease is shown as if there was a sudden glitch in a computer game you were playing.
I have to say though, that I’ve seen this film a few times now. I only truly enjoyed it the first time because I had no idea what I was in for. The conditions were perfect, and I’ve yet been able to recreate the same atmosphere. I recommend using a projector, it needs to be seen huge!

JOSH COHEN

The Lady From Shanghai

The lady from Shanghai, starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Wells is about a man called Black Irish who becomes a crewmember on a yacht. He falls in love with the captain’s wife and gets involved in murder and betrayal. The hall of mirrors sequence at the end of the film is classic Orson Wells, which is a great example when talking about mis en scene.

After Wells’s character is drugged and wakes up in an abandoned theme park, he goes through a bizarre fun house that represents the chaotic situation in which he has ended up. He’s been played with, a puppet in the hands of villains. He falls in love with a woman who frames him for murder and whose husband wants him to suffer. Wells walks through a dark corridor with elongated shadows intertwining on the wall. I feel like I’m inside his mind. He feels alone and very small at this point. Everything is larger than life. There is nothing he can do to escape these monstrous characters.

~Brianna P.

In the room of mirrors his ex lover faces her husband, both with guns drawn. Their images overlap and repeat into the distance. This implies an infinite nature about these evildoers. They talk about the natural state of a person. The repetition of their evil, the true nature of who they are, is evident. When the finally shoot, they miss each other and keep firing, shattering the glass and the reflection until they finally kill each other. Also referred to in the film is a speech by Wells who describes a situation in which he was surrounded by ravenous sharks, so blinded by their rage, that they started devouring themselves. This is what happens to his lover and her husband. They destroy everything they touch, including themselves.

Cabin Fever: Reviewed by Davis Rivera

In his 2003 directorial debut “Cabin Fever,” writer/director Eli Roth has carefully crafted a film of mood where the actors appear to effortlessly support themselves without the interference of Roth to help develop their characters. Roth does this in many ways, most notably the higher ratio of key to fill distilling the screen with a low-key lighting set up rarely seen since the “golden years” of horror which included such heavyweights as Hooper, Raimi, and Carpenter. He begins the film using strictly saturated colors even panning to the sky at one point to reveal that it is as red as the blood that will be shed later. As the blood begins to flow, so do the desaturated colors in the faces, clothes and walls belonging to the characters’, dampening the bright hues of the first forty-five minutes to a memory. This is to emphasize the fact that the life-threatening virus has reached them and there’s nothing they can do about it. The film is not picturesque nor is it exquisitely adorned; but by eliminating these textbook examples of presenting the mise-en-scène to the viewer, Roth has allowed us to pay attention to the characters and since there are so few we can quickly look around at the scenery and determine whether the subtle changes are signaling their impending doom or their possible relief.

The film begins by introducing us to the five main characters: Jeff, Karen, Paul, Marcy, and Bert. They are all recent college graduates who decide to celebrate this momentous occasion by going out into the woods and having lots of premarital sex and drinking plentiful amounts of alcohol. A not-quite naturalistic high-key lighting that sets the optimistic mood of fresh-faced kids having one final celebration before they begin their lives as adults emphasizes these scenes and every scene presented before the group reaches the woods. Once they reach the woods, however, natural-key lighting slowly takes over. The group’s string of unfortunate events begins when Bert goes hunting and accidentally shoots a violently ill vagrant thinking he is a squirrel and leaves him to die alone. Later in the film, once the lighting has reached its final stage of low-key, the vagrant returns to their cabin asking for help only to be beaten and set on fire as he walks away and collapses into the town’s water supply. At this point, Roth’s evocative score returns with its diegetic use of the sound of flies, segueing into the next crucial scene.

The following day, Karen, the love interest of Paul, is shown drinking from a glass of water. Beginning with this scene, the contamination of the water becomes part of the film’s drinking motif, which repeatedly shows each of the main characters, except for the selfish Jeff, drinking the one substance that can harm them. The disheartening series of events begins with a shot whose composition emphasizes the foul water, which appears to have bits of waste inside of it. The glass Karen drinks from is granted an exaggerated visual importance in the foreground of the composition and leaves Karen almost completely blocked out of the shot. Its proximity to the camera and its size make it impossible for the viewer to ignore, reminding us of the vagrant’s death only minutes before. Very soon after, Karen begins to exhibit the same symptoms shown by the vagrant earlier. Not knowing what to do with her, the group locks her in a tool shed to guarantee she’s been fully quarantined. This proves to no avail as Paul later finds out when he opens the shed and finds the virus has eaten away almost all of her flesh.

