Now this is a shot I’ve been infatuated with for years. I first saw this in my literature class in year 11, and it has stuck with me ever since.
Continuously morphs from a reactionary shot of the main character to the events surround them, to a POV shot – immersing the viewer into the scene. It shows depth and variety of scenery; deciding to not focus on one singular point, but to establish the scene and the entire world of the characters in giving a continuous unbroken 360 degree perspective of the environment they inhabit. It attempts to show the full spectrum of human emotion and the reactions/effects that war may have on people. Some lash out with violence, some wallow in despair in reflecting their actions, some turn to prayer, some choose ignorance, and some rejoice in its end. In one seamless shot we are not only given the perspective of our main character, but also a clear view of the mentality in total of their comrades, no matter how differing they may be. Whilst transitioning between the main characters perspective and the immersed audiences, the cinematography and stylisation remains the same- resorting to a continuous voyeuristic style. The only thing distinguishing the difference between the characters’ POV and the separated audiences’, is the involvement of the characters within frame. The objective of this shot is to provide scope, and it does exactly that in allowing several points of view to take control and dominate the shot without detracting from the overall scene. It is a shared experience, and so the imagery, perspective, and interpretation at hand must be shared as well. It is in this shot that it able to masterfully establish mass scenery and major differing scope/interpretation, whilst all keeping it within the one singular mentality of the combined characters contained within it.  The centrally-aligned cinematographic transition of frames help give light to the narrow and tunnelled vision of the soldiers depicted. There are plenty of actions playing out in the peripheral, however those are never noticed nor of any concern to the centrally depicted characters. Personally, this singular long-shot is able to give as much scenes could ever hope for, and that’s even after reading into it. everything within it is so meticulously constructed that you cannot help but assign meaning to every action; the imagery and alignment is so precise that it is near impossible for it to be chance.