Roman Osin – Cinematographer – Pride & Prejudice

Okay, so I am posting this pretty much because I consider it one of the most beautiful shots I have ever seen. It really is a shame this was the only time Roman Osin teamed up with Director Joe Wright. The whole movie is filled with stunning imagery. Joe Wright more then any other director I have studied seems interested in using all the elements in the frame to tell his story. Usually he concentrates on relating his main characters with curtain elements or color schemes. With Atonement (2007)Joe Wright represented the main character Briony Tallis with the color White. There was also Briony’s sister in the movie, Cecilia, who was constantly symbolized by the element of water. In his latest movie Anna Karenina (2012) the much more unstable title character, Anna, was represented through a stream of lush colors depending on her mental state. For Pride & Prejudice the main character Elizabeth Bennet – the one you see on the ledge here -is constantly represented through earthy colors.

This image shows Elizabeth completely in here element. She is surrounded by rich browns and yellows. The sky even seems to carry some of those yellows and the blue is subdued so it doesn’t distract from the theme. This image also clearly expresses Elizabeth’s rebelliousness; I mean seeing she stands on the edge of a cliff. The beautiful thing is all the elements, such as the colors and the wind, are embracing her. Notice how both the horizon line and edge of the cliff points us directly to Elizabeth. I feel this shows Elizabeth’s independence and unwillingness to be tamed. It says everything we need to know about who she is and that is just illustrates some fine visual storytelling.

Joe Wright – An Observation – Telling a Story

Joe Wright is one of those filmmakers who likes to let his audience know he is telling a story. At the beginning of Pride and Prejudice the main character Elizabeth is reading a book, which Wright described as the beginning of the story she is about to go on. In Atonement the first thing we see is Briony typing out the last part of her play. At the end of the story we find out she is in fact the author of the story we are watching. The Soloist revolves around a group of articles the main character Steve Lopez wrote for his newspaper.  Hanna was described by Wright as a sort of fairytale and we see Wright express this motif constantly; through the main character Hanna reading out of the Brothers Grimm book, the way Wiegler dresses in green and red to resemble a witch, and the fact the whole third act takes place in a deserted circus land which resembles something you would see in a classic fairytale. In Wright’s latest feature Anna Karenina he goes a step further in making it obvious what we are seeing is made up. He fictionalizes the story by setting it in a theater. Wright makes it obvious the actors are on the stage when performing.  Instead of cutting to another scene we at times see prop men come out and change the location in front of our eyes. We even have scenes take place in the prop room, backstage, and up on the catwalks.

If you really think about it most films have very little resemblance to real life. Even the ones based on true stories are completely manipulated in order to express a curtain view. Whether these views are of substance, accurate, or worth your time has everything to do with the storyteller. Joe Wright is a master at using the tools of cinema to manipulate the audience’s view. Wright doesn’t even try to hide this fact. He wants you to understand you are watching a story and not reality. He tells you this through the way he composes shots,  uses music, and edits his films. In fact every time a filmmaker chooses to make a cut, use a curtain angle, or bring in music he is manipulating the audience’s emotions. Wright just is a master at it. His job as a filmmaker is not to tell the literal truth, it is to use the tools of manipulation he has at his disposal to tell the emotional truth of his story.

 “A storyteller is someone who hides the truth in fiction so you can see it better”
Steven Parolini

This is one of the best explanations of a filmmaker’s job. We have the power to send people off to lands where gods and giants rein, to galaxy’s light years away, or to worlds that resemble ours but have toys come to life and animals talk. Wright makes no attempt to make you believe what you are seeing is real. He understands the power of the audience understanding they are watching a story. He wants to exaggerate what we see in real life and create an experience. His job is to understand the heart of his story to such a great extant he could manipulate whatever he needs in order to make the heart of his film resonate with the audience. Wright has experienced life. His films are proof of this.The heart of his stories come from a real and truthful place in his heart.

The reason films like Hanna, a story of a child trained assassin, or Pride & Prejudice, a 17th century drama, resonate with the audience is because they go beyond their genre and show universal truths. Whatever Wright thinks he needs to peel away in order to express those truths more clearly he will take away. It is why we see such impressionistic work in a movie like Anna Karenina. Wright felt the story of lust and love would work better if he heightened the surroundings. He uses extreme color schemes in order to express the emotions of the story and his characters. In the movie Wright does not waste time cutting to different scenes. He has many of the sets change in front of our eyes because his characters’ lives are in constant flux. In Wright’s films we follow his characters’ emotional arcs. The surrounding is completely changeable depending on where his characters are emotionally.

Telling a story requires a lot of talent and technique to get it right. The director needs to be thinking about the framing, music, lighting, sound design, costumes, actors, camera movement, how all those things contribute to the scene, and how the scene contributes to the whole, through out the whole filmmaking process. This takes a lot of devotion and study to get right. You will not get someone who is interested in putting in the countless hours of time and effort unless he is completely devoted to telling the story he has to tell. Joe Wright is a storyteller and his art is telling a story. No wonder he likes acknowledging this in his films from time to time. Yet, Wright doesn’t care whether you catch his acknowledgments. He actually wants you to get so interested in his worlds and so close to his characters you get completely invested in the story. He wants to reveal to you the wonders of the worlds he creates and the emotions of his characters. He wants to tell you a story you will never forget.

