Insurmountable loneliness and desolation

Nichole 2022-04-02 09:01:14

The film "The Band Visits" uses color, light and composition to weave a rough image of the Israeli city like sackcloth and an irresistible sense of alienation and loneliness.

The use of color in the film is very handy, and the band members at the beginning of the film stand across the road to create a stage effect with a sense of alienation. This sense of alienation exists not only in the alienation that we cannot participate in as a viewer's perspective, but also in the alienation of incompatible colors. The incompatibility lies in the fact that the sky blue dresses of the band members are always brighter than the Israeli cities with the gray background. In the scene where several members of the band are eating at one person's house, the director always uses warm and cold clothes to clearly separate several people. The warm yellow wallpaper and the warm-toned clothing of the family members made the three band members look particularly abrupt in that scene, and the atmosphere was always filled with embarrassment and alienation. It was not until the two sides talked about their common favorite music that the director put the two groups of members in the previous frame, and the abrupt blue color was wrapped in yellow, making the two colors relatively harmonious and dispelling the awkward atmosphere. . The contrast and collision on this color block is more silent and pressing is the scene where the band leader and the restaurant owner have dinner. The proprietress's loose hair was dressed in red, and she smiled and raised her eyebrows step by step. At this time, the warm red and the restrained blue formed an ambiguous and alienated texture. This sense of alienation not only exists in the erratic eyes of both parties, but also in the collision of the opposite colors of the seats in the opposite positions of the shots directed by the camera.

The film's understanding of light is more original and novel. The film uses top lighting in multiple sets of shots. It creates a feeling that the actors are on the stage, and adds another wall brought to us by the drama to the wall in front of the audience caused by the movie itself, so that the alienation caused by the movie itself to the audience becomes Double. Like the little brother who was waiting for his girlfriend at the phone booth on a cold night. In the eyes of the band members, this teenager is weird. This kind of loneliness and alienation of meeting a strange person who can't communicate with him in a foreign country is What the film wants to convey. And a beam of overhead light hit the strange boy's head, making the boy's face strange and blurry in the eyes of the audience. The desolate night, the forgotten park bench, the proprietress and the captain sit on the bench, the top light hits their heads, and the surrounding darkness wraps them up to form a loneliness that resembles a stage effect.

The composition of the film is also very ingenious. When the band members are eating at an Israeli family, the director deliberately arranges the two groups of members in different frames, and the two pictures are played back and forth to form a sense of incompatibility. The lonely director who cannot be expressed in words can express it extremely well with only pictures. A more obvious sense of alienation and loneliness also exists in the composition of these two different pictures. Compared with the warm scene in which Israeli families are scattered and surrounded in a semicircle, the three band members are sitting closely together. The director edited back and forth between this compact composition method and the warm scenes of the Israeli family, forming a strong visual impact and feeling. The rigorous composition, in which the band is arranged to line up in a frame, appears three times in the film. Highlights the rigor and incompatibility and alienation of a band of soldiers. When the composition appears for the second time, the moment when the cleaners enter the frame, the awkward scene becomes grotesque and the distance between them and the city becomes even more insurmountable.

The loneliness and alienation of the film are subtly dissolved in the details of each scene, giving the audience an inalienable viewing experience and different emotional resonances.

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Extended Reading

The Band's Visit quotes

  • Lieutenant-colonel Tawfiq Zacharya: This is like asking why a man needs a soul.