My favorite sequence in Faces Places was in the beginning of the film, it included the series of locations where Varda and JR did not meet. The still countryside, the calm street, and the busy club provided a contrast to each other and created a sense of anticipation as the scenarios got more and more comedic. Each location had its own color scheme and frame composition making each one unique cinematically as well as physically. The countryside had a plethora of pastels within frame which gave the shots a fantastical appearance, almost as if it was taking place in a fictional world. The street was much duller, but there was the aspect of realness to it, drawing the audience away from the idea that it was a staged “not meeting”. The club was darker, but the use of colored lights and the filling of the frame with bodies made Varda, the oldest one in the frame, stand out. She managed to draw the audience to her in a room full of people by staging the shoot so that she appeared “out of place” enough to catch their eye, but no enough to take away from the meaning of the film. The color throughout the film slowly begins to dull, making the scenery appear less magical and more realistic, which I interpreted as a metaphor for life itself, in the beginning everything is new and interesting but eventually it begins to lose its glamour and becomes dull. Varda and JR attempt to add more life to life by pasting the photos, creating a memoir to everyone they’ve met, the people who would otherwise be forgotten. The faces eating the baguette, the fish, and the giant farmer give the forgotten regions of the country a unique twists, they give the otherwise dull locations something unique. The use of color by Varda and JR as people is also indicative of the change of life, however it acts as an antithesis to how one may portray the world. Varda wears bright colors and appears fun and creative, whereas JR wears darker colors and covers his face with sunglasses in every shot. This can be seen as a representation of how as one grows older, they begin to see the world as dull, and in order to bring more color into it, they will act more like themselves, whereas the younger generation tends to attempt to blend in in order to not disrupt the beauty they see.
My favorite sequence of the film is about ⅔ of the way through. It is the part in which they determine what image to place on the fallen fort and then see it after it gets washed away. Similar to the rest of the sequences of JR and his team pasting the images up, the image is shot from a very long shot. I often like to interpret framing and composition as literally as possible, and I took this framing as signifying putting things into perspective. One of the main themes of the documentary is the idea of death and transitions between phases of life. Agnes profiles people that are aging, or people that are seemingly unimportant during times in their lives in which there is something of a change. For instance, the woman whose house is getting torn down, or the man adapting to new technology on his farm, or Agnes’s features as she ages. But this case is different. The subject is a picture of someone from the far past. The picture then gets washed away. Implicitly, the film deals heavily with the trivialness of people's lives. Agnes is immortalizing images of people that don’t really matter all that much on face value. However, this image does not get immortalized; it is stripped away by nature. Perhaps, and this is my best guess, Agnes is saying that we may try to preserve our lives, but they will all eventually be forgotten. Or perhaps he's just projecting her owns fears as a very elderly woman. In terms of editing the shot of the image pasted up is juxtaposed almost directly with the image of it washed away. Perhaps this is to say that we will all be forgotten. France was the place existentialism took hold the most in the 1950, so it makes sense that Agnes shows a narrative that basically says “nothing matters”. Pretty dark for a cute 90 year old woman.
My favorite sequence of this film is the one during the final project that JR and Agnes creates. It's of the dock workers wives in which they past huge, full-bodied portraits of the three women onto the cargo. The location is much different from the other villages they shot at, which makes the scene somewhat more impactful, or at least interesting, to me. The women are shown being photographed before the images of taken of them are shown being constructed with a crane. The very best shot from this scene comes moments later after work has been constructed. It’s a very wide angle which depicts the three women sitting in the enormous works of art where the images of their necks should be. By showing the artwork next to a realistic scale, it makes the image that much more monumental, effectively utilizing camera framing and composition to emphasis the importance within the shot. From there, closer shots of each woman sitting in their portrait is shown, allowing them to discuss the feelin these enormous images instill in them. Next, another large shot is constructed in which each of the husbands of the three women is shown walking towards his wife. The scene is constructed in a very visual and symmetrical way, making an artful shot to depict the art. Overall I liked this shot so much because of how Agnes and JR combine the huge scale of the work they created with the people the inspired it. I also liked this project so much because of how the two explored gender roles and modernized a traditional and old-school profession. This project was a very fresh take on something rarely explored or questioned, perfectly emphasized and illuminated through the meticulous camera work.