Soon after the fall of Karen, the other members of the group begin to turn on one another. They all decide its best to stay together regardless of their bickering, except for Jeff, who has been sure of the cabin’s perilous nature ever since the diseased vagrant showed up and was beaten and killed by the group. Jeff wisely leaves them and, carrying a case of beer, runs into the woods to make it on his own. After Jeff’s departure, everyone else soon becomes infected. Bert decides to take action and drives into town to get help only managing to infect a young child whose caretakers are aware of the disease Bert is carrying and attempt to chase and kill him. When they all reach the cabin a caretaker of the child kills Bert, Paul kills all three caretakers, a vicious dog kills Marcy, and Paul attempts to make it into town but soon collapses in the middle of the highway. Luckily he is picked up by a trucker and dropped off in front of a hospital. The doctors decide that they cannot help Paul so the sheriff arranges for his body to be discarded in the woods. Ironically, he ends up partially in the water supply used to produce the town’s tap water and local “natural spring water” brand of bottled water. The one survivor, Jeff, awakens in a bush surrounded by empty beers cans and walks back to the cabin to check on everyone. He is somewhat grief-stricken to see that they are all dead but immediately becomes filled with joy at surviving the ordeal. The camera tightly frames Jeff in his moment of jubilation confusing the viewer as to why Roth has chosen to constrict him in such a way. Moments later, he is gunned down by police who believe he is a raving victim of the disease.

The main reason Roth successfully maintains such a clear mood of trepidation throughout the film is that he doesn’t allow us to maintain any kind of long-lasting bond with his characters and he stays away from an over-usage of prostheses or props to create the mood he’s so craftily formed. He understands that something that is beyond these characters’ control, their poisoned surroundings, is infinitely more frightening than any monster and allows the ominous tone to reverberate until the film is over.

