Full-length narrative shot of Theodoros Angelopoulos
——Poetic expression in simple narrative
Author: Saudade
Love movies, feel life, and love sadness.
Eternity and a Day, a French drama in 1998. Director Theodoros Angelopoulos won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for this work. The depiction and understanding of time in the movie has become the essence of the plot. Regarding time as a subjective foothold, the memories of the past are intertwined with reality, and finally discuss time, the world in time, and the self in time. Angelopoulos loves continuous shots and contemplative stories (Horton, Dan & Angelopoulos, 1992). In Eternity and a Day, this style is clearly reflected. According to Cao (2019), Angelopoulos is one of the most important film directors in the 20th century. On the basis of Bazin’s realist film theory, he demonstrated his uniqueness in three lens modes: fixed long lens, sports long lens, and long depth of field lens. The pursuit of film aesthetics has constructed a strong poetic aesthetic in the history of film art. This film blog will start with a full-length shot in the film and analyze its artistry.
The scene takes place in the middle of the film: 00:59:45-01:04:15. Bruno Ganz, the protagonist who experienced the last day of his life because of cancer, is driving in search of someone who can help him take care of his dog. The 3 minute 30 second shot can be divided into the following parts:
The shot begins with a 30-second stop-motion shot, and the protagonist enters the frame in a car. After getting off the car, with the sound of the accordion, he ran into a couple who were in a wedding ceremony.
Subsequently, following the protagonist's sight, the screen changed from a fixed shot to a moving shot, and the bride in the wedding was followed up. In this part, the protagonist gradually leaves the screen. After that, the lens started a right-to-left horizontal visual rotation at a fixed point. The bride moves from far to near in the picture, and then from near to far, completing the transformation of extreme long shot-long shot-extreme long shot. It can be guessed that this is to create a first-person insight. Angelopoulos deliberately put the protagonist outside the screen, completing the visual transition from the third person to the first person in the same shot.
At this time, Angelopoulos took a zoom shot, the lens was gradually zoomed in, and once again changed from extreme long shot to long shot. The screen focuses on two newlyweds. Accompanied by music performance, the two danced.
Then there was a long tracking shot of the rotating machine from right to left. But unlike the previous shots, in this period of shooting, the protagonist does not appear in the picture, nor is it the starting point of vision. The camera position is shifted from straight-on angle to high angle. The picture overhead shots the newlyweds walking from the road to the waterside, and there are many people participating in the wedding and children lying on the railing watching the lively. It is worth noting that at this stage, the protagonist has not appeared in the picture.
In the final stage of the shot, the director once again zoomed from extreme long shot to long shot. The other characters in the picture are out of the frame, leaving only the bride and groom, accompanied by the continuous sound of musical instruments. Until 01:04:10, the music stopped abruptly, and the protagonist led the dog into the screen.
At this point, this shot shooting is over. In fact, this shot is dull and uninteresting. The picture has no complicated highlights, just a narrative in the form of a running account. The director also did not add any non-narrative background sounds or lines to the screen, only natural environmental sounds. However, the protagonist's psychological state is still reflected in the small details.
First explore the relationship between the protagonist and the picture. The starting point of the shot is that the protagonist enters the frame, but after the bride and groom appear, the protagonist quickly leaves the frame. Later, the picture showed the protagonist's first-person vision, and once again separated from the protagonist's vision and transformed into an overhead shot. It was not until the end of the scene that the protagonist returned to the scene. This shooting method of introducing the protagonist in the first person and then allowing the protagonist to join the camera after scheduling is a poetic repetition. Just like the theme of the film, in the rhythm of the normal passing of time, there are constantly rich encounters and changes with time.
In addition, the presentation form of this lens has a good control over the protagonist’s sense of onlookers, alienation and substitution. There is no objective and actual connection between the protagonist and the characters and objects in the lens. He has been participating in the lens as a bystander, and he has a sense of alienation from the outside. The first is the movement. The groom and the bride have been dancing since they met, and other people also have movement changes. The camera does not directly capture the protagonist's trajectory, but from the first person to visual judgment, the protagonist's trajectory is fixed. The absence of the protagonist in the overhead shot also shows that he is independent of the crowd. The sound level is also reflected. The noisy sound reflects the authenticity of the original ecological shooting. But at the same time, in this three-minute-long shot, the protagonist never made any sound except for the parking action. The protagonist's complete silence and the hustle and bustle of marriage form a very vivid contrast, as if completely out of the camera.
Finally, although the marriage event has no real connection with the protagonist. But it also touched the memory of the protagonist. The protagonist’s memories are mentioned many times in the film. It can be clearly felt that in the meeting, the protagonist regrets his estrangement from his wife. When he watched a couple holding a wedding ceremony, it was an old man who was truly touched, tangled and nostalgic at the end of his life.
Old age, homecoming, loneliness, nostalgia and sigh. To enrich the connotation of the film with the most common description is the poetic aesthetics of Theodoros Angelopoulos.
Reference list:
Angelopoulos, T. (Producer & Director). (1998). Eternity and a Day [Motion Picture]. France : Paradis Films.
Cao, J. (2019). An zhe luo pu luo si dian ying chang jing tou mo shi fen xi (Analysis of long shot mode of Angelopoulos film). Journal of Fujian Radio & TV University, 2, pp. 93-96.
Horton, A., Dan, G. & Angelopoulos, T. (1992). National culture and individual vision: an interview with Theodoros Angelopoulos. Cinéaste, 19(2/3), pp. 28-31.
