HER & MOMMY: Disorienting the viewer for an emotional reaction
Something I’ve been studying lately is how to create emotion purely through visuals even without context.
It’s a great challenge, take away the back-story, take away the sad music and all you’re left with is an image. Is it possible for that image to provoke emotion simply on its own? Well obviously yes, we see incredible photography all the time that evokes strong emotions in us, but what about simple moving images without even having the face of the subject in frame, can that image conjure emotions?
This is what I’ve been looking into for the last few months, I noticed this when I last watched the film “Her,” great movie by the way, you should watch it. What I noticed was the use of lighting to create two district kinds of Mellon collie, #1: Cold white/blue lighting, it creates a hallow feeling, even lonely.
And #2: Warm red/orange lighting, which creates a feeling of comfort and relaxation.
I noticed this along with a key element that I have been using to my advantage in my own projects ever since, that that element is, extremely shallow depth of field.
Take a look at Bon Iver’s song “Holocene,” the song constantly evokes Mellon collie through disorienting the listener with multiple instruments playing at once and constantly switching between the left and right ear, what I noticed in the film “Her” is that the constant extremely shallow depth of field disorients the viewer in the same way, causing you to not entirely be sure what’s going on, especially when hand held or short cuts are introduced to this. Now we’re not talking about shaky-cam disorientation, that’s a cheap trick used by filmmakers like Michael Bay to disorient the viewer simply because the acting and action are poorly executed, thus the disorientation hides those things.
But what if you could use that technique in an artistic way, what if you used disorientation to create a feeling of being out of touch with reality, that is after all what depression and anxiety are, being out of touch with what is going on around you, feeling the world move slower than usual, feeling the lines between emotions blur.
Then I stumbled upon a French film called “Mommy,” this just might be one of the greatest movies of the decade and you must watch it. This film uses every possible opportunity to disorient the viewer, from everything I’ve just mentioned about strong depth of field, to the fact the film is shot in a perfect square aspect ratio, giving it a claustrophobic feel. “Mommy” uses these things to its advantage to separate the moments of the character’s disorientation and clarity, in two scenes in the film, two of the main characters both separately experience clarity in their lives for the first time in the film, and when this happens the aspect ratio of the film is widened to the normal 1920x 1080 that we’re used to seeing film formatted in. And the depth of field becomes shallower, making everything clear in beautiful wide shots that take up the whole screen.
While films like “Her” and “Mommy” have incredible soundtracks, beautiful acting and extremely unique and personal stories being told, we must remember that film is a visual medium, and any film that pushes the boundaries for what is both disorienting and clear, can create a more freeing experience for the viewer and other artists who come after.