The Shawshank Redemption- Isaac Richter

Released in 1994

Directed by Frank Darabont

"These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them." I believe these lines spoken by Morgan Freeman in the film describe the concept of setting when it comes to this film. Most of the film takes place in a prison, which is the last place most people want to be in (unless you're a warden or a guard), and yet, we come to feel comfortable in this prison. The slow pace and episodic nature of the narrative help to do that, but that's discussion for other posts. The prison feels like a closed college campus, except for the fact that the dorms are prison cells and the men there have a curfew and have to ask the guards permission to do most simple tasks, but there's a dining hall, there's a lot of space outside and even a library.
The Shawshank Redemption is the story of two prisoners and their 20-year-relationship in Shawshank prison. "Red" Redding (played by Morgan Freeman) had served 20 years of life sentence in Shawshank the day Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) was brought into Shawshank prison for killing his wife and her lover, wrongly accused. Red is known around Shawshank as the guy who can get things, so Andy uses him to make his stay in Shawshank prison a more bearable one. When Andy first walks into his prison cell, it's nothing but black, dusty stone walls and a mattress for him to sleep in. Tight framing is used in this scene to make us feel claustrophobic. As time goes on, and he gets acquainted with his prison cell, he has a poster of Rita Hayworth on the wall, a book and some rocks polished into chess pieces on the window. As soon as all of these pieces are brought into this cell, it becomes a somewhat comfortable place to be, even for us. It's still tight framing, but it feels warm and familiar. Tight framing is used through most of the film, in some parts to create the feeling of being locked up, but in other parts to create a place that feels comfortable to the audience, that as soon as we walk outside this prison, the world is overwhelming.
This is a film that requires that the audience to care for the characters, so in that sense. You can't distance your audience from these two main characters, because if you do, then we won't care every time Andy is put in the Hole, or we won't care that Red keeps getting rejected for parole. We need actors that the audience can relate to. Morgan Freeman is an actor who has been typecast into the role of the wise old man who narrates the story and offers insights into the main characters, which is exactly the type of actor we need for a role such as Red. He's a man who has been in Shawshank long enough to call it a home, long enough to be a legend inside and a nobody outside, so we need an actor who can wear those years on his shoulders with as much ease as Morgan can. For Andy, on the other hand, it was important to get a character actor who had the char of a leading man. In Andy Dufresne, Tim Robbins is able to carry a heavy weight on his shoulders, a mysterious grimace, and he's at his best when he has all the hope in the world staring out on you in his eyes. Robbins never overplays any of his emotions. He knows exactly how much to show, keeping Andy quiet, mysterious, but ultimately a restless soul, and it's that passion on the screen that makes us believe Andy every step of the way.
For a prison movie, the color in this film are very bright. Most of the film is shot out in daylight, where characters talk and work out in the field, or in places with windows, where the sun comes in. When the film turns dark, it usually means that something bad is about to happen, and this happens whenever Andy goes into the hole, or a character is about to be killed or beaten up. These are the scenes where we lose some hope, and we can't see the light beyond the darkness, but whenever there is some light coming in, it means there is some hope. Even in Andy's climactic escape from prison, as soon as he comes out of the sewer in the middle of the night, the moonlight shines right on him and expresses his freedom. In the final scenes when we're out into the real world, the difference between fear and hope are represented by the framing. When we see Red at his new job, the framing is tight and claustrophobic, just like we saw earlier with Brooks before he killed himself, but after Red reads Andy's letter, it turns to a loose framing, where Red finally feels he can go anywhere and finally feels free, much like an earlier scene where a bunch of prisoners are up on a roof drinking beer and staring at the sky, like the world belongs to them.
Prison is the last place anyone wants to be, but if you're in there long enough, you get used to it, even come to depend on it. And the way to do that is to make the environment around us a place we want to stay in, and yet a place we want our characters to get out of. We need to feel comfortable enough in prison to be able to stand it for the duration of the film, just like our characters do, but we need to still hold some desire to get out. We may not feel very comfortable when we are out, but that's only because we've gotten so used to being in prison, we're afraid of the outside, or at least Red is and we fear for him. But we always hope that Andy and Red achieve what they want to achieve, and their love for each other (r should I say affection) is what keeps us hoping.

Theresa Corvino - Brothers Grimm

Brothers Grimm
Terry Gilliam
2005

Brother Grimm is a story based around Will and Jacob Grimm, conmen pretending to be monster catchers escapading across Germany. This backfires when they are forced to confront a real magical force in order to save a town from the curse of an evil witch.
The casting of Matt Damon and Heath Ledger in this movie is perfect. They are completely unexpected and the opposite of type casting. Heath Ledger, being a method actor, must have studied his role well because it worked for him. His neurotic performance was completely on par. His performance allows him to describe his character through exposition less because he was able to display that, including incidents in his past that created ticks.
The setting created by Terry Gilliam completely sells the world and the story. It’s dark and gloomy nature sets the tone from the first shot and maintains the feeling until the end. Many of the sets are crooked and rigid like a Tim Burton set that makes it seem slightly unrealistic like a fairy tale but also ominous like the mood that he was creating. Most of the characters wore only muddy browns and blacks to further create a dark feeling. The female lead is the only one to wear red because she is the only character that truly fights with all she believes against evil witch.
Terry Gilliam created a world that is, at what time, very believable and historically accurate due to the environment and the way the minor character act, allowing the main characters to allow more ridiculous because the minor characters and setting sell the realism of the story.

Jose Saca – A Short Film about Killing (Third Post)

“A Short Film about Killing” is a dramatic film directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski and released in 1988. The film is an extended version of the fifth episode (Thou Shalt Not Kill) of Kieslowski’s “The Decalogue,” a ten-part miniseries made for Polish television based on the Ten Commandments. The film deals with an unmotivated murder committed by the lead character, Jacek, who brutally murders a cab driver in cold blood. The film then shifts to Jacek’s sentencing to death by hanging. The film is a renowned proposal against the death penalty, arguing that murder is murder no matter how you put it.

