Analysis On Selected Film

            Requiem of a Dream is a film directed by Darren Aronofsky in year 2000. This film tells a story of four different individuals and their addiction to drugs which eventually leads them to their own downfall at the end.

Harry, Marion and Tyrone are best friends and they are heavily dependent on drugs and abuse it frequently. They began with taking drugs for pleasure and with certain turns of events they became drug dealers and from there they slowly succumbed deeper and deeper into the world of drugs. In the beginning, Harry and Tyrone starting taking drugs casually when they were hanging out and as a means to pass time. Slowly it came across their minds to become drug dealers and to make a business out of it so that they can earn more money to have a better life. In the end, Tyrone went to prison and Harry lost his arm due to infection from the drug needles. While Marion ended up prostituting herself to keep her supply of drugs.

Sara, who is Harry’s mother started out as a lovely but lonely middle-aged women. She was too hung on to her past and she misses her late husband Seymour and her son is rebellious. All this has led her to her obsession of the TV show “Juice”.  She wishes to be on the show just so that she can share about her husband and son. Her dreams came true when she received a phone call for the TV station that she will be on “Juice”. She wanted to look perfect and fit in to the red dress hence she decided to lose some weight by using drugs. At an earlier stage she realized that the drugs were harmful, but when she consulted the doctor he ignored her. Yet, Sara continued with the drugs because she was already too deep in.

At the end of the film, all four main characters suffered the devastating consequences of drugs abused leaving the audience to ponder about the usage and effects of drugs on society.

 Soviet montage emphasized on a series of random shots put together to bring a certain meaning to a specific situation. For example, in the opening sequence there were montages of the television show ‘Juice’  hosted by Tappy who seems to be a very influential person and a great motivator. He was seen hosting the show, garnering the crowd to cheer for him and he was out on the streets talking to people trying to convince them to go on a certain diet plan. All these were done back and forth to create a sort of hypnotizing and fearful effect. The constant sing alongs and loud cheering from the crowds indicates that they worship Tappy and his talks.The director may chose to edit it in this particular style as a way to convey to the audience that people can be easily absorbed into the world of television to escape the harsh realities of life. This is because television has the ability to draw people deeply into it and to forget the real world that is around them. It could be said that television is a silent emotional drug.This is one of the reasons why Sara is so hooked on to the show. She uses it as means to escape from the fact that she is lonely and she has nothing much to live for in her life as her husband has passed away and her son is hardly home to accompany her hence making her feel more alone.

The next montage which is seen is the one during the drug taking process. These montages were shown were frequently throughout the whole film every single time the characters took the drugs. It has images of the drug preparation and the drugs entering the bodies via the veins. It also showed the effects of taking drugs when the pupils dilated and the following scenes either show the actors in a blissful mood or super charged up paced. This may be done to show the audience what really happens when one puts drugs in their bodies. They may not know what happens as the audiences may not be drug users. Moreover, it may have an underlying meaning such as the use of drugs can lead to a bad end. The consumption of drugs were at first seen to have harmless effects. For example, in the beginning when we first see Harry and Tyrone shooting up, they ended up spinning records, laughing and having fun. After the montage of Sara taking her diet pills for the first time, she was seen happily eating and dancing. But as the film progresses, we can see that the characters are slowly dwindling to their ends after each time they take the drugs. They were having hallucinations and they became more and more addicted to it.

There were also montages of Harry and Tyrone selling the drugs in the street. The shots varied from cash exchanging hands and the passing of the drugs. These were accompanied by a simple "Ka-Ching" sound to represent that drugs can make money and that a lot of people are using it. Following the success of Harry and Tyrone from selling drugs there were montages of their lives getting better. They were pictorial shots of Harry and Marion looking for a shop lot, renovating it and purchasing it. In this part of the film, it tells a story to the audience that the characters are finally having their dreams come true yet they will still suffer a bad ending.

