I am thinking about the scene from The Passion where we see Jesus on the cross from God's point-of-view as he sheds a tear. How many other films have used a similar POV shot? The only thing that comes to mind is Magnolia as, I believe, we see the earth from above as the frogs begin to fall.

Breaking the Waves.

Lots of movies -- it's a pretty common device, I think. Two that immediately come to mind are Phone Booth and Children of Heaven.

Indeed, the Georgia Straight critic even had a line in his review of The Passion to the effect of "for once, the words 'God shot' are not merely metaphorical".

Children of Heaven? Are you sure you're not thinking of The Color of Paradise? I was absolutely sold after the final scene in this, Majidi's greatest film.

I clearly remember shots like this being used in Unbreakable, i believe we've even discussed before how God might be looking down on the Bruce Willis character as he comes to terms with his own super-humanity.

The ending of Tykwer's Heaven is another one of these sweeping camera/shifting perspectives kind of shots. After the ethical crises you went thru with the two main characters, the ending was overwhelmingly perfect. Also, as far as just a great POV shot goes, the best one i've ever seen is somewhere in the first 15 minutes of The Princess and The Warrior. There wasn't any big point being made, but the difference in perspectives was luscious.

The Schumacher thread reminds me of Veronica Guerin's fateful death scene which lingers on and on and on and on until we just plain can't take it anymore. It was a poor example of this kind of play with the camera.

-s.

[quote]Children of Heaven? Are you sure you're not thinking of The Color of Paradise?[/quote]
Since I've seen Children of Heaven and not The Color of Paradise... pretty sure.

I think the God shot in the Passion is differrent from those other's cited. There's a remoteness about it which just goes a step further IMHO. I appreciate there's something of a convention of overhead shots being "God's perspective" but even before he spoiled it with that tear effect I thought Gibson had acheinved something different with that one.

Matt

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The ending of Tykwer's Heaven is another one of these sweeping camera/shifting perspectives kind of shots.  After the ethical crises you went thru with the two main characters, the ending was overwhelmingly perfect.

I agree--but the "spacecam" as the eye of God is used throughout--especially if you listen to the bonus track on the DVD.

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I think the God shot in the Passion is differrent from those other's cited. There's a remoteness about it which just goes a step further IMHO. I appreciate there's something of a convention of overhead shots being \"God's perspective\" but even before he spoiled it with that tear effect I thought Gibson had acheinved something different with that one. Matt

I think I would reserve the end of Heaven for this slot. That is absolutely the one overhead POV shot that is invested with an absolute poetry of meaning.

Well, maybe that is a bit of an overstatement, because the Passion is fairly good and the Magnolia one is my favorite shot from that film so packed with great shots.

But thanks to the resurrection of discussion on Heaven I was able to track down some comments I made on this scene:


Heaven is going to be such a radical reorientation of reality and our perception of reality that the experience currently stands beyond linguistic expression. We simply cannot talk about it intelligibly. We can though envision it as a removal from the earth and its situations. In the storyline of Heaven we have two characters so entangled in a mess of their own design (and she did kill innocent people) that actually being removed from the earth is their only way out. In that final image then, they escape reality by actually escaping from the film. They ascend out of range of the camera and language. But the transition between heaven and earth is so ineffable that eventually even the image of their ascension is disconnected from our vision, they have passed out of the film into something else. In that image we pass through language into a vision of what Heaven is.

What a great way to "talk" about heaven. If I am on about that last sequence, then it is some pretty heavy cinematic stuff...

Having said that though, other than the last shot of Heaven, Run Lola Run is his most substantive work. From one perspective it is nothing more than an exercise in style. An exercise that works pretty well. But from another perspective it points us a new direction in film (one that we see in Bruno Dumont, Haneke, Noe, and maybe Wim Wenders). It doesn't follow the realist fiction tradition that European film is dominated by under the influence of Bazin and Bergson. It also isn't expressionist, simply standing in the shadow of Herzog or Dreyer with a few dark Fassbinder twists. Twyker takes the story, splits it at the seams, and lets other stories leak into it. He allows us to see the possibilities of "stories" as the possibilities that we encounter in reality ever day. There really isn't a hard and fast distinction at times between imagining life and actually living it. Both at the root are a form of storytelling. And something happens in Lola Rennt that doesn't often happen in other films: just for one instant we get to peek behind the veil. And, in the spirit of what makes existentialism such a fruitful enterprise, it is a glimpse both pessemistic and optimistic at the same time.

...In all of Kieslowski's films there is a substantive vista of the human spirit. There is always that moment, or a particular image, through which we are struck with "meaning" that erupts from within the film. This "meaning" then spreads itself out over the course of the film. The Princess and the Warrior simply doesn't have this quality, it disappears from the screen as immediately as it appears. Heaven would do the same thing if it wasn't for the perfect ending.

Of course, the reverse shot for representing hell/Satan/death is usually a camera on the ground looking up.

