Inside the Subconscious: The Master and There Will be Blood

This is just a short essay I wrote for an intoductory film class.  It asked us to write about the implicit meaning in two scenes by the same director.  I selected Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and There Will Be Blood.

Within the context of film analysis, there seems to be a subtle war within the frame between the implicit and explicit meanings being conveyed to the viewer. Paul Thomas Anderson is a director who lines every shot with kinetic and visual symbolism that often times can be rather disorientating to a viewer’s understanding of the work. Within his films There Will be Blood, and his most recent work, The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson uses brilliant cinematography to portray subconscious thoughts and allow the viewer to see far deep into the character’s implicit reasoning.

There is a scene in The Master, (nearly directly in the middle of the film), that showcases the effects of cinematography on anti-realistic elements. In this scene, Lancaster Dodd is singing a drinking song to a group of his followers. Dodd waltzes around between two rooms (what seems like a dining room and a study area) during this process, interacting with the individuals during certain parts of the song. The group itself is composed of mostly young women and men, with a few older women interspersed. The camera itself sits on a slide rail, and follows Dodd’s frantic movements by tracking left and right, framing him at the center of the dining room with a crowd around him, and then tracking his movements back to the study area, where there are more individuals and even two females playing the cello and piano. Most of the individuals are standing, their kineticism echoing that of Dodd’s hyperactivity – however, his wife is sitting, legs crossed, and there is a sharp smile on her face. This presents visual stress, her relative stoicism conflicts with the overall movement within the composition, perhaps hinting at conflict in the future (which happens after the scene ends). There is a cut from the wide menagerie of movement to frame a relaxed, drowsy looking Freddie. His face is filled with low-key lighting – the chiaroscuro within the shot shows the shadows within the wrinkles of his face, making him look much older. The bright colors within the clothing of the party-goers is contrasted with the mute, conservative tones of Freddie’s blue dress shirt, evoking a sense of drowsy melancholy. Even the camera reacts in this soporific manner – a dolly shot moves very, very slowly, enlarging Freddie’s figure (and importance) in the frame. Freddie’s eyes blink slowly, and his chest rises and falls, with no other part of his body moving. It is as if he has been drugged. Suddenly, there is a sharp cut back Dodd, which a radical change in the mise-en-scene. Every female is now naked, including Dodd’s wife. Dodd grabs one of the girls, her hand moves to reinforce his grip around his waist. The kinetic nature of the shot has not stopped, but we are now met with the realization of the sexual connection within every touch, every movement. The drowsiness of Freddie makes the viewer realizes that we are viewing the party from a first person perspective – we are gazing from Freddie’s eyes. The surreal, anti-realistic appearance (the abrupt nudity creating an oversexualized experience) is caused by Freddie’s drowsy, perhaps drug filled perception. Thus, we are given a glimpse into one of Freddie’s “sins” and a core concept of the movie – Freddie’s hypersexual nature.

The scene I selected from There Will be Blood is at the third quarter of the movie. Daniel Plainview must be “saved” in order to get Bandy’s tract of land for his oil pipeline. We are given a low angle shot of Eli Sunday, giving him an intimidating appearance. The shot is framed unusually close to his face, eliciting a feeling of claustrophobia – instead of Eli preaching to us, it is as if he is attacking us with his words. A cross lies slightly blurred in the background, with Eli’s face bobbing around, obfuscating certain portions of it. This is a symbolic presentation of the blurring of truth from Eli – he is covering portions of what he believes in order to appease his ulterior motive of fame and fortune. The high-key lighting makes everything seem a bit fuzzy and unreal, they are inside a church yet everything is awash with light. The light dilutes the colors, giving it a faded, false tone. A cut in the shot presents Daniel Plainview, his face is hardened, his mouth forms a grimace. We see Daniel walk up the stairs on the stage, standing squarely in front of the cross (which is simply a cross cut out of the wall). Light pours from the cross cut out, giving a certain aura of light around Daniel’s shoulders, embracing him. However, Eli quickly dismisses this comforting notion, and forces Daniel onto his knees, grabbing him by his hair. Daniel is now in a compromising position – his position of strength over Eli is diminished. The shot cuts to a close up of Daniel’s face, who is forced to look up at Eli to ask him how to pray. The claustrophobic nature of the close up not only forces the viewer to feel uneasy, but it also symbolizes the helplessness of Plainview. Here the frame stays, as we hear Eli accuse Daniel of various sins to confess – Daniel’s face is hardened, but an inkling of emotion can be seen through his quivering lip and darting eyes. The camera is stationary, providing us a rigid view of the scene, and emphasizing every movement that Daniel makes. Thus, we get a very emotional view of Daniel’s character, we see every muscle twitch, every hair raised, every shoulder slump. This hypersensitivity mimics the anxiety that is within Daniel’s mind – an implicit presentation of the character’s inability to think while under emotional stress. As the scene continues, we see this anxious mind begin to burst, as Daniel begins to yell the statements fed to him by Eli. Daniel is uncomfortable with the emotional stress, he is a man of more visceral types of pain. The tension in the scene crescendos sharply, as Eli begins to slap “the devil” out of Plainview. We are given a wide shot of the stage, presenting Eli battering Plainview. What we witness is the catharsis of two characters – Eli exerting his physical control over Daniel, and Daniel feeling “real” pain from his actions (as opposed to the metaphysical pain of sin). As Eli hits Daniel, Daniel smiles, mocking him, and asks him where his God is. Daniel is more comfortable with physical pain, and in fact gets an emotional release from the anxiety driven sequence before. Thus we are presented with an implicit view of the character’s feelings toward certain stressing situations – in a way, a view of Daniel’s subconscious nature.