Joe Wright – An Observation – Responding

From my studies I have found there are two very distinct kinds of directors both of which I have tremendous respect and admiration for. There are the Fincher’s and Kubrick’s of the industry who are known for being perfectionists. Many say they already have the movie in their head before they shoot their first shot. Their job is to get what is in their head into the camera. Usually this involves countless hours of tedious work, where the director is trying to control as many details as the time allows to get his vision onto the screen. The other type of director I have encountered is the “Go with you gut” directors. These directors are the Eastwood’s and Spielberg’s of our day. Every day is a inspiration to them and they let these inspirations drive their directing. They do not obsess over flaws in the frame, in fact they capitalize on mistakes a actor makes or the weather creates and bring a more authentic feel to their films.

Joe Wright is a director who falls under the category of “go with your gut” directing. He has done his research but he relies on the performances, costumes, and locations to guide his directing. He wants to be inspired. This is one of the main reasons he does not like working on sets. No matter if he is shooting a period piece, a thriller, or a buddy movie, Wright wants to find actual locations to do most of his shooting. He get’s inspired by the locations and they become just as involved with his story as the characters. His mission is to inspire the crew and the actors to do their best work. He sets things up so the actors can actually mingle with the extras when they are not shooting. He plays music and gets rid of as many distractions as he could so his crew stays on task. During inmate scenes Wright said he tries to have only him, the sound recorder, the grip, and the cinematographer present with the actors so they could feel as comfortable as possible while executing their scene.

One thing you will notice with almost all of the personal scenes in Wright’s movies is his use of the a handheld camera or steady cam. In his commentary on Pride & Prejudice Wright talked about how most of film is about the technical part of filming but the handheld empowers the actors. The great Italian director Federico Fellini  is widely known for making the handheld style of filmmaking popular for the coming of age generation in the 1970’s. The first Rocky film was a breakthrough movie with the steady cam. Through the use of the hand held and steady cams filmmakers found they were less limited with the camera and could explore more personal things and create a more realistic feel in their stories. Using handhelds and steady cams allows the camera man to react to the action on screen in a much more intimate way. Wright likes to respond to what he sees and what he feels. When we watch Wright’s brilliant multiple minute single shots in Pride & Prejudice, Hanna, and Atonement, they are successful because they allow us to take a uncut second person view of the situation and soak in the environment, characters, and story as though we were there. We feel like we are in a 17th century ball, walking in the midst of beaten down World War II soldiers, and trying to escape from secret spies, all because of Wright’s superb ability to transport us into his worlds through the intimacy of the camera.

Even music is used in many of Wright’s films through the response of natural sound effects in the environment. Atonement starts off with the main character Briony at her type writer finishing her play. The typing from Briony slowly transitions into Briony’s theme music with the type writer noise maintaining the basis of her themes beat. At the end of the first act when Robbie is taken away, his mother begins to bang on the front of the police car. The banging becomes the main beat for the powerful climatic music used to end the first act. We see a similar use of sound in the movie Hanna, where helicopter propellers, traffic sounds, and combat noise transitions into the main themes used in the Chemical Brothers score. This is just another example of how Wright is inspired by the world around him and lets it guide him even in post production.

A good directer needs to balance between being prepared and leaving room to be inspired. After watching Wright’s latest film Anna Karenina it seems he brings his response oriented directing style farther then ever before. Unlike Wright’s other films Anna Karenina is mostly shot inside a set. He wants to bring to attention the story he is telling is piece of fiction intentionally dramatized to provoke emotion. Everything seems to be a response to Anna’s emotions.  There is even a time where everything stays still until Anna’s vigorous passion awakens them. Wright wants to awaken his audience . He will hit us with emotions that sometimes defy logic. In most of Wright’s films he does not even try to hide the fact we are watching a story unfold.  He has no intetion in making these stories look real. Instead he wants them to feel real and he will dramatize whatever he needs to to get the desired effect. He is looking for the audience to feel anger towards his characters, love, sorrow, and happiness. In short, Wright is looking for a response.

Joe Wright – An Observation – Dyslexia

I first started to research director Joe Wright when I found out he was dyslexic. He has said in interviews his dyslexia made him feel stupid and is one of the big reasons he didn’t finish school. The man just didn’t read as fast as other students and he wasn’t a linguistic thinker. I am sure the school system was, like it is to so many other dyslexics, not kind to Mr. Wright. It is interesting however that Wright says his dyslexia is also the reason he has been so successful in the film profession. In a interview on The Telegraph Wright stated, “I think my dyslexia was a vital part of my development because my inability to read and write meant that I had to find knowledge elsewhere so I looked to the cinema”.

