It had its moments of neorealism, but it is mostly a non-neorealistic film. On the side of neorealism, it had historical and war content. Its main characters are on the side of the resistance. It is also raw, gritty and violent.
On the other side, the beginning is very strange. It opened like a storybook or fairytale with a beautiful starry sky and a narration. After that it goes into the actual story, but still that story element is strictly for fiction. Its letting the audience know from the beginning: this is based on real events, but this is a film, not a pseudo-documentary. Films like The Battle of Algiers are so convincing, people believe its a documentary, not a staged, fictional story. This is because of non-actors, locations, grittiness, content, and shot choices.In Shooting Stars, there are many moments that take you out of the story and make it obvious that it's a put-together film, not a documentary. This includes shot choices, and editing. Unrealistic death scenes and hearing inner dialogue of some characters. When the city was being bombed, the resistance group is miles away, listening. For this scene there are appropriately many close ups of the people's reactions, but there are also some awkward shots of their ears to emphasize them hearing the bombs. Personally it took me out of the moment, and I found it a little funny to choose those shots for such a dramatic and important scene.
There is also the editing. The obvious "wipes" from one scene to the next is so distracting from the story. There is no way to stay in the moment with the characters when the scene abruptly changes like that. It's a device commonly used with less-serious content matter. I don't understand the meaning behind that decision. I would be very interested in the director's meanings and ideas behind this film because with such serious subject matter, some technical and artistic choices don't seem to make sense.
I also found myself laughing at the ear-shots and the wipes. I could understand the significance of zooming in on the people ears as they listened to their houses exploding as a dramatic effect, but it was just over done. The first person was okay, zooming in on everyone was borderline ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteThe wipes were just child's play. It's something my parents would do if they made a montage of home videos of me for my birthday or something. I felt like it wasn't professional at all. As a previous film major, I understand the need for time transition when the scene takes place in the same spot, but most people would zoom in on a window or something when the sun is out and then zoom out when it is dark.
I really like your fairy-tale analogy. Looking back, the movie did seem to have that kind of flow to it.
I'm glad that you mentioned the openiing of the film because I think that you were right that the film portrays itself as kind of a fairtale storybook because that is more of a kind of way of escapism, a sense that this atrocity of having to live like they do is too unbearable to deal with and that maybe just maybe it's all just a bad dream.
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