Besides compiling different footages to make a meaning out of it; one of soviet montage aim is to allow the audience to experience what the characters in the movie are experiencing. For example, when Tyrone met up with the other drug dealers and he was about to get a promotion. As it turns out, they were ambushed and he ran out from the car with blood all around him. The montage was shaky to bring the audience to Tyrone’s state of emotion where he was shocked and panicking at while trying to escape for his life at the same time. He had just witnessed someone being shot from a close range and their blood was all over his face. He didn't expect for such a thing to happen and with the way the shots were composed and shot, it really made the audience believe his fear. The other example for this is when after Marion prostituted herself for the first time to Arnold. Her face was pale and she looked sick and was also breaking out in a cold sweat. Her surroundings seem to be a blur and it is to probably indicate the disgust she feels with herself. All this is further emphasized when she was seen throwing up towards the end of the shot.

Reference:

Woody Lindsey. Retrieved on March 8, 2012, from http://filmdirectors.co/soviet-montage-film-techniques.

Historical background of the movement | Film list | Directors

In reference to Wikipedia, soviet montage theory is an approach to understand and create cinema that relies heavily upon editing. The Soviet Montage movement began in 1924 and ended at 1930. During the existence of the montage movement's, fewer than thirty films in the style were made. But the films were very influential. In the aftermath of the 1917 October revolution, the new Russian communist government was interested in encouraging the development of a strong national film industry. The Soviet film-makers were part of an artistic avant-garde committed to innovation and experimentation and creation of new artistic practices. But the film-makers were too poor to afford cameras and film stock to shoot new films. Instead, they began to experiment with editing old films. They took old footage from pre-revolutionary Russian melodramas and a few rare Hollywood imports and re-cut them and spliced them together in innovative ways.

But the Soviet film-makers achieved a moment of true epiphany when someone smuggled a print of Hollywood pioneer, D. W. Griffiths’s 1916 film “Intolerance” into the country. The pattern of editing established by D.W. Griffith in his films taught the film-makers how different shots sizes and camera angles could be combined together in the editing suite with powerful narrative force. The Soviet film-makers wished to harness the power of cinema as a tool of education and propaganda and they therefore wished to go much further than simply entertaining audiences with spectacle and historical romance. This “montage” cinema which demanded that audiences continually searched for the meanings created by juxtaposition (two different shots joined together to make a contrast) of two shots can thus be seen as an alternative to the continuity editing-based Hollywood cinema. One of the Soviet film-makers who developed this idea into both a theory and a practice of film-making was Sergei Eisenstein.

When Lev Kuleshov created his famous film experiment (which showed his ability to alter the audience’s perception of reality with perceived “cause and effect” rules), it prompted many of his students to begin developing “montage theory,” or the theory that images could be combined together in ways that could create new meanings that weren’t inherent to the images themselves. Kuleshov's experiments were showing how important editing is and he developed the central idea to the montage theory and style. A central aspect of his experiments was that the viewer's response in cinema was less dependent on the individual shot than on the editing or montage.

Directors, V.I. Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein were part of the formalist tradition in film history.Vsevolod Pudovkin was one of the most influential montage theorists and film-makers in Russia. He believes that the power of the cinema comes from editing. In the 1920s when the Soviet government can afford to purchase some film equipments and film stock, he began to create some very interesting and provocative films using his theories about montage. Taking cues from his mentor Lev Kuleshov, Pudovkin believed that film actors don’t really act. Rather, it’s the context the actors are in that creates emotional and intellectual meaning. This context is established through montage by showing the relationship of the actor to exterior objects. For instance, his 1926 film “Mother” which is about factory workers who try to form a union to protest unfair working conditions in the time period just before the first Russian revolution. The factory owners and policemen who oppress the workers wear sinister-looking leather gloves. Pudovkin cuts between images of these oppressive men and close-ups of their tightly clenched fists, evoking a symbolic parallel suggesting brutality and militancy.