La Jetee, Chris Marker

La Jetée by Chris Marker is a piece of science fiction that forms the recurring theme of time travel into something new and beautiful. The film is most unique in it’s presentation – instead of us watching a movie in 24 frames per second, we watch 1 frame per every 2 seconds or so. It is a slide show of photographs, a film that encompasses the feeling and reality that any Ken Burns documentary has, (it in fact uses many techniques that are found within his modern documentary work), yet it captures the world of a fictional universe. This formal stylization allows the viewer to truly focus in on each and every still, admiring the characteristics of the predecessor to film, photography. La Jetée  is truly an admirable work of avant-garde film making through it’s use of the slide show, presenting statements on the philosophical aesthetic value of art and the psychological concept of recurrent memory.

When confronted with a motion picture, it is easier to quantize frames into scenes or shots in order to analyze the piece. It would be rather pointless to go through the film frame by frame in order to formulate an analysis (also it would take an enormous amount of time to do so), so an audience member usually notes the movements in the composition instead of it’s harmonies or individual notes. La Jetée  presents us with each and every note, and gives us the time to appreciate every still frame – much like an audience member at an art gallery. We may comment and recognize the contrasting chiaroscuro of every still and note the change in angles of every shot, (the images of the past are bright, and full of the motion of the world, the images of the future are still, dark, and dead). We are brought back to a time before film making, a time where art was exactly what was in front of us – there was no further explication to the piece other than what the artist had placed precisely for us. While the film is science fiction, (the events we are watching are ahead of our time line), we are implicitly transported back into the past of art critique;we are a time traveler in a time traversing movie. The film forces us to realize the beauty of cinematography without motion, the importance of the frame and the framed within movie making, the harmony of the still picture.

The slide show mechanic also comments on the psychological foundations of memory. The main protagonist (played by Davos Hanich) has a certain image indelibly etched into his mind – the image of a girl’s face watching a man die. He remembers seeing her when he was a boy, just before the airplanes came – the planes that carried the nuclear warheads that caused World War III. Humanity is driven underground, lost and without hope for survival. The man (Davos Hanich) is selected by certain scientists to travel through time to attempt to find a cure – the image of the girl hopefully serving as an anchor in time for him, so that he won’t become lost and ultimately fail in his mission to find something that will save the human race. The slide show is a composite sequence of mnemonic images – each with a certain cathexis, or emotional force, behind it. The man sees the girl not only as an aspect of the humanity pre-annihilation, but also as an idol of beauty and romance, strengthening the emotional connection the man has to the girl. The man remarks that, while in the past, things are surreal and dream like. A sequence in the film shows the girl sleeping, then gradually waking – the slide show moves faster and faster until it is fast enough to reveal the motion of her smile. The surreality of the world was destroyed at that moment, a sudden realness is obtained as we are shown motion in a very still world. It is as if his brain, attenuated to the reality of the future, is slowly becoming acquainted with the world of the past – one time line of memory being replaced by another.

La Jetée was quite an amazing film. It was odd to see a story unfold in the manner of slide show with narration – there was definitely a disconnect between the characters and I throughout the work. However, this disconnect is perhaps exactly what Chris Marker wanted. The man himself is disconnected within his own reality, his memories are not only of the present and the past, but also of the future. For a film that is only 28 minutes long, it definitely left me with a lot to think about.

Schizopolis, Steven Soderbergh

“In the event that you find certain sequences or ideas confusing please bear in mind that this is your fault, not ours. You will need to see the picture again and again until you understand everything.”

                -The Director

Schizopolis is a film that has made me question whether there is truly any worth to critiquing art at all.  The quote above is delivered by Soderbergh himself at the very beginning of the film, as he stands on a stage speaking  directly to us, the audience.  Soderbergh proclaims that this film is the most important film of all time – he urges that every man, woman, and child on earth must see this film, or else it may tear our society apart.  If we do not understand his work, as stated within the quote above, we must watch the movie, again and again, until we understand everything.