My favorite sequence of Faces Places is when Varda and JR are sitting at the table discussing their plans and expectations for the film. I like how this scene serves as an introduction to the two artists and their creative dynamic. The mise en scène, mostly the set design, of the room they’re in is very vibrant and colorful. The liveliness is an appropriate visual portrayal of their eccentric and inventive personalities. I liked the cat in the background because it reminded me of all the cats in Cléo from 5 to 7. The conversation seemed more scripted than natural, but I didn’t have a problem with that because it set up the fact that the documentary is pretty stylized. Even though the conversation seems weird, it still gives the impression that they are bouncing ideas off each other and that they have a lot of creative chemistry. All the different food arranged on the table and especially the close up shot of Varda’s plate reminds me of a painting because it is so clearly set up in a certain way in the shot. It’s almost as if the cinematography frames the shot like a literal frame around a painting. This impression is something you would totally expect from a documentary about art and artists.
My favorite sequence in the film starts 32 minutes in. JR and Agnès are looking at the fish that will go on the water tower, and Agnès asks where the flounder is. Almost in response to her question, it cuts to a shot of the flounder on the water tower. Later on, when they are walking up the staircase to look at it, I think it is beautifully shot. The shadow of the staircase looks really cool. I also like the sound, how you can hear them talking clearly from far away and even when JR is not on screen. Then there is a shot of the finished water tower, and you hear JR ask Agnès, “do you remember where we caught these fish?” and it cuts to the store where they bought them. Something I really like about this sequence (and the film as a whole) is that it feels like you are listening in on their conversation. It’s nice to hear them joke around, like just before when JR joked about catching the fish and then it cutting to a store. Similar to this cut, Agnès points out the eye on a fish and it cuts to her eye exam. I think the editing is really clever and goes well with their witty conversations, so it stood out to me in the film and especially that sequence.
My favorite sequence is the sequence at the end with the dock workers. The sequence is stands out from the rest in many different ways. The setting alone is a very big difference between the dock and the rest because it is just such an industrialized compared to the rest of the film, which gives it a very rustic feel, even though it is not in such a free place like a village or anything, its in a dock but you still feel so freeing much like the woman did sitting on their portraits. The long shot of them on the boxes is completely beautiful.
The entire sequence you can feel the love between JR and Agnes as they share their last project together. Much like the love between the wives of the dock workers and them, while it may be a different kind of love you can compare the two connections.
Going back to the shot of the 3 woman on their portraits the composition is stunning as we see the three woman perfectly divided into threes across the screen. Then we get shots of the three woman individually in medium shots in order for us to get more personally with the women.
My favorite sequence in the film is a very short one in which JR and Agnes go and sit together in a cafe one night. Inside the cafe are a variety of characters, including one dog asleep on the booth opposite them. As the two sit they discuss their appearances and how they present themselves to the world. Agnes notes how JR always wears his sunglasses, which sets up a moment later in the film when he finally removes them. Agnes notes how funny it is, the two of them together, both with their own distinctive look, and how strange it is that they've teamed up to do this unusual film together.
This is my favorite scene in the film because of the way it presents these two people as very normal and down to earth, despite the fact that they are famous masters of their craft. The setting of the scene: a diner with all sorts of regualar everyday people and animals helps to shape how we see these two people. The direction of the scene is very powerful as well, in the way that they sit close together to show their bond that they share. As they talk they are filmed at eye level. This helps the viewer relate to these two people and adds to the desired effect of the scene.
My favorite sequence of the film is at the very end of the film where Varda and JR go to visit Jean Luc Godard. After a failed attempted at meeting with Godard, JR looks to make Varda feel better by removing his glasses for her for the very first time. Why this is my favorite scene is because this sequence follows the film's semi documentary and semi narrative structure that allows for the documentary to stand out. Up until this scene, the film has been building up to the meeting, having presented Godard in a friendly light that Varda looks fondly upon. The anticipation of meeting Godard builds in this scene, when audiences expectations are subverted and we never get to meet him. Sadden by this turn of events, Varda speaks to JR on the waterfront, where the film subverts expectations for a second time. To cheer up Varda, JR removes his sunglasses for the very first time to her, which is shot out of focus, so that we cannot see his eyes. This reveal is one that has been built up throughout the course of the entire film, Varda wanting to see JR's eyes. This gives off the effect of the moment being a personal one between the two, and it is my favorite moment in the film.