A fair question to ask is “why did Wright fail in school but find substance through the cinema?”.  In order to understand you must learn a little more about dyslexia. Dyslexia is usually labeled as a learning disability. Those diagnosed with dyslexia usually have a hard time with organization, reading, writing, and spelling. The majority of school systems rely heavily on verbal and linguistic teaching creating a huge disadvantage for dyslexics.  Knowing this it is easy to understand why Wright failed in the school system. However the cinema can also be a learning tool. The cinema teaches through the use of images. Through the cinema’s stories we learn lessons on politics, geography, evolution, religion, humanity, and so on.

I don’t believe Dyslexia is a learning disability. It is a different way of thinking. Dyslexics think through images. Some of the strengths associated with dyslexia are the ability to think spatially, being able to look at a problem from multiple angles, advancements in the imagination, and being able to see the big picture of any given problem or project. If you watch Joe Wright’s movies you can see how he has a firm grasp in all these areas.

When listening to Wright talk about his films it seems he relies more on instinct then any literal reasoning. He has done the research for his project but he wants to let the locations and visuals dictate the way he films. Because of this we find every frame in his movies stimulating. His main mission is to provoke emotion through his visuals. Wright never lets the details of the plot get in the way of his characters’ emotional growth. As a dyslexic myself I remember taking tests and always doing badly because I didn’t remember names and dates. What fascinated me and the things I constantly talked to my parents about were the emotions of the events I had learned about, how those impacted the people during that time period, and how they related to me in the present. I understood the material but didn’t have the ability to express my understanding through writing or the the tests I took. I can imagine Wright had a similar problems.

For Wright the literal facts seem to be the farthest from his mind. In Wright’s first feature film Pride & Prejudice he doesn’t care about the fact that Elizabeth Bennett is at a much lower class then Mr. Darcy as much as he cares about the emotional effect that fact has on their relationship. In Hanna the whole plot point of the title character Hanna being genetically altered in order to be a better killer was described by Wright as no more then a “macguffin” (a plot device with little to no explanation, used to propel the story). What mattered is this plot point propelled us into an emotional story.  We see a child grow up and emotionally go to battle with what she was made to do verses what is morally right.

One of the most important things a director must be able to do is have the big picture of the film in his mind while shooting individual scenes. It has been clinically proven that dyslexics use their right brain to a much higher extant than most non-dyslexics. The right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for seeing connections that tie things together and seeing how parts relate to wholes. The beach scene in Atonement and the exploration of Skid Row in The Soloist are examples of Wright leaving the main characters entirely in order to observe the bigger picture. He is able to ground his individual stories by showing us the world around the stories.

Wright creates connections in his films in many ways, including the use of mirror imagery, musical themes, and repeating pieces of dialogue. In Hanna we see the title character use the same line of dialogue to start off the story and to end it; making us reflect on how or if the events she went on had created any change. Two of the key scenes in Atonement are when the main character Briony tells the great lie to the investigators towards the beginning of the story and the truth to the reporter at the end of the story. The lie is what sends us into the conflict the rest of the story revolves around and the truth is what resolves the story and brings the audience closure. Wright binds the two scenes by using the same framing, background, and has the main character Briony looking straight into frame both times. We instantly see how these scenes are connected and how important they are to the narrative of the story.  At the beginning of Pride & Prejudice we hear the musical theme we come to associate with Elizabeth and the Bennett Family. However the same music is played by Mr. Darcy’s younger sister when Elizabeth visits Mr. Darcy’s house. Though Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s worlds look quite different the music unites them emotionally. Wright’s ability to understand the complete story gives him more insight on how to direct these individual scenes and connect them to the greater narrative.

No matter how much a dyslexic has worked to overcome his or her natural weaknesses the struggles are never completely resolved. Wright still says it takes him much longer to read a script or a book then most people. However he has found ways to change these perceived  weaknesses into strengths. Wright has said, “Because I think visually, not being able to read meant that other parts of my brain were pushed further, and so when I read a book, I have to see it”. It is not a accident that three of the five movies Wright has directed have been based on literary classics. It’s not that Wright is against reading, very few dyslexics are. It’s just the words come to Wright’s mind as pictures. Wright’s ability to see what he is reading allows him to translate the written word to film in a much more visually expressive way.

There are many others who have struggled in the classroom to become some of the greatest filmmakers in history. It is suspected that the great filmmaker David Lean struggled with dyslexia as a child. He hardly got by in the school system and was constantly made fun of by peers and his father for being a slow learner. Steven Spielberg is another diagnosed dyslexic who also severely struggled in the school system. These filmmakers did not just overcome their dyslexia they have used it do miraculous things in the cinema.  I feel Joe Wright is on his way. Many would call movies like Pride & Prejudice and Atonement some of the best films of this new century. It is hard not to call his five minute shot of the Dunkirk evacuation one of the most awe inspiring shots in all of cinema. Wright continues to explore his art form and he is going in an ambitious direction. His last two films have been criticized for being over the top and against the grain of established cinema. However “against the grain” is a perfect description of dyslexia. We think in a different way and are often called failures in the established system because of it. Still, many of these school system failures, such as Steven Spielberg, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Edison, have the greatest success stories in our history.