How to analyse a film

When it comes to analysing a film there are different methods and stages that you must go through in order to produce a successful analysis. Each stage of analysis breaks the film down into different areas and helps you to understand the director’s ideas for the film during production stages.

The first thing to do in a film analysis is to do a genre analysis on the film; this involves looking into each different aspect of the film, for example: Codes and conventions, Mise en scene, Narrative, iconography and similar areas. These aspects of the film are analysed in detail and compared with other films of the same genre to understand if the director was going for an original angle. Most films will conform to the codes and conventions of the genre mainly because it is what the audience wants. An example of this is a film such as James Bond where all the aspects of the film are exactly how the codes and conventions of the genre suggest. This means that considering James Bond is an action film it includes lots of explosions, guns, money, suits and good looking women. However sometimes directors will go against the usual way of doing things. This is quite a brave concept because choosing to purposely make a film the way experience has proven wrong can often lead the film in the wrong direction. If the director was trying to break the conformity of a genre in a powerful way, they are referred to as an auteur director.

An auteur is basically a skilled director who creates films for the artistic and impressive value rather than just to make money and be the next biggest thing. An example of an auteur director is Quentin Tarantino who created Pulp Fiction, a film that was considered to highly break the genre conventions of a typical crime film. The film did this in a clever way by giving the film an obvious theme and complying with a lot of the conventions such as the characters wearing black suits, carrying big guns, dealing with drugs and going after dangerous women. All this makes the film sound like a regular gangster film until the film is watched. One of the most noticeable things about the film is how it is played out; in a very unique order to make the action run its course in a way that makes the film much more interesting for the audience. This is referred to as a non-linear structure. In terms of the plot however it differs greatly from the typical gangster films in that it doesn’t simply involve the police trying to take down crime or gangsters combat the police. The film also contains a lot of subtle differences in terms of props and style making the film look a lot more laid back and less flashy to contrast the gangster theme.

When analysing film genres, it is important to remember the 7 main areas that genres can be broken down into. One of these important factors is codes and conventions. Codes and conventions are essentially the all-round things that make a film fit into a specific genre. An example of codes and conventions is with a genre such as teen comedy, the codes and conventions would be everything about the film that targets that particular audience. This includes everything from the typical high school setting to the wild partying plot and everything in-between. Another aspect of a genre is the setting, the setting defines the

entire look of the film to the audience before they even watch the film, so it is important that the film producers choose a setting that works well with the genre and compliments the look of the film. An example of this could be in gangster films where the typical locations usually consist of places like diners, large houses, crowded cities, nice cars, dark nightclubs and many more locations of the same theme. Pulp fiction does this very well by showing many scenes in these precise locations. This instantly shows the audience the precise genre and plot of the film. Similar to the setting, the characters included in a genre are again, a defining factor of the style of the film. For each genre there is always a specific cast of characters who are essential to the plot of the film for example in the horror genre There is usually a very specific set of characters, consisting of an over confident character who doesn’t believe what the others think is happening, a character who is always nervous and is usually the first one to suspect something and always dies, The hero who is usually a male character and completes a brave act usually to save his friends, a female victim who is usually portrayed as young, dumb, attractive and always suffers an unfortunate death, a loved up couple, usually too preoccupied with each other to notice that something bad is going on, and finally the obvious character, the bad guy, the bad guy can take on any form as long as it is terrifying, often being portrayed as either zombies, werewolves or a man in a mask and can often withstand an inhuman amount of pain. Themes are another important aspect of films in terms of the meaning portrayed whilst watching the film, each different genre has a completely different theme but each film of the same genre tends to have a small bunch of themes that reoccur often. In romantic films the theme of love is always present similar to how it can be present in other genres or a similar theme such as friendship with sidekicks in action films however it is always portrayed in a different way depending on the genre. In action films the main theme would always be conflict due to the purpose of the film and love with romance films purely down to the nature of the genre. In the film ‘Quantum of solace’ the film makes use of the good looking women to add to the theme and conventions of the film, the women are represented in a derogatory manner and are objectified throughout the film. This is the case with many different action films and is still used today despite many sexist concerns because of the conventions of the action genre. Similar to this concept each genre has a typical set of narratives. This is mainly because there have been many tried and the popular narratives are the only ones that get good ratings. For example in comedy narratives usually involve a road trip, a holiday, a high school parties and similar experiences. These narratives are specific to each genre because the narrative makes it easy to fit the correct jokes/action into the film. Iconography is yet another example of a trait of each genre; iconography is not displayed in each film but is active in films of each genre. An example of iconography is from the film ‘Back to the future’ with the well-known car, the delorean is now a worldwide reminder of the film and instantly makes people think of back to the future. Iconography is heavily linked to genre because it is what people look for in each genre, things like sheriffs and horses in westerns, explosions in action films and everything relevant to each genre to give the audience a clear indication of the nature of the film.

