Director: Michael Bay
Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer
Screenplay: Randall Wallace
Musical Score: Hans Zimmer
Stars: Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale and Josh Hartnett
Genre: Wartime Drama
Synopsis: A tale of two Best Friends, Rafe and Danny, who become Army Air Corps pilots, they soon meet gorgeous Navy Nurse, Evelyn, whom Rafe falls for immediatly. When Rafe gets called out to Britain and shot down, whilst in combat, he is immediatly assumed dead. Danny and Evelyn find comfort in each other and form a relationship. When Rafe mysteriously appears to find Danny and Evelyn as a couple it causes friction between all three of them. Just before Danny and Rafe are called out to duty Evelyn tells Rafe that she is pregnant with Danny's child this hurts Rafe but he knows to look after Danny, for the unborn childs sake, when Danny is shot down and slowly dying in Rafe's arms Rafe tells him that he cannot die as he's gonna be a father. This cuts to years later when an older Rafe and Evelyn are together raising their child, Danny Jnr (Danny's biological son) when they then take Danny Jnr to Danny Walker's Grave.
This film is based upon the Historical events in World War II when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941.
Here is a short clip of the movie.
The title sequence consists with the two main characters-Danny and Rafe-as children playing in a .pretend airplane this shows the audience later on in the movie that actually the two characters wanted to be pilots their whole lives. A sense of foreboding when they start the real airplane shows that something is going to happen later on in the film with the characters and planes.
The Mise-en-Scene is quite stereotypical they are both farm boys from Tennessee. One is wearing denim trousers a white shirt and braces to keep the trousers up, and the other (Danny) is wearing a pair of dungarees. you can tell by how tatterred Danny's clothes are compared to Rafe's that perhaps Rafe is wealthier than Danny or perhaps Danny works on the farm that is owned by Rafe's father and that is how the two boys met. The binary opposition between the two boys is made up by the love of flying they both share. The cornfields that they're playing in show a stereotypical farm, with a red barn and fields and fields of corn and wheat also the water metre that stands nearer the barn is very American and a stereotype of a farm. Later on when Rafe's dad has finished with the plane he leaves the two boys unattended and they jump in the red plane. The colour of the plane connotes trouble, danger and a warning siren. So when the boys get into the plane the audience automatically realise that there is going to be a problem. They guess right when the plane starts and the two boys are unable to control finally they do and restore mahem.
The camera shots are quite simple there is a shot reverse shot between Danny's father and Rafe, the tension between the two characters in the SRS is purely because Rafe called Danny's father a "dirty German" and Danny's father is distraught because he fought against the German's in WW1 so for someone to refer to him as one is heart-breaking let alone finding out that his son and best friend are both playing a make-believe game of the Great War. I think that a shot reverse shot can leak out a lot of emotions between two characters as we find out how each character is responding to the other's remarks. In this moment both Rafe and Danny's father are scared and angry but the father looks mostly terrified like he's just gone back to the Great War. Before this there is a brilliant low angle shot of Danny and Rafe watching the red plane-that Rafe's father is flying-going past them, this is also slowed down and the shot emphasises the fact that both these boys are treasuring this point in their lives and the memory will stay with them forever. Right at the beginning of the Film there is a tracking shot of the red plane and the sun is setting just behind it so all you see is the silhouette of the plane this is stunning and very elegant. The fact that the movie opens with an airplane shows that the film will consist of planes-which it does because the boys grow up to be pilots in WW2.
There is not a lot of diegesis in the film but most of it is diegetic, this includes a lot of the dialogue between Danny and Rafe and Danny's father. Also there is a fabulous diegetic sound of some cards hitting against a bike wheel's bars making a fluttering sound-this is on the toy airplane that the boys are riding-and it sounds remarkabley like an airplane's motor. Finally a non-diegetic which is the piano playing softly in the background. I don't think the opening needed the non-diegetic sound as the airplane motors spoke for itself.
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