There are differences in the specific way each director thought editing should be used. Pudovkin did not agree with Eisenstein’s system of montage, which created “jolts” between cuts. Instead, Pudovkin believed in greater impact could be made by linking shots in a constructive way. His theory of montage is called “linkage editing”. In linkage editing, individual shots are used to build up scenes. The shots are not in collision with each other, but are used as fragments or parts of a whole scene. For instance, Pudovkin often cut between two images to suggest a symbolic link or connection between them. By seeing these two images side by side, the film-maker encourages you to figure out that there is a psychological relationship between the two shots. The two shots combine together to create a new idea. Pudovkin made extensive use of devices such as “intellectual montage” in The Mother and The End of St Petersburg.

Sergei Eisenstein shared Pudovkin’s commitment to the revolution and to the communist ideals of the new Russian government. Both of their films had themes exploring social conflict and the oppression or redemption of the Russian lower class. But whereas Pudovkin’s use of montage was intended to enhance the dramatic narrative, Eisenstein wanted to interrupt the narrative with clashing ideas. Unlike Pudovkin, he felt that the continuity between shots should not proceed smoothly. Instead, he thought they should be shocking, sharp, jolting, and even violent because the dynamics of montage serve as impulses driving forward the total film. He believed that shot A (the thesis) could be juxtaposed with shot B (the anti-thesis, a shot that would have been diametrically opposed to the first shot). The clash of thesis and anti-thesis could result in synthesis, the creation of an entirely new meaning out of the clash of these two opposing ideas. In Eisenstein’s 1925 film Battleship Potemkin, there is one of the most famous and influential sequences in cinema history typically referred to as The Odessa Steps sequence. To him, conflict was created by the juxtaposition of shots of high visual contrast. The central scene of the film, consisting of parallel lines of soldiers marching down the steps leading to the harbour systematically shooting the onlookers, provides a vivid example of the effectiveness of Eisenstein’s montage technique. The effect is to heighten the horrific nature of slaughter as well as to hold the audience in suspense. The furious and shocking climax to the scene demonstrates how he is able to use montage to manipulate audience expectations and to shock with violent juxtapositions and graphic images.

Directional continuity is also disrupted. A shot of the crowd fleeing towards the left of the screen is followed by an image of the crowd fleeing in the opposite direction. Similar shot composition also creates visual dissonance and disunity. Another way that Eisenstein differed from Pudovkin is that Pudovkin's juxtaposed images were organic to the context of the film. Eisenstein felt that films could include images that were thematically or metaphorically relevant, regardless of whether they could be found in the location of the film or not. For example, in Eisenstein’s first film “Strike”, which was made in 1924, he spliced together images of workmen being shot down by machine guns with images of bull being slaughtered. The oxen were not literally on the location where the story takes place. The image was spliced in for metaphorical purposes, similar to how literature might make a figurative comparison. The formula mentioned earlier can be applied here: shot A (massacre of the workers) + shot B (bull being slaughtered) = new meaning C (that the workers are being killed cold-bloodedly like animals in a slaughterehouse). It is the audience that create meaning from the juxtaposition of the shots.

The dramatic impact of Soviet Montage broke all the rules of the smooth, invisible editing of the Classical Hollywood Style. A style of film-making that evolved to immerse the audience in a story and disguise technique was turned upside down in order to create the opposite emotional effect and to bring the audience to the edge of their seat. The time-bending techniques of Soviet Montage pushed the cinema beyond the realism of Hollywood into new psychological territory.

References:

Lev Kuleshov Experiment. (n.d.). Lights Online Film School. Retrieved March 4, 2012, http://www.lightsfilmschool.com/articles/lev_kuleshov/index.html

Nelmes, J. (2003). Linkage editing. An Introduction to Film Studies, 3, 396. Retrieved March 8, 2012, from

http://books.google.com.my/books?id=vb_1ma9DKH0C&pg=PA396&lpg=PA396&dq=vsevolod+pudovkin+linkage+montage&source=bl&ots=0kCc3G1rsB&sig=AODIBPXIEyRZs_6RXYMPAs33tzk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=d3xYT9LXN43MrQez5KjUDg&sqi=2&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=vsevolod%20pudovkin%20linkage%20montage&f=false

Nelmes, J. (2003) The Soviet Montage Cinema of the 1920s. In An Introduction To Film Studies (3^rd ed.,pp. 390-417) New York: Routledge.

