The scene that I have chosen to analyse is from the Safdie Brother’s 2017 film Good Time. At this point in the film, Connie (Robert Pattinson) has broken his brother out of police custody in hospital and asks a lady he recognised from the hospital shuttle bus if he can use her phone.
I chose to analyse this scene for a number of reasons. I believe the Safdie Brother’s use of focusing, differing and combined colour temperatures, framing, folly and soundtrack amongst a host of other filmic techniques are all used expertly to build suspense in this scene.
The opening shots of this scene are a series of close-up POV shots from both sides of the door. The shots from the house’s POV show a close-up of Connie’s face and close-ups of the Grandmother and little girl’s faces. The use of warm incandescent background lighting mixed with the cool foreground light combined with red lights which sources are not in frame and excellent colour grading give Connie’s face a reddish hue, which I think was used to outline Connie’s intensity and continue with the the film’s most common motif which is the colour red.
The Safdie Brothers rely heavily on close-ups, POV and dirty POV’s during this sequence which helps outline the disconnect between Connie and the innocent family. The sequence of shots that show the Grandmother talking to Connie through the door is a perfect example of framing and shot selection. We are introduced to the grandmother with a dirty close-up from over Connie’s shoulder. The shot is on a slightly lower angle which traditionally and also in this case is used to outline the character’s power. The following shot is a close-up of Connie from the Grandma’s POV. The camera is pointed down on Connie which traditionally and again in this case is used to outline weakness, this simple technique is used again later in the scene.
The use of folly, dialogue and sound muffling are used expertly in this sequence. The Safdie’s distort/muffle the sound of the dialogue depending on the shot’s POV, this simple technique is used to further outline the differing POV’s in the shot. An example of this is when we are looking through Connie’s POV at the Grandma while she is shouting at Crystal. In this shot we hear a slightly muffed and distorted voice, but when are looking through the Grandma’s POV while she is talking to Crystal (they are both on the same side of the door), we hear the sound of the voices perfectly. This simple technique is used to further reiterate the sense the different point of views of the two characters in the sequence.
When we are introduced to the Grandma’s house, the first shot used is a mid-shot of Crystal, who is looking slightly to left of the screen. This shot is followed by a wide POV shot of Connie wheeling his brother into the room and the grandma charging the phone. The mixture of warm incandescent light coming from the left of the room and cool blue lights from the right both make the shot look very aesthetically pleasing and are also used moments later to expose Connie’s brother’s heavily bandaged face.
The final sequence in the scene shows Connie sitting down to call his mother. The first shot in this sequence is a dirty mid-shot from Crystal’s POV. A series of shots mid-shots and close-ups from Connie’s POV looking up at the grandma and the grandma’s POV looking down at Connie follow the original mid-shot and are used excellently to further build pressure and also reiterate the power balance in the room. The Safdie Brothers blend a series of cool colours in the background of the shots looking at the Grandma. The frame is shot in a low aperture which puts the focus solely on the Grandmother, but due to the slightly warmer reddish colour on the right of the screen, we can see a grainy silhouette of Crystal. Crystal is then shown in a dirty wide POV shot the subsequent shot.
Once the phone call is over and Connie askes the Grandma if he can leave his brother at the house. The Safdie’s use framing to once again perfectly outline the slight shift of the house’s power balance. When the Grandma raises her voice, there is a dirty close-up tracking shot of Connie standing up, at the end of the shot the camera is looking up at Connie, which is a complete reversal to earlier in the scene. As the two argue, the camera angles centre slightly and instead we see two similar close-up POV of Connie and the Grandmother, this removal of position and angle coincides with the grandmother letting Connie stay in the house.
The scene I chose is actually one of the rare scenes in the film dominated by dialogue, the Safdie Brothers mostly relied on intense electronic music made by Oneohtrix Point Never and loud folly sound. Despite the scene being a bit of an outlier comparing to the rest of the film I still thought it was incredibly vivid and was a really good example of suspense building through shot selection.