So, what exactly is in the film itself?  Soderbergh plays the lead role – a man named Fletcher Munson, who works for a corporation called Eventualism.  Eventualism is a direct parallel to our worlds Scientology, a claim that can be reinforced in a multitude of ways, most apparently in that the Eventualism book cover shown in the film is that of an erupting volcano, which Scientology’s Dianetics shares.

While it may seem that some sort of plot is developing, perhaps one that will criticize Scientology, an organization which has been ridiculed and attacked recently by the internet activist group Anonymous – Soderbergh instead creates a story involving multiple characters and multiple points of view that is packed with visual symbolism and experimental techniques that tests the audience’s ability to decipher the complexity unfolding on the screen.  One character, Elmo Oxygen, spends the majority of his time on screen speaking in gibberish, communicating with other characters in a string of words that are completely unintelligible.  Some scenes have characters stating the premise of their lines instead of saying anything at all: “Generic greeting!”, “Generic greeting returned”.  All of these are meaningful pieces to this intricate and well-developed puzzle of a film.

Or are they?  I’d like to go back to Scientology for a moment, an organization that often uses psychology to reinforce their religious agenda – this is what creates the “science” portion of Scientology.  Through double speak and esoteric language, Scientology convinces its followers that what it is saying is both scientifically and spiritually sound, when in truth, it is neither.  Through a complex web of examinations and education, a follower of Scientology can gradually be rewarded with more knowledge, further complicated books filled with pseudoscience and ridiculous claims.  A follower attempts to understand these works in order to find meaning in his or her life, and often does.  It is simply the nature of the human mind to find meaning in often disjunct packets of sensory information – even when there is nothing truly to be found.

At the beginning of the film, Soderbergh tells the audiences that if we don’t understand the film, we need to watch it again.  He challenges us to find meaning in it by saying we probably are too dumb to figure it out the first time – classic use of reverse psychology.  The film is simply a psychological experiment, providing the audience with enough sensory information to come to thousands of various conclusions as to what Soderbergh was actually trying to say with his experimental scenes.  It is an unintelligible string of events that we, as human beings, make intelligible.

When we are attempting to find a deeper meaning, we are bound to find something.  Schizopolis presents countless moments where the viewer can attempt to create meaning and glimpse into the greater message Soderbergh is trying to make, but I’d like to believe that this is fruitless.  I think the fact that Soderbergh had no script for the project, and in fact wrote the lines for each scene right before filming, supports my hypothesis.  Soderbergh is simply playing with our minds, laying a trap that we can’t help but fall into.

Breathless

“All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.” – Jean-Luc Godard

I think you’ll find the truth in this statement within Godard’s first movie, Breathless (À bout de soufflé) – a film which established Godard’s presence as an auteur of La Nouvelle Vague (The New Wave).

As reflected in Godard’s quote, this film focuses on the life of Michel Poiccard(Jean-Paul Belmondo)–  a womanizing conman and self-proclaimed asshole – and Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg), an American girl pursuing a career in Journalism through her work in the New York Tribune and her studies at the Sorbonne.  Michel is living life dangerously, a theme that is personified in every scene of the film; whether we are seeing Michel steal a car, burgle an innocent civilian, or haphazardly stumble through the crowded Parisian streets, we can tell that Michel is a man who lives in the moment, characteristics that are deeply contrasted with Michel’s love interest, Patricia Franchini.

Credit: Creative Commons/Rialto Pictures

Patricia, played by the incredibly beautiful Jean Seberg, is looking toward the future.  She is in college pursuing a degree, (it is revealed that Michel did not finish college), and capitalizing on every opportunity given to her to advance her career through the New York Tribune.  Godard presents her as a defiant, forward-looking American, filled with wanderlust and ambition of which Michel Poiccard hopes to revitalize within himself.

And the method of resurrecting these feelings in Michel are accomplished, at least in his mind, by getting in Patricia’s pants.  Something Michel attempts to do at every single turn.

Michel is distraught with the boring Parisian way of life – their plain women, their kitschy, artistic  films – Patricia is exciting, hard to get, and ultimately, his method of living vicariously through American superstars, like  the affectionately called bogey (Humphrey Bogart).  Michel is deeply infatuated with Patricia, every action is directed toward wooing her, and eventually, in convincing her to flee the mundane Paris and travel to beautiful Italia (well, that, and also to escape the Parisian police force that is constantly on Michel’s tail).

The film is fast paced and exciting, presenting the beauty of jump cuts and the absurdity of breaking the fourth wall.  The constant tension developed in every scene eventually culminates to a beautifully executed ending, which left me with the urge to explore more of Godard’s work.

– Bipol