Cook versus airplane*

Classification in categories

• Battle and nature
• Battle and technology
• Suffering / victim / sacrifice

 

In the film’s dramaturgical construction, this scene is between the discovery of Ramirez’s malaria and the discovery of Salazar’s corpse.

The dynamic pattern of the audiovision can be compared to a boiler under pressure that explodes in the course of battle and reemerges at the end of the scene as a conflict between characters.  The sound design is the dominant level of the staging, in interplay with shot composition and facial expressions.  Pressure is built up in > EMU 1 as a tension between acoustic and visual events. The increasing dynamics of the sound (the airplane engine becoming louder) in contrast to the almost static image of the soldiers in the bushes (little movement within the shot, no camera movement) makes the onset of movement within the frame (machine gun fire) seem like a flashover. This audiovisual explosion extends over the next sequence of shots in an expanding movement from close-ups of the soldiers, to a long shot of the jungle camp. It culminates in a last volley of machine gun fire (the sound is isolated and moves to the acoustic foreground) and the following image of the exploding Japanese plane, a point-of-view shot from the perspective of the soldiers. This dynamic effect finally ends in a small camera movement at the beginning of > EMU 2. There is a change in the staging: after a short standstill, new tension is created by the acting, the confrontation of the characters.

The affective course of the staging moves from fear (acoustic crowding from off screen), to the desire to fight (spread of the explosion), to triumph (point-of-view shot of the exploding airplane); mourning acts as a caesura (the slow camera movement in contrast to the previous dynamic) followed immediately by a new affective dynamization (Dane’s anger), the precondition for the continuation of the plot.    ML

Expressive movement units

01 02 

Materials about the scene

Position of the scene in the film