Saturday, 19 January 2013

Deconstruction of 2 Film openings in my chosen Genre: Drama #2

ATONEMENT (2007):

Director: Joe Wright
Producer: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Paul Webster
Screenplay: Ian McEwan (novel) Christopher Hampton (Screenplay)
Musical Score: Dario Marianelli
Stars: Keira Knightly, James McAvoy and Brenda Blethyn
Genre: Wartime Drama

Synopsis:
Fledgling writer Briony Tallis, as a 13-year-old, irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit. Based on the British romance novel by Ian McEwan.


 

The opening titles consist with a Courier (typewriter) font naming the opening titles and the title itself. Throughout all the words and letters appearing a non-diegetic typewriter audio is going on in the background. This then turns out to be diegetic as later on the sequence we find one of the main characters’ writing a script.

Once the titles have gone the black background cuts to a shot of a doll’s house-one that looks remarkably like the house they are living in. It’s a very old, Georgian styled doll’s house and the exterior design is identical to the architecture of the large mansion the characters are living in. this may be because the director wanted to give the audience the idea of the kind of house the characters are calling their home and also a typical house that would have been owned by the bourgeoisie. The camera slowly does a backing track shot of the doll’s house and pans over some figures of animals all in a line two-by-two. This clearly shows the age of the child, between 8 and 13. Then we see a silhouette of a girl sitting down on a typewriter-this is when the audience realises that the typewriter sound is diegetic.  The quick pace of the typewriter, matches the quickness that the little girl is walking.

The Mise-en-scene throughout the opening matches the class standard and the up-to-date fashion. For example the short hair was very popular in the 1930’s so the fact that the little girl and the mother both have the short hair shows that the producers have stuck to the period of the drama. Also the little girl has pleats on her skirt which was very 1930’s fashion and was very popular in magazines like Vogue. The hairstyles were also a trend that was started by Vogue. This type of hairstyle was popular among the bourgeoisie but when the war started the women refused to go by the fashion trends as the magazines were not being imported from the European country’s that started the trends. So women in Britain started their own fashion that resulted in Tea-dresses-usually made from old table cloths and curtains- and the hair dressing profession was not as popular so women made their own styles at home with shoulder length waves and kiss curls all made with cut strips of rag. This is seen later on right into the war when the young girl becomes a military nurse.

The décor of the house coincides with the supposed age of the doll’s house-which previously mentioned was meant to be a sneak peak of the house that the character’s live in. The banisters and the staircase have a dark mahogany touch and the wallpaper shows the era of the film.

The modern (although not so modern now) typewriter seems quite binary as it sits on a small bureau in a pastel coloured play room. This though (even if you hadn’t a clue of what the era is) shows how the age this is helpful for the audience and gets them wondering also why a little girl has a typewriter. Is it hers? Her mother’s/father’s? We understand later that it is hers and this then concludes how well off they are as a family. Although it is the start of the war because of the sense of how rich the family is; when seeing the many maids, cooks and how large the house is with all its twisting corridors and beautiful décor. One just happens to wonder how far off are they going to be when they enter the war and whether they actually succeed in keeping their home.






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