Last night I rewatched The Royal Tenenbaums, directed by Wes Anderson. A lot has been said about Anderson’s visual aesthetic and his symmetrical mies-en-scenes, best captured in this awesome supercut:
Watching the film, this scene was particularly striking to me in its tone, editing and contrast to the rest of the film.
First of all, I took notice of this scene because it makes my eyes well and the hair on the back of my neck stand up, which Paul mentioned on Monday. This scene is very different to the rest of the film in its colour: it has very cool lighting and blue tones, which contrasts dramatically with the red dripping blood into the sink. At the beginning and end of this youtube clip, you can compare this cool colour with the warm browns and yellows that is characteristic with the rest of the film.
After watching the clip numerous times, I noticed that when Richie Tenenbaum begins to take of his sweat bands and chopping his hair, the footage is edited to remove unnecessary movements and cut down on time, but the shot remains the same. The result of this is a sort of jumpy set of actions that is still fluid and hardly noticeable, and which also reminds me of the editing techniques of the french new wave, which Anderson cites as a major influence in his cinematic style.
Here is a classic example of similar editing techniques (jump cuts) used in Breathless, directed by Jean Luc Godard.
I also really love the bird-eye-view shot of the blood dripping down his arms into the sink full of hair. I had borrowed The Wes Anderson Collection from the library, which has lots of pictures and interviews with Anderson organised by film, and it had a picture of the camera rig that was set up around Richie Tenenbaum in this scene, which seemed like a lot of effort for one quick shot of blood running, but it is so affecting and important.
