Name: Denis Villeneuve - Crafting Morality Through Mystery
Uploaded: 2017-09-27T13:41:56.000Z
Duration: 12 min 57 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The thing is that questions II, I love when cinema brings questions in your head, in your heart.

When me, I like movies that are staying with me for days or weeks, you know, that's, that's the beauty of cinema.

When you create images and those images create emotions or questions inside yourself that you bring with you at home and uh makes you think about the world not today.

And that's why II I would like to do as a filmmaker.

I've always considered cinema foremost as a tool for storytelling.

Although I've never thought it conceivable that cinema could ever just tell stories.

Films are forged in the minds of artists minds overflowing with a lifetime of experiences.

And it's each of these experiences which plays the role of influencer to every creative filmic decision, cinematic thought is in essence, an exploration of oneself from what the artist considers life's most imperative questions to what is deemed a moral act, this elemental human import results in cinema being either a means to better understand the world in which we live or something so personal that it could only be the abstraction of art that could offer any semblance of an explanation.

The true art of filmmaking is to transpose it from mere storytelling to a cathartic instrument for mankind a manner wherein for a brief moment, it's the impression of real life which makes reality and all its nuances make sense.

Cinema is the human dream a way to understand how our trauma fits into this existential jigsaw.

So forgive me for not going home to have a good night's rest.

But perhaps the greatest way to wield cinema is as a synthesis to use stories of high personal drama to present them as a reflection of the issues that pervade all of humanity, a fusion of the personal with the universal and this is the perfect encapsulation of the cinema of Danny Vil Nev.

I feel the best thing that can be said about Vil Nev's work is that he generates films of such a haunting complexion that they remain with you.

They mirror the world we live in while simultaneously displaying the rawness of the human condition.

I like when the stories can have, we can relate to the stories from an intimate point of view like this and that this story can be about politics from a so so politics point of view, but still you you relate to the story from with intimacy and that it's always the best story.

But how exactly does Villeneuve spawn stories of such a chilling proportion yet sustain that intimacy.

And to achieve that, Villeneuve relies on filmmaking techniques that emphasize mystery.

What I believe to be the strength of Vnu's movies is the ability to control information, regulating what the audience sees is the role of any filmmaker from deciding which subject will be the focus to literally guiding our eyes through framing.

But Villeneuve's filmmaking is more concerned with placing larger emphasis on what the audience doesn't say.

The human imagination can be infinitely worse than reality.

And thus, Villeneuve never permits the audience to see the whole picture.

He will often transition to a new scene before its climax or simply cut out entire portions of a scene.

Often the unknown is what is most terrifying and the audience is insufficient knowledge encourages them to fill in the gaps of the story that they nerve purposefully keeps hidden.

If we were shown everything our mind is given closure.

But when we aren't we torment ourselves in wondering exactly what is being hidden from us.

VN loves to leave questions for the audience, whether it's the identity of our antagonist or the truthfulness of a character.

VN constructs his scenes by offering us fragments of information, details that are more than we anticipated, but less than what we need for a definite answer.

The key is that Villeneuve finds from which perspective he will be able to exploit the most in order to both simultaneously hide information and reveal just a fraction.

We may discover clues alongside our protagonist or cut away at the most vital moment.

The goal is to find from which point offers us the most drama filmmaking for me because it's uh it's all about the notion of point of view.

I think the most important thing in cinema is to uh to suggest and not to show for Villeneuve, the ideology behind filmmaking can be summarized under what information we receive and how we receive it.

And for Villeneuve, it's through suggestion, a method of storytelling to use as little visual information as possible to say as much as you possibly can because sometimes the smallest pieces can say more than the complete picture ever could.

They'll never will focus on the details of the person hands gripping onto a bed, the details of a foot rather than where the drama actually lies.

He doesn't directly show us the truth, but he shows us a portion of the truth.

It's as though Vil Neuve focuses on the segment of the image which doesn't directly give the audience an answer.

But it says enough that we can envision a truth so harsh that it can't be directly looked at the atmosphere of Villeneuve's film stems from this unknown.

One way to define his work is a fondness for dark material.

But what makes it all the more powerful is how Villeneuve manages to create a constant sense of dread.

It's a filmography which always feels on the brink of something awful about to happen.

It's a ceaseless apprehension and it comes down to the visual style that Villeneuve has created.

The most apparent thing about the look of Villeneuve's films is that his camera work is objective and methodical.

But when it does, it acts with a kind of omniscience as if it has a mind of its own objectively presenting events that seem destined to happen.

The Nu's early work was far more based around a handheld and frantic style.

But over time, it developed into a style which prioritizes a very meticulous image.

The result is something very sinister as though the camera knows something that we don't and acts in a manner to try and reveal that information.

Most of Vilnius's framing is done in wide angles with deep focus.

We see the entire frame with a stark clarity as if to show us the answers to the mysteries are in plain view.

But Vnu also likes to use this framing to heighten our character insignificance.

Vnu likes to isolate his subjects whether it's by cornering them in the frame or by using the landscape as a threat itself.

The camera's usage makes subjects seem inconsequential one way or another with a visual language, putting them in a state of seclusion.

The purpose is to show that through isolation comes helplessness and this is exactly the same notion that comes with mystery being in the unknown.

The visuals are an extension of the idea of what it is to be dwarfed by an engulfing force.

Villeneuve accentuates dread and the crux of his imagery is based around this concept.

Something foreboding, something unexplained scenes are shot at an incredibly slow pace in order to absorb all surrounding atmosphere.

But a staple for Villeneuve is the interjection of scenes with objects of interest that at first glance seem unrelated but leave us with a feeling.

These moments are more like exclamation points to punctuate the current emotion pervading the scene.

They express something indefinable, but they do conjure something unnerving.

If the scene continued without these edits, they wouldn't feel as foreboding.

But with them, they serve as a harbinger to the inevitable danger approaching our characters.

I'm not trying to tell you you're doing anything bad.

I'm just trying to get the right answers out of you.

And in order to accentuate the trepidation V nerve rather than holding the camera still on subjects ups to employ very subtle zooms.

No, the effect of this is small but important when we see scenes where the camera is immobile, we're more likely to take the scene at face value because it's being presented to us as flatly as possible.

But if the camera has a conscious thought process behind its actions, then there's a suggestion of a deeper subtext to the shot.

The zoom gives the impression that each time one is used some kind of a revelation is about to occur.

Yet when it doesn't, the audience's suspicions are heightened, uncertain of what relevance the scene had and therefore paying keener attention to the details that follow memory is a strange thing.

But why does Villeneuve want to employ mystery in all of his movies?

Because in the work of Denis Villeneuve, we're shown the fragility of the human mind when we lose sight of what we know because of our obsession for seeking the truth.

Villeneuve is able to exploit the drama of scenes through when and how he reveals information.

We may return to a scene and see it from multiple perspectives.

Only to realize that when we thought we had the answer, we were in fact solving the wrong mystery this whole time, we become just like our characters who too are looking for answers unaware that they're not asking the right questions.

Our judgment becomes clouded as soon as we become emotionally invested.

And Villeneuve presents us with a world that appears clear on its surface.

Yet we soon learn that our vision was always hindered by our own biases.

There's no objective morality in these worlds.