A few days ago my brother 
We realized that as the story went on the screen there were interesting cinematic details embedded in it and we had not noticed. My brother took the initiative to write everything we perceived, so I said Why not?
Synopsis
Director: Damián Szifron
Photography: Javier Juliá
A real estate and political entrepreneur arrives to a lonely restaurant, after going through a storm in the middle of the route. The waitress immediately recognizes him as Cuenca, the man responsible for several economic conflicts in his family, that led to her father's suicide. The cook of the place, a rather somber character, suggests to the waitress to kill him silently with rat poison, but she can not convince her.
Fragment of the analysis
Javier Juliá did a wonderful job with the cinematographic language. Clean, rough and with rich information about the characters involved in the scene. A combination of environments that captures us and immerses us fully in the Argentine film.
To enjoy this analysis, we classify the information by planes. Being a short story, each shot contains valuable information in the context of the scene to tell us much more than the dialogues could say. So, let´s not wait... Let's start!
Take nº.1 Sequence.
• Quality of light: In this sequence we can see the light hard at the beginning, to separate an environment from the other, but at the same time dark completely covers the face of the cook, reflecting evil in her and symbolically indicating her possible bad intentions. Upon entering the kitchen, the bluish color represents the completely cold temperature and it is projected in the zenith direction, which illuminates the entire kitchen in a soft way.• Depth of field: At the beginning the depth of field is wide to know the place, and then the frame closes towards the waitress. Change the depth and minimize to detail only the bottle of poison in front of the waitress.
• Angle and camera positioning: the sequence maintains a horizontal angle, but both figures are shown almost entirely in a back position.
• Frame: Starts in the medium-long plane, it stays that way but when focusing the bottle, we get a close-up.
• Camera movement: Soft panning with Dolly forward, followed by a slight movement to the right.
Take nº.2
• Depth of field: Average, to be able to detail the entire kitchen but blur the client, so we do not forget about him. In this plane, the 3 actors are appreciated, but the waitress and the cook have the main focus at that moment.
• Angle and camera positioning: horizontal angle.
• Frame: Medium long shot.
• Camera movement: fixed.
Take nº.3
• Quality of light: Warm and cold. There is a balance between both temperatures, also symmetry. But the cook interrupts this, since the cold light predominates in her. Like the waitress, warm light covers her more than cold light. You could think of this as ying and yang.• Depth of field: average.
• Angle and camera positioning: horizontal angle.
• Frame: Medium long shot.
• Camera movement: Soft panning to the right
Take nº.4 Sequence.
• Quality of light: Warm and cold. The vegetables keep their real color while the cook remains opaque and even seems to belong in the coldness of the environment (or does she make the environment cold?)
• Depth of field: Minimum. It focuses the cuts of the potato and it expands to focus on the waitress.
• Angle and camera positioning: slightly chopped, ending horizontally.
• Frame: Close-up - medium-long shot.
• Camera movement: Slow panning up until you reach the waitress, it becomes a standby shot.
Take nº.5
• Quality of light: warm and cold. The warm light is behind the cook, while she tells that she was in jail. She says she was happier there than where she is at the moment. It could be inferred that we all have light, but she left it behind with whatever it was she did that put her in jail. It can be noticed that she wants to kill the man, but beyond that intention she wants to do it for something supposedly fair for the waitress. We all have light in us, but coldness predominates in her.
• Depth of field: average
• Angle and camera positioning: horizontal
• Frame: medium long shot.
• Camera movement: standby
Take nº.6
• Quality of light: Cold. The warm light mentioned in the previous plane is no longer perceived.
• Depth of field: Short.
• Angle and camera positioning: horizontal
• Frame: close-up.
• Camera movement: panning down.
Take nº.7
• Quality of light: Warm and cold. It remains soft to create shadows and depth in the environment.
• Depth of field: Average
• Angle and camera positioning: horizontal
• Frame: medium long shot
• Camera movement: panning to the right.
Take nº.8
• Quality of light: Warm and cold.• Depth of field: Wide
• Angle and camera positioning: horizontal
• Frame: medium long shot.
• Camera movement: standby.
Take nº.9
• Quality of light: Cold. Hard light that marks the shadows to give greater strength to the objects and highlight them so that the details are noticed.
• Angle and camera positioning: chopped. Very subjective from inside the shelf.
• Frame: Close-up.
• Camera movement: standby.
Take nº.10
• Quality of light: Warm. Soft light that provides shade behind the waitress symbolizing that she is coming out of that darkness. But at the same time, the light is clear to detail and highlight the food in his hands.• Angle and camera positioning: Horizontal, always focusing the food.
• Frame: half-short-medium-long plane.
• Camera movement: traveling with steadycam.
- In order to understand the story from the point of view of the psychology of color, we must emphasize some things:
The color red is present subtly in the scenes. It represents good or bad passion (in this case bad). When control is lost, everything turns red. Red represents anger and evil. When all the feelings are close to the surface and humans are present, they let themselves be carried away by their emotions and they completely dominate them.
The clothes of the waitress. It is a fresh version, within the coldness that is perceived in the kitchen. In fact, it seems to indicate that it does not belong to that environment. We do not know if indeed the young woman is happy, what we can say, is that despite having gone through a possibly traumatic experience, she continued with her life.
The clothes of the cook. It translates into a perfect combination with the colors of the kitchen. The cold environment is constantly present and the cook is in her world. She gives life to that place and moves with confidence. That is her domain. The warmth of the young woman is perceived all the time.
Fun Facts
First, watch this:
In the initial credits, it is appreciated that as the names of the actors appear, they change the photos of the animals simultaneously and this makes us think that each character will have a behavior (personality) similar to the animal that appears in each Photo.
Now watch this:
The story that concerns us, is full of surprises and details. One of the most interesting is the cook's knife. And we say the cook's knife, because obviously it belongs to her, because in any kitchen they would not allow the use of an utensil knowing that it could have been the cause of someone's death. It is literally marked on the sheet with a simple name "LEON".
- Who is Leon (a person)?
- What represents Leon, the wild animal or is a reference to the movie Leon the professional, revealing to us in advance that it is a murderer?
- Is it a simple knife?
- The cook has a nickname to her knife?
We prefer to say that it is a preamble for what is about to happen. If we go back to the previous curious fact, the cook is represented with a photo of a silverback gorilla (Rita Cortese). A very volatile and aggressive animal when it wants to attack or defend its herd. And if we see in the introduction of the film, the waitress (Julieta Zylberberg), is represented by an innocent lamb. After all, she is going to defend an innocent being from the injustice that she has lived through.
Although this story is quite short, it is very interesting. Represents a number of emotions at a specific time. Three completely different beings confronted. Each one with its own history. They found themselves in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Thank you very much for taking a few minutes to read our post. I hope you've had a good time and we hope you watch the whole movie, because it´s really worth it.
Sometimes we have to give the chance to Latin American cinema, because in this case, I assure you that you will not regret it.
See you next time!
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All images and gif were made by us from the youtube video except the posters of the film.
The dividers were created by me.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://nairesc.rockdio.org/2018/08/29/cinematographic-analysis-wild-tales-the-rats-ft-sabreu-2/