My favorite sequence in Faces Places begins when JR and his crew begin putting up the mural in the abandoned mining neighborhood. As he is up on the scaffolds, a group of kids stop to watch him work. The camera pans across their faces, at a somewhat low angle, reflecting the awe they feel at the scale of the art - this shot really stuck out to me because I felt the same way - before cutting to JR on the scaffolds. Even though he is physically above them, the camera only frames him with a slight low angle (similar to the shot of the kids) and slight long shot. This is to reflect that he is also impacted by the art, but that he does not consider himself as important/more important than the art itself, and that he does not consider himself above anyone for being the artist. This is reinforced by the next shot, where the kids take a selfie with JR, who is still on the scaffolding, but is much smaller in the frame then either the art or the kids taking the photo, again showing that he considers the art and the art’s impact on the public to be more important than himself. We are then shown some of the art - four miners on a house, mostly even spaced apart, shot from a low angle to convey the importance of remembering the history of the neighborhood and honoring the past.
The best part of this scene, though is when JR reveals that he wanted to honor the only woman who lived in the neighborhood by putting a mural of her on her house. We are shown the woman coming out of her house, looking quite small compared to the mural. When she walks across the street, however, to view the mural properly, the shot of her becomes a close-up as she realizes what it is. This is to show that the art itself is just a reflection of her importance and impact. She starts to cry a little, and this is when I started crying, because I’m a huge sap.
My favorite sequence from this film is that of the opening scene, in which the two artists describe where and how they found each other. The film takes a whimsical approach to this fateful meetup, as the opening shots shows the two passing one another in very common situations, but stating that they did not meet in that way. For instance, the two are depicted traveling down a road through the use of a wide angle shot, thus showing the large distance between them. As the begin to get closer to one another, the narrator states that they did not meet this way, then cutting to another situation at a bus stop. The bus stop scene even features dialogue between the artists, yet they still do not meet in this fashion. The framing of this shot is also very important, as it illustrates the barriers between the viewer and the upcoming story. The scene features the artists speaking to one another within the bench area at the stop, with the camera situated behind a translucent wall. This visual barrier symbolises the barrier between the viewer and the upcoming narrative, which is emphasized by the movement of the camera in front of the wall once the dialogue begins. This shows that the wall is removed by the characters speaking to each other, but is promptly placed again once they go their separate ways.
My favorite sequence in "Faces Places" was the scene in which a farmer's image was painted onto his barn as a "guardian" kind of figure. The mise-en-scene was peaceful and natural, and it was well lit enough to see the lack of negativity in the area for the duration of the project.
My favorite sequence in Faces Places was in the beginning of the film, it included the series of locations where Varda and JR did not meet. The still countryside, the calm street, and the busy club provided a contrast to each other and created a sense of anticipation as the scenarios got more and more comedic. Each location had its own color scheme and frame composition making each one unique cinematically as well as physically. The countryside had a plethora of pastels within frame which gave the shots a fantastical appearance, almost as if it was taking place in a fictional world. The street was much duller, but there was the aspect of realness to it, drawing the audience away from the idea that it was a staged “not meeting”. The club was darker, but the use of colored lights and the filling of the frame with bodies made Varda, the oldest one in the frame, stand out. She managed to draw the audience to her in a room full of people by staging the shoot so that she appeared “out of place” enough to catch their eye, but no enough to take away from the meaning of the film. The color throughout the film slowly begins to dull, making the scenery appear less magical and more realistic, which I interpreted as a metaphor for life itself, in the beginning everything is new and interesting but eventually it begins to lose its glamour and becomes dull. Varda and JR attempt to add more life to life by pasting the photos, creating a memoir to everyone they’ve met, the people who would otherwise be forgotten. The faces eating the baguette, the fish, and the giant farmer give the forgotten regions of the country a unique twists, they give the otherwise dull locations something unique. The use of color by Varda and JR as people is also indicative of the change of life, however it acts as an antithesis to how one may portray the world. Varda wears bright colors and appears fun and creative, whereas JR wears darker colors and covers his face with sunglasses in every shot. This can be seen as a representation of how as one grows older, they begin to see the world as dull, and in order to bring more color into it, they will act more like themselves, whereas the younger generation tends to attempt to blend in in order to not disrupt the beauty they see.