If you go to 6:05 of the clip in the link above, there's about a 6 second mini-montage from the film
Requiem for a Dream (Aronofsky, 2000) which I think is a good illustration of what Eisenstein
discussed in his montage theory. Specifically, on p. 60 he states, "The differentiation in montage-pieces
lies in their lack of existence as single units. Each piece can evoke no more than a certain association."
Each of the abstract images, the dilating pupil, the lighter, the interior of the veins, etc, come together to
establish the feeling of "getting high," rather than explicitly stating that the protagonists are getting high.
Jose Guerrero
K, so I actually watched that film for the first time, the whole way through, two weeks ago. Aronofsky does do a great job with making the audience feel as though they're present within that very moment of gettin high. Lil Trivia for ya... if you watch the scene during Ellen Burstyn's impassioned monologue about how it feels to be old, cinematographer Matthew Libatique accidentally let the camera drift off-target. When director Darren Aronofsky called "cut" and confronted him about it, he realized the reason Libatique had let the camera drift was because he had been crying during the take and fogged up the camera's eyepiece. This was the take used in the final print! So awesome to watch it over again and pick up on it. It's faint but watch closely.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3OK0KgXjmk