What I found interesting about this movie was how there was a clear cinematic shift as a result of the damn explosion. “If the first half of Night Moves is defined—thematically and visually—by the cluttered, overgrown space of Harmon' s middle-of-nowhere cabin in the woods, where the team prepares for their single momentous act, the film's second half keeps returning to the Utopian world of the produce farm: its daily rhythms of harvesting and packaging, its compromises with the greater world, and its aversion to grand gestures.” (Nelson 2014) Certainly the imagery is something that greatly changes in the film. The first half we are witnessing the atrocities that have happened to the planet as a result of human interaction. We see burned down trees, cut down trees used for lumber and deforestation, and we see a world in pain. This pain is added with the fact that the diegetic soundtrack is playing in a melodramatic minor cord. Minor cords of course are a popular musical trope to signify pain, loss, or darkness of some sort. Now in the first half this soundtrack is repeating in it’s haunting melody anytime the trio boats past or witnesses the reason they are bombing the damn. However in the second half of the film we only see this music being used when Dena is upset about their part in the bombing or when Josh is worried about being caught by the police as a result of Dena. Not only is the same music being differently in the first and second halves of the film we notice that the imagery is completely different. As stated in the Nelson article the second half greatly differs from the first almost to symbolize that the trio’s efforts on the damn really had no effect on creating this huge change. The locations shot in the movie show this too. In the first half we see a lot of juxtaposition between nature and humanity. These examples can be seen when the children are playing in the field of dead trees, the trash heap with a lush forest in the foreground, and the man-made nature (the waterfall) seemingly mocking Josh with it’s artificial nature while he is buying the boat. The last and final thought I had on this binary mode the film takes with it’s first and second half is the idea of purpose. In the first half of the movie we are seeing this trio with such purpose, and even though they are eco-terrorist they still seem, at least from my point of view, to have good intentions. This is partly because the first half of the film is focusing on Dena, who is far more up beat then her male counterparts. However the second half of the film, which is focusing more on Josh, seems to leave this regret in the air as a result of their fear. Our upbeat trio attempt to save the earth quickly shifts to three individuals split up viewing their own existence as criminals, not saviors of the earth.
Reichardt’s film, Night Moves, once again shows an astonishing amount of nature in her film that symbolizes a lot to the point she is making about eco-terrorism in her film. In the beginning of the film Josh and Dena are overlooking the river, which becomes the main symbol in the entire film. One specific scenic view in this film, is with two kids playing (0:45 mins) and the mountain is in the background, the camera is not moving but we can see the boat moving. As they are driving the boat, it makes you feel like you’re driving the boat and looking over to the side where the trees are. Another scene in the film that makes you feel a part of the scene is during the bike scene, which feels like you’re riding a bike behind him. You can assume the camera man in this scene was on a bike because the camera is moving and is not steady. Reichardt manages to make this film somewhat suspenseful/thrilling for example; the camera view of lights reflecting in Josh’s mirror(1:26) as haunting music is being played and the scene keeps going back to the review mirror as the car passes him, makes the audience feel fearful for Josh himself.
In Night Moves, Kelly Reichardt wants the audience to discuss this mysterious film as whether or not it was worth this extreme action of blowing up a hydroelectric dam and living with the guilt? I like how Elle points out the ethics of this eco-terrorism story and how the film is sectioned into two parts. The first half of the film and the second half of the film focus on different characters but you can tell the fear that they have. Every time Josh was outside working and heard a car passing by, he was in fear that the car was a police officer coming to arrest him. An important scene in the film is when Josh comes back from his trip and the father (not Josh’s) and the son are talking about the news. The father explicitly makes the argument that blowing up one hydroelectric dam on one river was not worth it, considering that there were many more hydroelectric dams on that one river. What makes it worse for both Josh and Dena was that someone died during this explosion, which is not what they wanted. The argument here is, though the three characters wanted to prove a point, they ended up killing someone, and not changing anything except their lifestyle.
Now, Josh looks for a new job, as the closing scene of him looking through the mirror, this theme is similar to Reichardt’s other films in whether or not there is some type of hope for her characters that are lost. Josh getting a new job could be a sign for hope and new beginning after he “accidentally” killed Deana out of fear. Similar to finding the tree in Meek’s Cutoff, or leaving the dog in OLD JOY, Reichardt leaves the endings of her films up to the audience, and then they can assume what will happen next, whether it is positive or negative.
