Winters bone

How far does the knowledge of the production process encourage a constant shift between passive and active spectatorship.

Scenes between 01:08:31 – 01:12:41

Spectatorship throughout the movie is a mainly active focus due to the neo realism style of the film which means that it is similar to real life in a lot of aspects. The film uses long cuts and handheld camera work to draw out scenes which give them the feeling of being real. Winters Bone is also set in a remote part of America called the Ozarks where it is a patriarchal society heavily based around family and their business of drugs. These factors set the movie up sounding like a movie that would be very passive however due to production and a knowledge of the area and how it is dealt with there is hardly any conflict within the film. The sequence starts with Ree and Teardrop looking in a graveyard for her fathers grave, the scene is shot hand held and ends in an anticlimax which is typical of a neo real film which often doesn't have a linear path that the movie follows. If this were a passive film the main characters would have found a clue here which would lead them to the next location. The scene is slow and is very dark with the only lights in the scene on the torches they are carrying, in a passive film this scene would have more light however the lack of light in this scene is done to give more value to their dialogue as it is harder to see their actions. This scene is followed by a scene of them in the car where there is little talk and the silence is broken by a police siren. The audience see this police car before the characters as the lights appear but there is no sound yet this increases tension as if people are in the passive mind set of they will assume conflict. The only words spoken by Ree in the scene ask her uncle to pull over to see what he wants this lowers the tension again as it is a neo realism a car chase is not a common occurrence. The sheriff asks Teardrop to get out of the car but Teardrop tells him he won't this again hints at conflict. The scene involves very little outside sound and only has tense non diegetic music and dialogue which tells the audience a little bit more about the world that the characters are living. Throughout the movie guns are shown quite commonly similar to that of a passive film with lots of action except guns in the film are not the first choice weapon instead negotiation is, this is due to the films location and the people who live their, for example Ree uses her weapons to hunt the only time it is aimed at a person is near the end of the film at a person who has previously caused her harm. The sequence shows this confrontation between the sheriff and Teardrop where both have weapons and are ready to fight each other but due to the nature of the film the weapons are used more for intimidation as the sheriff doesn't actively seek to kill and nor will he put his life in danger without reason. The scene ends with the sheriff letting them go without a need for violence and Ree seems to praise teardrop for this. The scene is interesting as it is set up almost to mimic that of a passive film like an action movie except it shows how this kind of scene would end in real life. The fact that the sheriff can tell that the car is Teardrops shows the size of the place they live and the frequency of crime in the Ozarks. The scene ends how it starts in silence between the two characters and only the engine running, this is interesting and a factor of a active film as there was nothing that needed to be said so nothing was said which contrasts a passive movie where the radio would be on, a discussion about what just happen would occur or the scene would have ended.

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