Medium And Close Up Shots Of Verbal example essay topic

The Usual Suspects - Film Analysis The director uses several cinematic techniques and uses a whole range of other techniques to create a dark and repressive atmosphere. The opening shows the sinister mood and atmosphere portrayed throughout the entirety of the movie. The director's mastery of camerawork is evident from the opening of the film. A wide panning shot across a body of water is accompanied by sinister music. Excellent choice of camera angles was achieved by showing the full sight of the landscape, a harbourside dock through a long shot. The director deliberately uses a whole range of camera angles to add mystery, sustained through the film.

The story is told as a series of flashbacks, with real-time police interrogations with the core character, Verbal. The plot is cleverly crafted to go around in a loop, with the ending being at the start, making the audience slowly piece together clues and imagery, bit by bit to understand the structure of the film. The composer used voiceover's to avoid tedious elements of films, observable in many modern day films. Character and plot developments were achieved quickly, and no sacrifice of pace was conceded. There are constant intertwining scenes from the past and the present, only letting the audience learning bit-by-bit, like the detective's state of mind.

Much like the directorial style of Memento, the composer constantly uses flashbacks and voice-overs to show crucial plot developments and characterization. Recurring medium and close-up shots of Verbal give clues to reveal the identity of this mysterious figure. The same music utilized throughout the preceding opening sequence is continuously played through moments of these. The scene of Verbal lighting a cigarette is hardened by the imagery through these flashbacks, and the instances of dialogue between the investigator and Verbal. When one of the 'usual suspects' dies, the others decide to bury his body in a cave, and there is an excellent long-shot which slowly fades to black and then ends up to be the coffee in Kujan (investigator's) mug. Symbolically this can be interpreted to be a gesture to imply that Kujan has Verbal almost in a prison, trapping him from the outside world, searching for the ultimate truth.

The ending of the film is the culmination of all the individual comments exchanged in this cat and mouse game between Verbal and Kujan. The facade adopted by Verbal is superbly cinematized with the close-up of his crippled walking trait, as he walks away from the interrogation room and out back into the world, free from all crimes. All along, he had double-crossed and tricked Kujan from the truth. The culmination of all his lies, deceptions and deceit are portrayed through Kujan hearing and seeing the dialogue and quotations from Verbal "how do u shoot devil in back... the greatest trick the devil pulled was to convince the world that he never existed". The director emphasizes the twist in the ending and shows Kujan sitting in his office, looking at the billboard inside the interrogation room. Several continuous close-ups and flashbacks are all collage d together in this culmination of this now-revealed facade that Verbal adopted from the beginning.

The grasp that Kujan once had on Verbal is now lost, as symbolized by the dropping of the coffee mug, with flashing imagery of Verbal's sayings and his clever conversations with the detective. There is a close up of the shattering of the mug, and this is symbolic of how Verbal is now ultimately free and out of the grasp of Kujan. The camera angles quickly pan around the billboard, closing in on particular notices and photos, the basis of Verbal's whole 'honest testimony'. The scene of Verbal walking outside of the police station and lighting a cigarette is again this recurring imagery, a medium and close-up shot of this same stance which is emphasized innumerably throughout the movie's entirety. Again music is used to represent the irony of the detective's quotes "I'm smarter than you.

You " re a crippled and dumb person. That's why he chose you... ". A final close up shot of Verbal smiling. ".. and he vanished just like that", as if he was actually the 'devil' he was describing.

The audience comes to realize from the last few concluding scenes that the mysterious, silhouetted figure is actually the narrator and also the crippled man, Verbal..