These kinds of shots always bothered me. It's essentially cliched by now, why not come up with some new form of representing God?

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...In all of Kieslowski's films there is a substantive vista of the human spirit. There is always that moment, or a particular image, through which we are struck with \"meaning\" that erupts from within the film. This \"meaning\" then spreads itself out over the course of the film. The Princess and the Warrior simply doesn't have this quality, it disappears from the screen as immediately as it appears. Heaven would do the same thing if it wasn't for the perfect ending.

I don't know. I love meaning in film, don't get me wrong, but in life -- what is meaning? Doesn't beauty in its sheer aesthetic power have meaning in and of itself? There are moments in The Princess and the Warrior when i am overwhelmed with personified beauty. And that means a lot to me.

Some films pulse from the profound construction of narrative alone. Dogville is the most recent example of this that i can think of. Much of Manoel de Oliveira's work comes to mind as well. But another kind of film paralyzes the viewer with raw imagery, regardless of the depth of the script or any of its characters. Think: Medea, The Element of Crime, Vera, Irreversible, Reconstruction. I have always been drawn to these types first, which is probably why i am so attracted to dogme and to a certain extent Guy Maddin. I think that The Princess and the Warrior certainly fits into this category, which in terms of absolute “meaning” is probably lacking compared to films where the writer is involved long before the cinematographer. But i am convinced that images alone can speak to us as much as any script. A good cinematographer can speak as much as a good writer.

I will however admit that the perfect combination is found when both are in complete harmony together. My statement was that the two can live and affect us separately, but when they are unified and both masterful in their crafts, that is obviously going to bring about the cream that rises to the top. Examples of this are easy. Kieslowski and Haneke leap to mind. And Iranian film (the little i’ve seen which is mostly Majidi). The Passion of the Christ would be included on this list. Last night’s screening of Titus might fit this description. Ratcatcher. etc etc, I know we’ve covered this before.

I guess my point, before i got carried away with my own banter, was that different films have different strengths, and meaning is as elusive as truth was to Pilate. I do think that the camera involvement in The Princess and the Warrior is itself beautiful, and i’m not ashamed to admit that i can love an image for the sole purpose of its beauty. Is that dangerous?

-s.

No, that isn't dangerous at all. And as a whole we need to be developing critical methodologies to talk about these experiences in films that assess them correctly. Christian parlance just doesn't have the "speech" required to make heads or tales of what you are trying to anunciate.

I was just so struck by what Tykwer was doing at the end of Heaven that it overshadowed everything else he had done. The thing about Kieslowski though Stef is that he takes that moment, that sudden experience of something beautiful in terms of form, and uses it to transmit this bulwark of meaning that his characters develop. So each of his finely crafted shots, while extremely poised and beautiful, aren't an end in themselves but provide us access to the subtler language of his films. So when Twyker sets up a pretty scene, yeah in terms of film that is a rewarding experience, but someone like Kieslowski or Eistenstein (whom you recently mentioned) just takes it to a whole new level.

Don't get me wrong, I think we need to be learning how to articulate why it is that just the pure image in and of itself can be an enlightening and edifying experience. But if we are going to compare Kies. and Tykwer on this point, Kies. always wins for me. Perhaps though Tykwer's next few projects though will prove to be as powerful as something like Ratcatcher.

Back to Dogville, I apologize for forgetting that. That whole film plays on the notion of the overhead shot as a stand in for the moral presence of the divine. That is a great example.

The interesting problem that camera position and representations of the divine brings up is that they frequently challenge our cliched notions of God-talk. We can call a certain camera position cliched, but so are 95 percent of the words and phrases we use to talk about God on a daily basis. So the question of coming up with "new ways to represent God in film" is the same question of coming up with new ways to talk about in in both secular and religious contexts.

So I applaud something like Dogville for utilizing this cliched convention, but then over the course of the film bending this "language" as far is it will go and producing something quite unexpected for us.

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So when Twyker sets up a pretty scene, yeah in terms of film that is a rewarding experience, but someone like Kieslowski or Eistenstein (whom you recently mentioned) just takes it to a whole new level.

Agreed.

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Perhaps though Tykwer's next few projects will prove to be as powerful as something like Ratcatcher.

Judging from the first reviews that are coming in for True i think this is a definite possibility. [User Comments: Maybe the most beautiful movie I've ever seen.]

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Back to Dogville, I apologize for forgetting that. That whole film plays on the notion of the overhead shot as a stand in for the moral presence of the divine. That is a great example.

It begins with that overhead shot where we view the chalkmarks of everything that should be a town, but is this necessarily a view from the divine? I think we typically associate these kinds of shots with this idea, but i'm not sure that Von Trier was trying to use it here. The film's finale seems to argue against the belief that anything is out there for the town's people.

-s.

Yeah, I think he plays on the convention. The only Third Person out there is really just us. The people in this town really are just alone.