The following post will analyze mise-en-scène in “A Short Film about Killing” by looking at setting, human figure, lighting, composition, and how all the latter points manage to create a distinctive staging for the action taking place.

A.) The setting is Warsaw, Poland. We get a glimpse of ghettos in Warsaw when following the protagonist and the cab driver he’ll eventually murder. The film also shows upper-class sections in Warsaw, as seen in a scene where the protagonist wanders around aimlessly and is hounded by tourists looking for a hotel. The film manages to make a good parallel between the successful and the destitute by using the upper- and lower-class areas to its advantage. The film also manages to convey a deep sensation of despair enveloping the protagonist that is assisted in its choice to use the projected cynicism given off by its urban setting.

B.) The placement of characters plays an important part in the film. The director has chosen to do away with typical crowded streets and concentrate more on the isolation of his characters. In that aspect, this is perhaps one of the only films I can think of that manages to place its characters in a sort of intimacy not found in most films set in urban areas. For instance, the protagonist, as he wanders the streets of Warsaw, is placed at the center of many shots with flourishes of human activity coming in and out of the frame. He speaks with a few strangers, but the way he is placed, out of their viewpoint, conveys the distance between him and the public at large. Another key scene in Jacek’s placement is when walking the streets, he is placed dead center against an arriving crowd of protesters who bypass him without giving the slightest notion of importance. The choice to place him straight in the middle against these flourishes of human behavior heightens the loneliness and alienation on Jacek’s part. A character that plays an integral part in the story is that of a young lawyer who eventually is given Jacek’s case. We see the placement of him, especially in a scene where he has an intimate conversation with a judge, as close to the people who are literally in charge of his success. The lawyer, in the judge’s chambers, is placed in an over-the-shoulder where we feel his inferiority against this powerful figure.

C.) Lighting is one of the most talked about factors in Kieslowski films. The cinematographer in this particular film. Slawomir Idziak, uses natural light and filters in his lenses that give the film a dreary, cloudy look with an almost bizarre emphasis on reds and browns. An extensive use of shadows gives particular emphasis on the latter colors, giving the film a look of moody despair that heightens the alienation Jacek feels towards the world. The lighting, particularly in scenes with Jacek, manages to cast a shadow on everything surrounding the protagonist. The cinematographer creates a sort of effect resembling iris shots in silent films, a sort of bleakness that is only present when the viewer is presented with Jacek. Lighting also plays a key role in the film’s climactic hanging of Jacek. The underground gallows are lit from below with red lights, and the use of shadows gives an almost spooky vibe to the viewer. Indeed, if someone saw the film without viewing the past sections, they would probably think it was of the horror genre. Lighting plays a key part in the film’s epilogue as well. Jacek’s lawyer, innocence now lost at having been privy to Jacek’s hanging, is seen crying in his car in a wooded area. The lights cast a heavenly glow on the lawyer as he weeps, as if the worst is now over and the future might seem brighter.

D.) The film utilizes browns, reds, and blacks extensively in its composition. Browns are evident in the crisp, depressing hue given off by the Warsaw exteriors, especially in scenes where the viewer is taken deep into the recesses of Warsaw’s ghettos. Filth and dirt play an integral part in these scenes, and the characters look as if they were in a post-apocalyptic film when present in these exteriors. The compositions in most of the film’s shots are helped by the costume choices on the director’s part. The parallels between upper- and lower-classes are particularly emphasized in the overall costume choices seen on the characters. The film is emotional in its composition, especially in the scenes that lead up to Jacek’s decision to murder the cab driver in cold blood. Shadows are cast above the cab driver, while Jacek is lit with a bright light on his face that emphasizes the redness in his complexion and hair. Through these scenes , the composition establishes a mood of desperation and violence that ultimately climaxes in Jacek’s strangling and then clubbing the cab driver to death. The violence is not sudden, and its overall slowness is further enhanced by the placement of the characters in a “middle-of-nowhere” scenario (a wooden area far from Warsaw).

E.) The film uses all of the above factors to create an emotional experience that is distinctly European, with an emphasis more on the visual and on the characters themselves rather than plot or story. The film utilizes mise-en-scène as a tool to create a visceral yet mournful experience for the viewer. One that he or she may not easily forget anytime soon.