Rock, A. (n.d.). The Development of Soviet Montage. Retrieved March 4, 2012, from

http://medb.byu.edu/files/lesson/TheDevelopmentofSovietMontage.pdf

Soviet Montage. (n.d.). Retrieved March 4, 2012, from

http://www.digitalfilmarchive.net/clda/moving_image_arts/film_lesson_plans/SovietMontage.pdf.pdf

Soviet montage theory. (2012). Wikipedia. Retrieved March 8, 2012, from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_montage_theory

Trischak, E. (1999). Soviet Montage. Retrieved March 4, 2012, from

http://cinetext.philo.at/reports/sv.html

Soviet Montage- Narrative| Characteristics | Style

Montage is the technique of selecting, editing, and piecing together separate sections of film or video to form a continuous whole, which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information.


Sergei Eisenstein, sees montage as developmental and revolutionary; opposite ideas giving birth to something new. As the picture above shows a perfect picture of how Montage works.  Film A is arranged and put together with Film B (another section of film) to form the continuous film C. Montage stresses on the importance of the director (auteur) and work in post-production, rather than transcript writing and the screen. 

Montages are separated into 5 categories;

(a)   Metric Montage.

(b)   Rhythmic Montage.

(c)   Tonal Montage.

(d)   Overtonal/Associational Montage.

(e)   Intellectual Montage.




1.       Metric - where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image. Offering quick jumps which make you try to focus more on the actual clip. The most common use of this technique is in suspense thriller.

* Metric montage example from Eisenstein's October.*

 

    2. Rhythmic - includes cutting based on time, but using the visual composition of the shots .Mostly seen when used to show a solemn or slower moving scene .It induces more complex meanings than what is possible with metric montage. Once sound was introduced, rhythmic montage also included audial elements (music, dialogue, sounds).

* Rhythmic montage example from The Battleship Potemkin's "Odessa steps" Sequence.*

3.       Tonal - a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots this is always used to show an overbearing emotion. The most effective way to grab the attention of an audience is to tug at their heart strings, and that is what this type of montage does.For example, a sleeping baby would emote calmness and relaxation.

* Tonal example from Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin, death of the revolutionary sailor *

4.       Overtonal/Associational - the overtonal montage is basically the artsy version of metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage to synthesize its effect on the audience for an even more abstract and complicated effect. It provides the audience an extreme look.

* Overtonal example from Pudovkin's Mother. The men are workers walking towards a confrontation at their factory, and later in the movie, the protagonist uses ice as a means of escape.

 

5.       Intellectual – usage of metaphor to define the meaning of each shots. This technique is used to deepen the meaning of a scene. A way  to shows things from a few different perspectives.

    

Intellectual montage is montage not of generally physiological overtonal sounds, but of sounds and
overtones of an intellectual sort: i.e., conflict-juxtaposition of accompanying intellectual affects. It went further and became Eisenstein's proudest "Invention".

Influenced by Porter’s theory that that one can view two unrelated shots and deduce that the two are actually related specifics of cinema were contained in the organization of the cinematic material (which meant separate shots and scenes), in the joining and alternation of scenes among themselves, in other words, in montage.”

 Eisenstein called his montage work ‘the intellectual montage.” Conventional Narrative filmmaking, according to Eisenstein, tended to “direct emotions,” whereas his intellectual montage, “suggests and opportunity to direct the whole thought process as well.


Soviet filmmakers followed a "dialetic" approach to film editing. Essentially, this 'dialectic' refers to the "thesis plus antithesis equals new response" theory. In other words, when you place a shot (thesis) next to a different unrelated shot (antithesis), you end up with a response from the audience that is different from a response from viewing either of those shots alone.


A great effect that montage editors use was developed by Kuleshov. The Kuleshov effect refers to matching the eyeline of different characters, in different shots, to help the viewer connect the shots in terms of space and time.