If Meek’s Cutoff (2010) is a revisiting of the western, then Night Moves (2013) is a revisiting of the horror genre. Rather than using surprise factors or on-screen violence, Night Moves focuses on outside action, and what is on the periphery of vision. The film does use various tropes of the genre, both visual and auditive, in a traditional way, but that alters the overall result. For example, off-screen sounds, and music build emotion and anxiety, as expected. However, in one instance, when they stop to look at the dead doe, rather than show the bloody carcass—which would be a more direct approach—the off-screen sliding down the hill sound gives the scene the uncomfortable tone by prolonging the sound and making the viewer wonder just how deep the ditch is.
At its most obvious point, the sound of the explosion is the only indicator that their plan succeeded. In practical terms, using this technique allows the production to remain low budget, and within genre tropes, it creates a more impactful result by letting the audience use their imagination. Still, there are no periodical pictures of the aftermath, or Internet visuals, which would be cheap ways to produce visual impact, but the film refrains. Even at its most climactic scene, the film blurs the visual portrayal of killing, not letting the viewer too close. By being in the steam room, the visuals, through relatively short, close-ups of Dakota Fanning’s face, are overshadowed by a motionless foot, and not taken into the darker aspects of the genre.
While tropes such as the stalking scene, flashing his high lights at Fanning after work, and their representation through Jesse Eisenberg’s point-of-view shots, visually ground the film within the horror genre. What makes Night Moves different, is that despite working within the genre constrains, it continues to have the “Reichardt-style.” Her signature long-takes, and thematic visuals, such as the tracking shot of the cut-down trees at the lake, or Eisenberg’s manual labor, continue to present the sense of preparation and process into the film. Even in this revisiting, it imbeds the film with the passing of time and everydayness that resonates in her other films.
About halfway through Night Moves, I felt that nagging feeling of de ja vu. It took me a couple minutes to figure it out, but I soon realized that Night Moves is eerily similar to one of Christopher Nolan's very first films: Insomnia. Nolan is an auteur like Reichardt, but that's almost exclusively where their similarities in filmmaking end, so I thought it'd be interesting to spend this post comparing the two films.
I'll briefly summarize Insomnia for those who haven't seen it. The main character is a middle aged detective from LA. He has an excellent reputation as a detective and so he is sent to Alaska with his partner to help solve a murder case. Upon arriving in Alaska, his partner reveals that he knows some information about the main character that would end his career and feels it's his responsibility to share that with their department as soon as they get back to LA. The film moves past this and on to a chase scene between the suspected murderer and the two detectives. They are all on foot near a small lake, off of which unimaginably thick fog rolls. The fog makes it impossible to see anything. Our main character falls and hits his head, disorientating him, gets up, sees someone nearby and shoots. Another shot rings out at about the same time. He runs over to the person on the ground to find it's his partner. It's unclear if it was the shot from his own gun or the murderer's that killed the partner, who has a wife and child back home. The guilt our main character feels eats away at him and interferes with his work. It becomes obvious that in his disoriented state, he's not sure if he saw that is was his partner and shot him on purpose, to save his own career. The guilt of not knowing ultimately leads to his demise.
The most obvious parallel between Insomnia and Night Moves is the theme of guilt and the destruction guilt causes. Outside of the obvious, though, the tone of both movies is almost exactly the same, that of tension. This is built using mise en scene.
First off, both films are dark in a good number of the scenes. The lack of lighting almost instinctually makes a viewer feel uneasy. The characters are also isolated. In Insomnia, this is simply a part of the setting. There are fewer people to talk to in Alaska, and he doesn't want to reveal to anyone what he might have done. In Night Moves, our characters can only release their feelings of guilt by talking to each other, which they are not supposed to do. They are separated spatially; in the second half of the movie, they are rarely seen together. Josh, our POV, prefers to be by himself most of the time. The one prop they have that brings them together is the cellphone, and the conversations they have by phone typically feel unfinished and do not satisfy any of the tension the viewer feels. In fact, the phone conversations mostly add to that feeling.
Finally, there's there's the feeling of being watched, which is made palpable to the viewer by the camera. In Insomnia, Nolan uses the fog to obscure most of the frame with shadows moving in and out. Reichardt, as we've discussed, likes to allow characters to pass through the frame rather than panning to follow them, so when she does pan, it is noticeable to the viewer and gives an overwhelming sense of being watched from afar. We see this specifically in Night Moves when Josh watches Dena leave her job as he sits in his car.