Considering what genre analysis is made up of, there are still auteur films that contradict the usual codes and conventions of typical genre qualities. One film that is considered non-conforming to the usual genre codes and conventions is the film ‘Leon’. The film is part of the action genre and is directed by Luc Besson, who is considered an auteur director. The film does contain a good amount of action to make the film interesting and keep the audience on edge; however the action is shot in a completely different way to other action films such as Quantum of solace. Being a stereotypical action film, Quantum of solace is full of fast cars, beautiful women, expensive suits, huge explosions and just generally shows the character living the life of his dreams. However Leon is a film with an incredibly similar plot except it doesn’t contain any fast cars or beautiful women; the character wears scruffy clothes and moves from tiny apartment to tiny apartment. The film is an arguably more realistic approach on the life of a contract killer than the seemingly unbelievable approach of James Bond. A perfect example of this is in the opening scenes of each film, the opening scene to Quantum of solace can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYC_CBNtiM Instantly from the very beginning of the film it is obvious to the audience that the film is incredibly high budget, with immaculate shots of foreign landscapes and flash cars, the very first five minutes consists of uncountable numbers of shots of the main character and many different cars being destroyed in a high speed car chase with multiple explosions and non-stop gunfire. This is a complete contrast to Leon’s opening which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa1DuNjhWOk In this opening the film begins slow with minimal volume and lots of obvious enemies with guns searching for someone that is hardly ever seen by the audience. The action is a lot more violent and graphic than in the Quantum of solace opening and the main character is made out to be a lot more mysterious and flashy than the typical hero. Throughout the entire film the character is made out to have a bad life and he simply does his job because it is all he knows.

Luc Besson, the director of Leon, is widely considered an auteur director mainly because of this particular movie. This is because of the individuality and skill he showed in the directing of the film. He did a lot of the work himself rather than allowing the film to be created with him simply supervising the production and took a lot of care to make sure the film was in the exact individual style he wished. For most directors it would be a simple task to get a high budget film to be successful such as James Bond by simply sticking to the stereotypical codes and conventions of the genre. However Luc Besson was determined to break the conventions and make a film that showed great artistic merit despite how successful it would be and how much money it would make. This is one of the most important factors of an auteur director along with showing individuality in film creation.

Quentin Tarantino is another director considered as an auteur. He makes extremely popular films such as: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django Unchained and Inglorious Basterds. Each one of these films is a completely different concept; however each one manages to break the conformities of its chosen genre. With each film he clearly put a lot

more effort into the artistic merit than making money off commercial success. In my opinion Quentin Tarantino is an incredibly skilled director with a lot of brilliant ideas and individuality. Reservoir dogs and pulp fiction were two of Quentin Tarantino’s earliest films and consequently were both gangster films. Due to the fact that these movies were the ones that would establish him a name in the film industry they were extremely significant to his directing style and broke many different codes and conventions whilst managing to play the gangster genre perfectly to his advantage. His later films including Django and Inglorious Basterds were of a much different style with genres including American, western and War. These later films continued to break conformity and stick with his signature style however in a very different way. The fact that his films all follow the same style furthers the impression of him being an auteur director.

Quentin Tarantino also writes a lot of his films such as Pulp Fiction and Django. This proves that he does a lot of the work himself rather than allowing somebody else’s creation to end up in whatever way the actors make it. With him being both the director and writer he chooses the cast for his films, carefully choosing similar actors for each film often using the same actors at least twice. This is even more of an indication that he has high intentions for his films to be artistic and convention breaking as he knows who he wants playing which role before he has even finished writing the film.

Rian Johnson is a fairly new director who recently created a blockbuster called Looper. Looper is a sci-fi/action-thriller with a heavy plotline about time travel and the pursuit of ones future self. Rian Johnson is highly debated as an auteur director with a lot of fans claiming that he puts the effort into his films for artistic merit and a lot of people claiming that the films he makes are compliant to the genre codes and conventions.

Judging whether or not he is an auteur director is fairly hard considering his filmography consists of three, very recent films; however based on the evidence that has been portrayed recently with the film Looper I would argue that he is somewhat an auteur director. I arrived at this opinion by firstly checking how much effort he puts into the production of his films and with each film he has both written and directed the entire thing.

With only Looper to go off in terms of content, considering he was by far the main creator of the film it has to be said that all his effort was rewarded. With Looper being one of his first films he almost certainly demonstrated marvellous technical abilities in being able to direct a film so big and obtain a great cast including Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt. The film has a very individual style and uses the concept of merging action and sci-fi to make a film concept very rare in the entire film industry. The ability for a director to combine action genre characters and the action setting with a sci-fi plot makes the film very unique and impressive to look at, especially in the exciting scenes. The only aspect of the argument which is debatable is how auteur directors usually disregard commercial success for artistic merit and this film was created in an almost certain to be popular way. However in my opinion if the film is managing to be individual and unique to the rest of the genre then I see no issue with the director trying to make the film a blockbuster.