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite sequence of the film is about ⅔ of the way through. It is the part in which they determine what image to place on the fallen fort and then see it after it gets washed away. Similar to the rest of the sequences of JR and his team pasting the images up, the image is shot from a very long shot. I often like to interpret framing and composition as literally as possible, and I took this framing as signifying putting things into perspective. One of the main themes of the documentary is the idea of death and transitions between phases of life. Agnes profiles people that are aging, or people that are seemingly unimportant during times in their lives in which there is something of a change. For instance, the woman whose house is getting torn down, or the man adapting to new technology on his farm, or Agnes’s features as she ages. But this case is different. The subject is a picture of someone from the far past. The picture then gets washed away. Implicitly, the film deals heavily with the trivialness of people's lives. Agnes is immortalizing images of people that don’t really matter all that much on face value. However, this image does not get immortalized; it is stripped away by nature. Perhaps, and this is my best guess, Agnes is saying that we may try to preserve our lives, but they will all eventually be forgotten. Or perhaps he's just projecting her owns fears as a very elderly woman. In terms of editing the shot of the image pasted up is juxtaposed almost directly with the image of it washed away. Perhaps this is to say that we will all be forgotten. France was the place existentialism took hold the most in the 1950, so it makes sense that Agnes shows a narrative that basically says “nothing matters”. Pretty dark for a cute 90 year old woman.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite sequence of this film is the one during the final project that JR and Agnes creates. It's of the dock workers wives in which they past huge, full-bodied portraits of the three women onto the cargo. The location is much different from the other villages they shot at, which makes the scene somewhat more impactful, or at least interesting, to me. The women are shown being photographed before the images of taken of them are shown being constructed with a crane. The very best shot from this scene comes moments later after work has been constructed. It’s a very wide angle which depicts the three women sitting in the enormous works of art where the images of their necks should be. By showing the artwork next to a realistic scale, it makes the image that much more monumental, effectively utilizing camera framing and composition to emphasis the importance within the shot. From there, closer shots of each woman sitting in their portrait is shown, allowing them to discuss the feelin these enormous images instill in them. Next, another large shot is constructed in which each of the husbands of the three women is shown walking towards his wife. The scene is constructed in a very visual and symmetrical way, making an artful shot to depict the art. Overall I liked this shot so much because of how Agnes and JR combine the huge scale of the work they created with the people the inspired it. I also liked this project so much because of how the two explored gender roles and modernized a traditional and old-school profession. This project was a very fresh take on something rarely explored or questioned, perfectly emphasized and illuminated through the meticulous camera work.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite sequence of Faces Places is when Varda and JR are sitting at the table discussing their plans and expectations for the film. I like how this scene serves as an introduction to the two artists and their creative dynamic. The mise en scène, mostly the set design, of the room they’re in is very vibrant and colorful. The liveliness is an appropriate visual portrayal of their eccentric and inventive personalities. I liked the cat in the background because it reminded me of all the cats in Cléo from 5 to 7. The conversation seemed more scripted than natural, but I didn’t have a problem with that because it set up the fact that the documentary is pretty stylized. Even though the conversation seems weird, it still gives the impression that they are bouncing ideas off each other and that they have a lot of creative chemistry. All the different food arranged on the table and especially the close up shot of Varda’s plate reminds me of a painting because it is so clearly set up in a certain way in the shot. It’s almost as if the cinematography frames the shot like a literal frame around a painting. This impression is something you would totally expect from a documentary about art and artists.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite sequence in the film starts 32 minutes in. JR and Agnès are looking at the fish that will go on the water tower, and Agnès asks where the flounder is. Almost in response to her question, it cuts to a shot of the flounder on the water tower. Later on, when they are walking up the staircase to look at it, I think it is beautifully shot. The shadow of the staircase looks really cool. I also like the sound, how you can hear them talking clearly from far away and even when JR is not on screen. Then there is a shot of the finished water tower, and you hear JR ask Agnès, “do you remember where we caught these fish?” and it cuts to the store where they bought them. Something I really like about this sequence (and the film as a whole) is that it feels like you are listening in on their conversation. It’s nice to hear them joke around, like just before when JR joked about catching the fish and then it cutting to a store. Similar to this cut, Agnès points out the eye on a fish and it cuts to her eye exam. I think the editing is really clever and goes well with their witty conversations, so it stood out to me in the film and especially that sequence.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite sequence is the sequence at the end with the dock workers. The sequence is stands out from the rest in many different ways. The setting alone is a very big difference between the dock and the rest because it is just such an industrialized compared to the rest of the film, which gives it a very rustic feel, even though it is not in such a free place like a village or anything, its in a dock but you still feel so freeing much like the woman did sitting on their portraits. The long shot of them on the boxes is completely beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThe entire sequence you can feel the love between JR and Agnes as they share their last project together. Much like the love between the wives of the dock workers and them, while it may be a different kind of love you can compare the two connections.
DeleteGoing back to the shot of the 3 woman on their portraits the composition is stunning as we see the three woman perfectly divided into threes across the screen. Then we get shots of the three woman individually in medium shots in order for us to get more personally with the women.
