Analyzing Mise-en-Scene - Report Example

Analyzing Mise-en-Scène in Minority Report. Part One. The technical term “mise-en-scène” derives from the context of French theatre production and means literally “putting into the scene” in the sense of arranging props and people on a theatre stage. It has come to be used in the context of film-making and here, too, it has to do with the position of people and objects into a three dimensional space, with foreground, background, and spatial relationships with each other. Koenigsberg defines it as referring to “the composition of the individual frame – the relation of objects, people, and masses; the interplay of light and dark; the pattern of colour; the camera’s position and angle of view- as well as the movement within the frame.”1 Boggs and Petrie contrast mise-en-scène with the technique of “montage” which is all about putting different shots together in quick succession: “whereas montage derives its meaning from the relationship between one frame to the next through editing, mise-en-scène emphasizes the content of the individual frame. The science fiction thriller Minority Report, based on a short story by Philip K Dick, takes place in a futuristic New York, where crime is “foreseen” by special psychic law enforcers who catch criminals before they commit the crime that is about to happen. The challenge for the mise-en-scène of this story into film is to depict a familiar setting (mostly New York city) in a futuristic way, without lapsing into the clichés of B-movie and horror movie sci-fi. The key element of the plot is that the main character, John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, is caught up in one of the predictions of criminal action, and has to turn from being one of the police who chase would-be criminals, into one of those supposed criminals who are about to commit a crime. He must therefore be a believable psychic, hi-tech cop, but also a lonely and paranoid criminal on the run. The story is told in a chronological order, but there are screens within screens depicting past and future time which have a dubious status of being real, not yet real, or perhaps even just figments of the psychics’ imagination. Part Two One of the interesting aspects of the film is the way that it plays with time, asking the viewer to question both conventional concepts of cause and effect, and this new futuristic concept of pre-empting the future by foreseeing it and taking action before it happens. The story does come to a resolution at the end, with Anderton being confirmed as innocent, but the story twists and turns and the audience wonders all the while whether the predicted future will happen or not. The narrative style is vaguely threatening, as if Anderton is a tragic hero fighting against an unjust destiny and this is achieved though many scenes of Anderton walking fast between places, as if he cannot afford to linger and mix in with the other people in the society around him. The breathless pace adds to the feeling of pressure which builds up on Cruise. Many of the conventions of the thriller genre are followed, including high speed car chases, helicopter manoeuvres, swat teams descending from the ceiling, and a sharp contrast between the world of ordinary citizens (portrayed in static or slow moving natural settings with a full palette of warm colours) and the superhuman heroic cops and robbers who are the focus of all the action (portrayed always in black and always on the move at high speed). The director chooses mainly very cool colours and lighting effects to create a low-key, chilling and rather dark landscape, where blue and black predominate, with light reflecting from glass, Perspex and metal or appearing via various digital screens and devices. The police characters, including Anderton, invariably wear black, and even the female lead character, played by Samantha Morton, adheres to this spare and monotone concept, with her shaved head and unisex outfit. One of the most stunning aspects of the mise-en-scène is the way the characters are seen using highly innovative of ultra-modern 3-D technology. When the film was released in 2002, technology like the Wii interactive computer gaming system, HD TV, and even touch screen features now commonplace on the apple i-phone were still in their infancy and the film-going public had not seen people interacting very physically with the technology. In a scene within the police headquarters, for example, where Anderton and his colleagues sift through evidence relating to crimes, all the usual conventions of a police murder enquiry room are present: mug-shots, victim reports, pieces of random evidence, time lines etc, but the difference in Minority Report incident room is that all the data can be lifted, moved and pasted onto various horizontal and vertical substances. The actor’s faces are filmed in close up silhouetted against screens, or sometimes actually shining through the screens, since these are transparent in the way that holograms are. The camera plays with horizontal, vertical and transparent surfaces so that different realities appear superimposed one upon the other. As a method of conveying the complex nature of modern technology, this is a master stroke, and Spielberg’s a genius in creating these spectacular visual effects is what makes the film such a cult success with the geek generation. The film demonstrated 3D capabilities that the market was only just beginning to see the potential of. It is only looking back from a decade later that we can see just how revolutionary and cutting edge this camera work really was. Another important but easily overlooked factor in the film is the musical score by John Williams. The incident room scene described above, for example, is accompanied by a very simple and atmospheric music. It is not so much a continuous tune as a lot of complex chords which are smooth but at the same time slightly eerie. Almost like a counterpoint to these chords there is an intermittent bleep, blip, chirrup kind of background which indicates the noise of hi-tech information technology appliances at work all over the room. The camera moves all around the room, and there is no sense of an enclosing set of walls holding everything together. Because the background is dark, and the LED lights illuminate the faces and the data items in the centre of the room, the impression is given that they are floating together in the universe, being linked only by the images that weave in and out of focus around them. It is a scene that makes you feel dizzy and leaves a very strong impression on the viewer. Part three. Perhaps the most famous scene in the movie is the one where John Anderton marches through a shopping mall in his pursuit after the truth. The scene starts with a female voice-over advertising Lexus cars, and this is partly a comment on the media industry of today, and partly a calculated product placement move on the part of the Lexus car company. The scene opens with an arrow being shot and the camera follows the same line moving smoothly from left to right, off the edge of car picture and into a shopping mall. The scene immediately gains depth and John Anderton walks over from the back of the space and from right to left. This indicates that he is going against the flow of the majority and creates tension in the frame. From this point the camera appears to follow him at chest height, but then here and there it suddenly switches from head-on to left profile, to right profile, and then from behind, with confusing speed. A cut shot to a wall camera reveals that the director’s intention is to present the main character from the point of view of the artificially intelligent surveillance cameras. This point is underlined again and again when the camera pans very quickly from right to left and back again: the human eye cannot keep up with the speed, and only sees a blur between Cruise, an advertisement for Guinness beer, and then Cruise again. When Cruise first walks into the mall, his eyes catch the light and flash a bright white colour, as if to signify his ability to see what is going on around him. As the scene progresses, however, it becomes apparent that everyone’s eyes flash when they approach certain machines, because the machines are recording their individual iris configurations – a form of biometrics that allows surveillance to go on unnoticed. The sources of light in this mall scene are all sinister – they are either holograms advertising commercial products to tempt a listless and crowded public, or they are indications of data collection for control purposes. The sources of noise, too, are insistent, either the tramping of huge numbers of human beings through the holograms, or the persuasive voices of the advertising programs, calling John Anderton by name and promoting their products. It is not entirely clear whether he is hearing all of this telepathically, or whether the voices are real, and this adds to the eeriness of the mood. This complex, shifting, mise-en-scene depicts a world which is shifting more and more towards an information superhighway where human beings are pushed back. They look like dull workers, while the machines have all the brilliant lighting. Works Cited Boggs, Joseph M. and Petrie, Dennis W. The Art of Watching Films. 5th Edition. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, 2000. Print. Koenigsberg, Ira. The Complete Film Dictionary. 2nd Edition. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print. Spielberg, Stephen (Dir.) Minority Report. Starring Tom Cruise. Dreamworks/20th Century Fox, 2002. Film. Read More