1) Shot of a car going right (thesis)
2) Shot of a little boy going left (antithesis)
3) A bike wheel lying on the ground, spinning, and a pair of untied shoes next to it.

What story do you think is being told here? That the little boy got hit by the car?


All of the above shots could have ben taken on different days, on different locations, and the different actors may have never even seen each other. But somehow, it is within our nature to relate the different shots, because they are next to each other, and create a story. This is intellectual montage.

Influence and Impact on Contemporary Films or Other Media

“Battleship Potemkin” directed by Sergei Eisenstein (1925) is one of the earliest montage film where the film was edited in such a ways as to produce the greatest emotional response, so that the audience would feel sympathy for the rebellious sailors (Quoted from Wikipedia). From the view of overtonal montage, the entire film allows the audience to see clearly with whom they should sympathize. We usually will sympathy with the victims during war or disaster. In this film, the audience expressed their sympathy, pain and sad feeling which established the subdominant mood that take place for even more complicated meaning. Intellectual montage is shown in Odessa Staircase episode in which Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessans. The scene in the film is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps. The shots showing Tsar’s soldiers in their white summer tunics marching down an endless stairs (Primorsky Stairs) in a rhythmic, machine-like fashion, firing into the crowd combining with other shots such as Cossacks charges the crowd at the bottom of the stairs as well as the shots where a mother pushing an infant in a baby carriage falls to the ground. All the shots when combined together, it eventually creates a scene telling the audience that there is chaos happened in that particular location. It creates sad emotion and pain feeling to the audience as they predict “death is coming”.

We can see that there is revolution of soviet montage after the production of early films. After the Soviet revolution (1955), the Primorsky Stairs had been renamed Potemkin Stairs in the way they want to honor the 50th anniversary of the film “Battleship Potemkin”. However, the Potemkin Stairs were given back their original name, the Primorsky Stairs after Ukrainian independence. In fact, most of Odessites know and refer to the stairs by their Soviet name. Besides that, Soviet montage has been widely used in contemporary films. After the revolution, many filmmakers use montages to create different styles and feelings on the films.


“Requiem For A Dream” directed by Darren Aronofsky (2000) is a film that shows the drug-induced utopias of four individuals where their addictions eventually become stronger. The entire film is showing ‘addiction’ from the characters feelings and emotions as well as soviet montage. Drug is the main source for them to achieve their dream. For example, Sara Goldfarb consumed weight-loss pills in order to fit into her old dress to be on television. However, she ignored Harry’s warnings about the pills that contained amphetamine addiction because she insists that the great opportunity to be on television has given her a reason to live. In terms of the images, the pictures are good and pretty. When you watch it once, you feel to watch it again. In this film, the images and impact are hard to predict. It consists of most disturbing motion pictures about drug addict. The film portrayed the individual emotional core and how characters self-destruct.
From the view of mise-en-shot, various shots are been used in the film such as parallel editing, split screen, top view, extreme close up, fish eye view, time lapsed photography and the use of filters. Tonal montage is used in this film where emotional meaning of the shots is used to establish the dominant mood. For example, Sara is desperate to be on television therefore she went for diet which eventually move to quick cut showing addiction, trippy feeling of addiction. Her depress and desperate feeling was totally dominate the entire film. Besides that, intellectual montage also shown in the film where conflicting shots are made to provide the meaning behind. Audience will get to know what the scenes all about are once they watch the continuous scenes and combined them together. One of the example in this film is there are few shots of drugs, needle, smoke popping in and out very fast showing that Harry is having drug hallucination. Other than that, when Sara is consuming drug pills for her diet plan, there are separate shots comprising cup, grapefruits, eggs and refrigerator where when all the shots are combined together, the audience can clearly seen the process of Sara’s diet.