DeleteMy favorite sequence in the film is a very short one in which JR and Agnes go and sit together in a cafe one night. Inside the cafe are a variety of characters, including one dog asleep on the booth opposite them. As the two sit they discuss their appearances and how they present themselves to the world. Agnes notes how JR always wears his sunglasses, which sets up a moment later in the film when he finally removes them. Agnes notes how funny it is, the two of them together, both with their own distinctive look, and how strange it is that they've teamed up to do this unusual film together.
ReplyDeleteThis is my favorite scene in the film because of the way it presents these two people as very normal and down to earth, despite the fact that they are famous masters of their craft. The setting of the scene: a diner with all sorts of regualar everyday people and animals helps to shape how we see these two people. The direction of the scene is very powerful as well, in the way that they sit close together to show their bond that they share. As they talk they are filmed at eye level. This helps the viewer relate to these two people and adds to the desired effect of the scene.
My favorite sequence of the film is at the very end of the film where Varda and JR go to visit Jean Luc Godard. After a failed attempted at meeting with Godard, JR looks to make Varda feel better by removing his glasses for her for the very first time. Why this is my favorite scene is because this sequence follows the film's semi documentary and semi narrative structure that allows for the documentary to stand out. Up until this scene, the film has been building up to the meeting, having presented Godard in a friendly light that Varda looks fondly upon. The anticipation of meeting Godard builds in this scene, when audiences expectations are subverted and we never get to meet him. Sadden by this turn of events, Varda speaks to JR on the waterfront, where the film subverts expectations for a second time. To cheer up Varda, JR removes his sunglasses for the very first time to her, which is shot out of focus, so that we cannot see his eyes. This reveal is one that has been built up throughout the course of the entire film, Varda wanting to see JR's eyes. This gives off the effect of the moment being a personal one between the two, and it is my favorite moment in the film.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite sequence in Faces Places begins when JR and his crew begin putting up the mural in the abandoned mining neighborhood. As he is up on the scaffolds, a group of kids stop to watch him work. The camera pans across their faces, at a somewhat low angle, reflecting the awe they feel at the scale of the art - this shot really stuck out to me because I felt the same way - before cutting to JR on the scaffolds. Even though he is physically above them, the camera only frames him with a slight low angle (similar to the shot of the kids) and slight long shot. This is to reflect that he is also impacted by the art, but that he does not consider himself as important/more important than the art itself, and that he does not consider himself above anyone for being the artist. This is reinforced by the next shot, where the kids take a selfie with JR, who is still on the scaffolding, but is much smaller in the frame then either the art or the kids taking the photo, again showing that he considers the art and the art’s impact on the public to be more important than himself. We are then shown some of the art - four miners on a house, mostly even spaced apart, shot from a low angle to convey the importance of remembering the history of the neighborhood and honoring the past.
ReplyDeleteThe best part of this scene, though is when JR reveals that he wanted to honor the only woman who lived in the neighborhood by putting a mural of her on her house. We are shown the woman coming out of her house, looking quite small compared to the mural. When she walks across the street, however, to view the mural properly, the shot of her becomes a close-up as she realizes what it is. This is to show that the art itself is just a reflection of her importance and impact. She starts to cry a little, and this is when I started crying, because I’m a huge sap.
My favorite sequence from this film is that of the opening scene, in which the two artists describe where and how they found each other. The film takes a whimsical approach to this fateful meetup, as the opening shots shows the two passing one another in very common situations, but stating that they did not meet in that way. For instance, the two are depicted traveling down a road through the use of a wide angle shot, thus showing the large distance between them. As the begin to get closer to one another, the narrator states that they did not meet this way, then cutting to another situation at a bus stop. The bus stop scene even features dialogue between the artists, yet they still do not meet in this fashion. The framing of this shot is also very important, as it illustrates the barriers between the viewer and the upcoming story. The scene features the artists speaking to one another within the bench area at the stop, with the camera situated behind a translucent wall. This visual barrier symbolises the barrier between the viewer and the upcoming narrative, which is emphasized by the movement of the camera in front of the wall once the dialogue begins. This shows that the wall is removed by the characters speaking to each other, but is promptly placed again once they go their separate ways.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite sequence in "Faces Places" was the scene in which a farmer's image was painted onto his barn as a "guardian" kind of figure. The mise-en-scene was peaceful and natural, and it was well lit enough to see the lack of negativity in the area for the duration of the project.
ReplyDelete