Stills that Lead to Plot
A look at how stills have shaped my way of looking at film and projects.
Who wasn’t shaped by Point Break? I loved everything about this film. Utah was solving a crime, but he was also learning how to surf. Also, Bodhi is the best spiritual guide you can ask for. Yes, he tries to kill you in the desert and frames you for a bank heist, but the zen he bestows along the way somewhat makes up for it.
When Utah finds him at that beach, he can either take him in or allow him to surf that ridiculous wave into oblivion. He lets him surf. The set-up of this shot is everything. Surfers are running back to their car because they actually want to wake up in the morning. Utah walks down to the beach wearing denim on denim because it’s cold and he’s just by himself. He’s going to catch one of the FBI’s most wanted just walking out to the surf.
Bodhi is there too. No back-up, no weapons. He’s in his wetsuit with a towel around his neck, waiting for his set. Even Utah’s approach doesn’t phase him. He knows how his day will end, and the rest of it doesn’t matter. There’s a fight and watching Bodhi come out of zen mode and almost drown Utah is the reminder that even though he’s a surfing mystic, he’s also ex-military, and the latter is just as much a natural part of him as the spirituality. Utah lets him go and then he watches him surf that wave before leaving. Perfect scene.
There’s a theme emerging here. I loved The Hurt Locker. The way they joxtaposed James’ missions with his just nonchalant cool. There’s a chip missing from this guy. Five live bombs, and while everyone else is afraid, he’s just doing his job. He doesn’t even flinch or have a moment of retrospection after it’s done. He has a cigarette, and he continues with his day. In hindsight, this may not be the best attitude to look up to or have, but it’s a way of life, and it was documented well in this film.
When he finishes his tour and heads back home, he is unhappy. He loved being out in that desert, and he was good at it. Does it matter how dangerous the work is, or does it matter that few can do it and he’s ready to step up to the plate whenever he’s needed? We recently took a poll in my office on whether it was scarier to die by drowning or fire. I chose fire because I believe immediacy is preferable to slowly seeing yourself lose the oxygen in your body. Would the fear of being blown up lessen if you understood that if it were to happen, you wouldn’t have the time to register it?
The way this scene is shot, at first from God’s POV, it lays out what he’s doing. He’s walked out onto a field filled with explosives, and he’s got a short amount of time to deactivate them before they all die. The casual way in which I described that matches how our protagonist walked out onto that field. It’s a mixture of methodical and laissez-faire. The adrenaline this film induces makes you return for repeat watches.
Lenny in Stranger Days makes more sense today than he did in the mid-’90s. The world is coming to an end, people’s identities and lives are being cyphened by corporations, and some companies charge you to keep small fragments of it. In 1995, when this came out, it was thought of as too weird, but if you show this to kids today, and all they’ll see is a guy who maybe drinks so much, but every other theme will just seem like another day to them.
This film was shot in 35mm, and the DP used different lenses on a handheld during single takes. That’s how the film had that weird, out-of-place feel when you watched it. This may just be a cinematic trick to most, but to some, it means that you had a camera guy constantly holding three different lenses on his person with a handheld that was 35mm. Trust me, that is a flex.
The malignancy of this dystopian world is the reason Fiennes was cast. I thought it was an odd choice after The English Patient, but it makes sense now two decades later. The inability to keep track of a constantly moving AI-driven world, and everything is disappearing around you. The media are filling you with useless information, and you rarely know up from down. A normal person might just keep on with their day, but Fiennes actually asks questions about it, and here he is just sitting on his bed drinking. The first time around, people probably felt sorry for him. Years later, they’ll realize he was the only sane one around.
The themes and visuals of these films have stayed with me for years. I’m influenced by it in my manuscripts and stories. What do they have in common? They were all directed by Kathryn Bigelow. From middle school until today, her stories are universal and relevant regardless of the decade. I value her stills and her characters, and I wonder why all of the strong protagonists have to be male, but maybe we will see films in the future that will allow that toughness for a female protagonist. One could only hope.