In this particular moment of the film Wyatt and Billy are sitting in a graveyard with two girls, drinking, smoking and taking acid, a drug common in the 60's, from what is seen in these two minutes they are having a bad trip. further reading of the film as a whole shows that after this bad trip in the graveyard the two lads go on a journey of spiritual truth, the start of which can be seen and directly related to the underlying religious setting of a graveyard but also the use of a non-diegetic but then digetic voice over from a girl reading either from a bible or one of the lords prayers. at the start of the clip we get a mid shot low down looking at the four sat in front of a tombstone on of the lads is dressed as a native american, again pointing the the spiritual trip they will take later in the film. the lack of dialogue between the group doesn't help to show anything that is going on other than the words ''just shut up and take it'' the only speech here that conveys anything is the voice over that comes in a minute into the clip, throughout the scene there is a loud non-diegetic sound that seems like drums banging or something loud and ominous probably foreshadowing the nature of the trip they are about top take from the actual drugs themselves, ironically before they take a trip across america to find spiritual truth. the shot then jumps between a shot of them and a pan upwards of the tomb as well as a lens flare across the screen possibly showing this idea of spirituality as god is the light, this is also seen with the a shot of the sun then going to a white out to the jump back to their bad trip.
Even with the lack of dialogue you can tell what is happening in this moment and is conveyed through shots weather it gives a preferred reading is debatable, I would say that personally I took a negotiated reading to the text as without actively watching it i struggled to understand the ongoing of the clip.
''Cinema in the 1960s reflected the decade of fun, fashion, rock 'n' roll, tremendous social changes (i.e., the civil rights era and marches) and transitional cultural values.''
This can be seen with the drugs mainly as acid was a very popular drug in the 60's/70's however the camerawork is also reflective of the era as the cameras then were still on the bulky side and were not as handheld as cameras today, also reflection the changing times of the era.
Bibliography
Clip available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDAdzb9IeGU (Accessed 6th September 2019)
No comments:
Post a Comment