“Spiderman” directed by Sam Raimi in 2002 is the firsts film of the Spider-Man film series based on the fictional Marvel Comics (Quoted from Wikipedia). In this film, intellectual montage had been widely used. The first example is there are a few seconds’ shots showing the picture of bone membrane, DNA, spider shadow indicates that the main character, Peter Parker was bitten by the spider and he is suffering from pain. Another example is the scene where Mary Jane Watson first boyfriend comes towards Peter Parker to give a punch on him. A few seconds slow motion shots consisting of shot of students walking stunt, aeroplane slowly flying on air, flies fly around, water splashed out from straw and finally boyfriend hand punch indicates that the atmosphere at earlier on was peaceful but later on it become a tragedy where fighting happened between Peter Parker and her boyfriend. Audience will easily predict the situation based on the shots that combined together and they know that “fighting is going to happen”.
Moreover, “Spiderman” is not only appeared in film but it has also appeared in comics, novels, colouring books as well as cartoons. In another word, this film has slowly expanded to other media especially print media.


Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), which directed by Michael Bay, has an example of intellectual montage falls on a scene.
The long-shot of “Meteor Fires” falling towards the earth. The mid-shot of the satellite has been surrounded by Decepticons. Decepticons are hacking and copying the information from the satellite. Zoom into the network through Sam’s Mother’s hand phone. The satellite scene shows that Decepticons is searching and hunting Sam’s parents everywhere.
The long-shot of Decepticons are climbing and standing at the top of the New York Bridge and Other Decepticons are climbing to the top of New York building. Few cars (the Autobots) are arriving to a building. The “Meteor Fires” continues falling towards the earth and straight cut to the Paris street where is busy and a lot of people walking along the street like normal. In the Paris city scene, Sam’s parents are having a nice lunch.
A series of shots of warship at US Flotte, Nordatlan. The warship is under attacked by the “Meteor Fires” falling from sky. At the scene of the Paris city streets are attacked by the “Meteor Fires” falling from sky and then the “Meteor Fires” destroy the streets in Paris city. Jump scene to the warship has been destroyed by the Fallen, in this shots it means that the Fallen is back to revenge to the earth and then jump back to the people in Paris city are running everywhere. Sam’s parents have been caught by Decepticons.
In the scenes happening in New York City, Paris City and the Us Flotte, this means that Decepticons are everywhere in the earth to hunt for Sam’s parents. The Fallen summons his Decepticons to the earth to help his revenge. This montage has brought out the conflict between Decepticons and the human.
This montage affected the film on how the war began between Autobots and Decepticons.


The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King(2003) directed by Peter Jackson. There is a tonal montage falls on a scene to describe a character’s emotion and mood.
In the castle scene, the king, Denethor is having delicious meals and asking Pippin to sing a song for him. Then extreme close-up of Denethor is eating and the food sauce is squeezing out from his mouth, this shows that how selfish of Denethor is. Jump into close-up of the war horses legs running and close-up of the armies and horses of Minas Tirith running towards to the Orcs’ camp. The Orcs appear in their camp and prepare for war. Back to extreme close-up to Denethor is eating peacefully. In contrast, close-up of Faramir on horse is going to fight for the war. Back to the castle, Pippin singing, he hopes from the song lyrics to wake Denethor’s mind up. Then, the war begins. Close-up of Denethor’s hand is separating the dump stick with the chicken and the mid-shot of horse running. This contrast has shown that the armies and horses may like the chicken, died with uncompleted dead body. Jump back to the close-up of the Orcs prepare to release the arrow to shoot, and the horses running. Back to Pippin singing, and jump to the Orcs start to shoot, then extreme close-up of Denethor’s mouth with the excess chicken’s blood, Pippin cries. In this series of shots has shown that the armies sent to the war may die with bloods and how Pippin feels worried, hopeless, and sad about Denethor selfishness.
In this tonal montage, Denethor only cares about himself, worries about Aragorn and Gandalf try to depose him. He never cares about his people in his country and his son, Faramir. He enjoys his meal but he does not care and worry about the armies who sent out to save his country, they may have danger and they may die in the bloody war.
This montage describes the characters feelings and minds. Moreover it also describes how worried of Pippin to Faramir and the armies sent out to the war. The tonal montage also describes the complicated mood, feelings, and conditions in the scene.