Author Topic: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films  (Read 51199 times)

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #90 on: April 27, 2010, 11:46:26 PM »
Opening Credits

Most opening credits in films are an afterthought, something that the writer or director seems to come up with after the fact. Occasionally it might have some relation to the plot, but usually it’s a drawn out, mundane event such as a car ride or character walking through a bustling street or going to their job.


 
However, a great credit sequence will wordlessly immerse us into the world that we are about to experience for the next couple of hours and Days of Heaven is such a film.

We will be treated to something grand and magnificent, mysterious and ethereal. We know it from the moment the first notes of the dreamlike “Carnival of the Animals –The Aquarium” by Camille Saint-Saëns starts to play. We know we are about to witness something beautiful and odd, something like this fantastic castle made of ice.


 
We’re in America. How do we know this? Simple: they’ve got baseball. There are many who would argue that the great American pastime is baseball. I’m not much of a sports fan but I’ll take their word for it.



This is also a time of with a great divide between the wealthy and the poor. In contrast to the above shot of children in simple clothes playing a sport in the confined space to the city we have these grand men lined up in magnificent suits and tall hats, status symbols of their wealth and power.
 


And their wealth is built off the backs of hard working men in the upheaval of the industrial era. How man relates to this technology that emerges from this era and how it affects him and the world around him will be of interest as the film develops.



But this is not simply a story of man and machine. Even more than that it’s a picture about man and nature. Here we see man enjoying the world around him in nature. Yet at the same time, man and nature seem to be an awkward fit, not quite in harmony with each other as is indicated by the oblique angle of the canoe.


 
This will also be a film about the beauty, majesty and awe of nature. Here we see a woman looking out across the ocean in a breathtaking image. Take note of the name that appears in the credits here. It’s no mistake that the director of photography, Nestor Alemendros, is placed in conjunction with this image. It lets us know that the images that we are about to witness are going to be first and foremost about the beauty of the natural world around us.


 
Yet there’s also something treacherous about our relationship to nature. Perhaps part of it is the harshness of the natural world around us as is visualized in the harshness of the rocks in the frame bellow. But perhaps the treachery is in our human brashness, in our foolish leaps and bold daring into danger.


 
And here we get a group of children playing in the dirt. It’s an image of absolute poverty yet despite it all they seem happy and joyous, blissfully unaware or perhaps enlightened? It’s interesting that writer and director Terrence Malick credits himself with this image. Little is know about the elusive man, but I would conjecture that perhaps this is his way of suggesting that this film is about him returning to a childlike state.
 


And then the last shot of the film subtlety shifts us from photos taken in the real world into the world of the film. In a masterful move, the film gives us a shot that perfectly replicates the same look of the previous images, but manufactured in the time the film was made. It’s of the actress Linda Manz who plays the character Linda in the movie. It’s through her perception of the movie that we will take this journey so it is fitting that she is the one who bridges the gap from the credits of the film into the first shot of the film.



 
And there you have it. In one minute and 48 seconds everything we need to know about the world of the film is conveyed wordlessly with simple still images.

oneaprilday

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #91 on: April 27, 2010, 11:57:01 PM »
You've almost convinced me Days of Heaven > Badlands. :)  Anyway, I do love that credit sequence, and paired with the music, it might be my favorite ever? I don't know, but it's amazing.

Beautiful write-up, sam.

Clovis8

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #92 on: April 27, 2010, 11:57:21 PM »
lol this will be the world record longest review. Someone call Guinness. :D

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #93 on: April 28, 2010, 12:00:39 AM »
You've almost convinced me Days of Heaven > Badlands. :)  Anyway, I do love that credit sequence, and paired with the music, it might be my favorite ever? I don't know, but it's amazing.
That's the goal.

lol this will be the world record longest review. Someone call Guinness. :D
"I'm doing it for the kids, ya know? So that like future generations know about the greatness of this film. Because if this films dissapears, the aesthetic quality of wheat in art is going to plummet like crazy. Next thing you know, people will be starving for beautiful wheat imagery. That kind of starvation can kill a person's soul."

chardy999

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #94 on: April 28, 2010, 07:30:28 AM »
I think I need to see Before Sunset  :P. I liked Before Sunrise but in the year since I watched it, I haven't urgently felt the need to see its sequel.
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'Noke

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #95 on: April 28, 2010, 10:00:07 AM »
lol this will be the world record longest review. Someone call Guinness. :D

Just you wait till I'm done with my essay.
I actually consider a lot of movies to be life-changing! I take them to my heart and they melt into my personality.

oldkid

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #96 on: April 28, 2010, 12:58:34 PM »
lol this will be the world record longest review. Someone call Guinness. :D

Just you wait till I'm done with my essay.

Oooo!  A contest!  ;D
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Corndog

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #97 on: April 28, 2010, 03:51:15 PM »
I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week.
"Time is the speed at which the past decays."

Corndog

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #98 on: April 28, 2010, 03:55:48 PM »
The grand man tipping his hat there kind of looks like President Wilson, no?
"Time is the speed at which the past decays."

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Presenting Filmspotters Favorite Films
« Reply #99 on: April 28, 2010, 04:58:24 PM »
I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week.
I'll be hoping for both, but I'll take this as slow or as fast as I think I need to for the content to remain good.

The grand man tipping his hat there kind of looks like President Wilson, no?
I think it actually is, but didn't think it was worth noting. Although, I though a different president is in that train that rolls by later in the film. Could be wrong. I'll find out soon enough and if it is I'll be sure to bring it up.


 

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