Jan 10 2009
“The Matador” Mise-en-Scene Analysis
(A project I worked on last year for a “Film as Art” assignment, analyzing a specific shot in the film, doing a whole run down of what comprises that single image. A great little film, by the way.)
Film: “The Matador”
Director: Richard Shepard
Cinematography: David Tattersall
This entire film was blessed with a unique vision. From the quirky and eccentric characters and dialogue to the great art design and cinematography. Acclaimed director of photography, David Tattersall, brought to this movie a great sense of style and fashion, and a sense of professionalism above the film’s budget. The photography throughout the film is nearly always bright, saturated, and colorful and the shots are strongly based on shapes and lines and color contrasts to create visual tension and movement.
This scene in the film is when Julian Noble (Brosnan) and Danny Wright (Kinnear) go to a bullfight in Mexico City. It takes place about 25 minutes into the film. These two main characters first met in the hotel’s bar, had a fight, and later made up in the scene in the hotel’s driveway. Danny’s business tells him that the sale might not go through, and that he is going back to the States, leaving Danny to wait in Mexico. Overhearing this conversation, Julian, in desperate need of a friend, offers Danny a ticket to a bullfight. Danny is at first reluctant, but ultimately accepts to go. This specific shot happens pretty early on in the scene after we first get an aerial shot of the arena and then the camera travels up through the crowds in the stands to show Danny and Julian talking, we then cut to this overhead shot, looking over them, into the bull ring.
Mise-en-scene Breakdown:
1. Dominant—Because of the circular, centered shape of the arena, and the because the two main characters serve to frame the shot, our eyes are first drawn right to the center of the arena, where the matador and the bull’s showdown is taking place. The shrinking concentric circles of the ring appear from overhead like a bull’s eye, drawing you right to the center.
2. Lighting Key—This shot uses high key lighting and with a fair degree of contrast. This key really helps emphasize the strong colors and all the visual details of the crowds and the bullfighters.
3. Shot/Camera Proxemics—This shot is a medium wide shot of Julian and Danny, but because of how it’s angled, you also get an extremely wide view of the bullring below to really sell the idea that they are watching a bullfight. It is set up in a way that you have foreground and background action going on at the same time, so while the camera might be only a few feet away from the main characters you can still see what is going on hundreds of yards below in the ring.
4. Angle—This is shot from a high angle shot. It is not a bird’s eye, because this would have made the two actors less important. Rather, the angle gives prominence to the actors, letting them fill up a large portion of the screen, but lets you look down, almost as a POV shot as if you were another crowd member sitting a few rows higher than the two characters, looking straight down into the action.
5. Color Values—In this movie, colors serve to represent different characters, Julian normally being a bright orange, and Danny being a blue. In this shot, the whole world is dominated by reds and yellows and browns—Julian’s colors. Julian himself is wearing a beige and red shirt with an orange/brown leather jacket on top. This color scheme really links Julian to the background setting both visually and symbolically. A central metaphor in the film is the link between Julian and the world of the matador. And the colors in this shot cement this connection that Julian is right at home in this fighting world, a world of action and adventure, but also a world of death. Danny, on the other hand, is a complete opposite color. The turquoise shirt he is wearing seems to pop right off the screen due to the extreme contrast. Despite this though, we start to see bits of Julian creeping into Danny’s character. At the beginning of the film, Danny was always surrounded by dark, almost purple blues, but now his color scheme is gaining some of Julian’s warmth giving it more a greenish color. Also, a subtle costuming trick—the collar on Danny’s shirt is rimmed with red and yellow stripes, showing how he is being affected by Julian.
6. Lens/Filter/Stock—This was filmed with very wide angle lens. The wide angle gives an extremely long depth of field, which is proved because even the matador, who must be hundreds of yards from the two actors, is still in sharp focus. This was probably filmed using slow stock film which gives the film its very rich, detailed, and saturated look.
7. Subsidiary Contrasts—After first looking right at the center of the bullpen, our eyes are drawn up and out. The circle shape of the ring guides our eyes around the frame till we reach Danny and Julian. We realize that just as there is a battle going on in the bullring, there is also a sort of battle between these two characters.
8. Density—This image is very high density. You see tons of visual detail crammed into the shot (like the thousands of people you see seated). Yet because all these people are mostly in the far background, they are smaller, and so don’t totally distract us from the main character action in the foreground.
9. Composition—The dominant shape about which the shot is composed is clearly the circle. The concentric rings create the bull’s-eye image. The circle helps to visually unite Julian and Danny. Also to break up the image from being strictly centered, we have Julian and Danny each placed roughly on the left and right imaginary vertical lines of thirds, respectively.
10. Form—This shot is closed because it does not look like a random image, but rather, a highly composed and well-framed shot that ties foreground and background into one.
11. Framing—This image is somewhat loose. It sets up the vast wide shot and also gives the two actors prominence on the screen, but still giving them room to move around and act.
12. Depth—The way the image is shot, there is almost no middle ground, but rather a very sharp drop-off between the foreground actors and the background arena. This really clarifies that Julian and Danny are the main characters. A more eye-line angle would have made them “one of the many,” but this angle really separates them from the rest of the crowds and juxtaposes them directly on top of the arena fight.
13. Character Placement—The two actors are at opposite ends of the screen to show their antagonist and to serve as a “frame within a frame,” highlighting the arena far below.
14. Staging Positions—In this shot, we only see the back’s our the two actors, demonstrating how little we know about them, and how little they have revealed to each other.
15. Character Proxemics— At this point in the movie, Danny is still very wary of Julian and not sure how to take him. Although a friendship is starting to develop, there is still a sense of mystery separating the two characters. Because of this, in this shot, they are at opposite ends of the shot, with the background action separating the two of them from each other. Symbolically saying that Julian’s “matador” lifestyle isolates him from Danny and his suburban life.