It would appear that all of our directors that we have watched this summer, are all in in a certain sense, genre film makers. Now, with Night Moves, Reichardt joins into a small genre that some of the best directors, from Petzhold and Assayas to Fassbinder and many others, namely, the terrorist film genre. Although the rest of the filmmakers i mentioned made terrorist genre films about marxist, left-wing organizations, and Night Moves is about eco-terrorists, the films are very much in the same genre.The characters in the these terrorist films are often focused on small local acts instead of large grand master plans of terrorism. These directors also participate in critiquing the terrorist enterprise in some way. In Carlos, the protagonist eventually ends up becoming a fat faded fraud in someways, who is revealed to not actually care as much about the terrorism as about himself. In Night Moves, Reichardt pulls a similar critique. One of the characters on the farm, upon hearing of the news of the damn, is quick to fudge that the terrorist act was useless theatre, and in many ways all acts of terror are. And again, as we see the dark rabbit hole that Jesse Eisenberg, through reckless idealism blindly ventured into, we also sees another critique of terrorism: spend your life trying to kill monsters, sooner or later, you will become one.
I was thinking something along these lines while watching this film, Kyle. What separates "Night Moves" from the rest of Reichardt's films that we've watched was that it felt like she was actively trying to promote a viewpoint, for once. I hate to continue to hark on the aspect of "openness" in Reichardt's films, but because "Night Moves" had the least of it in the four films we watched, she is able to convince the viewer of an idea. I'll touch briefly on what I think she's trying to say, and how she convinced me of this.
In short, I think Reichardt is trying to show some of the failures of ecoterrorism (or maybe terrorism in a general sense). She certainly thinks that their goals- the promotion of ecologically sustainable practices- are good. We can see this by some of the good ways they're carried out in the film, like the farm. The filmmaker in the film, who said that she's focussed on a bunch of small plans (for sustainability) rather than a big plan, I saw as Reichardt directly placing her voice in the film.
As such, I'd say that Reichardt wants the viewer to think that eco-terrorism is counterintuitive. The plot- which is far more structured than her previous films- has enough reasons to think this. Sean outright critiques the plan's futility. Their killing of the camper is the exact opposite of what they want to do- help people. The emotional turmoil and Dena's subsequent death serve to this end as well.
To close, I want to touch on one more thing I found interesting about the film that's tangentially related to this. "Meek's Cutoff" was a very quiet film, which served to amplify the isolation they felt in the frontier. The viewer makes of this what they want, but in the end the viewer has to make a lot of judgements about the tone of the film. The extradiegetic music in "Night Moves" informs us a great deal about the tone. It told us when we should feel suspenseful, scared, and so on. Similarly, it tells us when is a good time to agree or disagree with the actions of the characters. To this end, Reichardt drives home her own point of view.
In Reichardt’s Night Moves, the fundamentalist characters in this film are mysteriously thought provoking. The question: “Was the bombing a useful blow or useless theater?” was brought up during an interview between Filmmaker and Reichardt. This question was also ingrained in the film itself, provoked by Josh’s organic farm leader after he reads the news about the bombing. This is a valid question to ask, considering who the characters are and what their intentions were. For one, the people that Josh is essentially trying to protect, on the same hand as the outsider, he cannot even connect with. Throughout the film he is portrayed as the outsider in every community that he surrounds himself with. I ask, what can this disconnection say about his ideals if he cannot truly relate to the society he’s supposedly trying to help?
Josh seems to be leading the other two characters along. He tells Dena what to say many times, and berates Harmon with questions about their plan. Josh has no family to speak of, a robotic personality, and is devoid of any emotion until he cries with regret towards the end of the film. His extreme act of violence near the end also shows what he truly cares about, which is protecting himself. However, in the beginning there are small sentiments that Josh’s character actually does truly care about nature. Two distinct scenes show us his half-hearted attempts to care for animals. Near the beginning, we watch him replace a fallen birds nest back into a tree, and later, push a deer that had been hit by a car and left half on the road back into a ditch. Josh may seem to dislike injustice, or things being out of place, which are small details that build on his ideals, but interestingly, the birds nest is empty and the deer is presumably dead already. So his lazy attempts to care actually seem late, or better yet, meaningless. At these specific points, he protects nothing, especially compared to if the deer were still alive, or if the nest was shown full of eggs. This all meaning to say, his intentions about blowing up the dam, based on the ideals given, are also meaningless. I would say rather then trying to protect, Josh is looking for something to take his anger out on.
Another beautiful cinematic moment is the reaction shot after we hear the bomb explode at the bridge. Reichardt gives us a medium driving shot, head on facing the characters side by side. After the explosion happens, we witness the emotional contrast between each character. The menacing look on Joshes face, the subtle regret of misguided Dena, and judging from the laugh, Harmon seems to enjoy hearing the fruits of his handy work. These are just a couple great examples of Reichardt’s expertise on building her characters without using any dialog.
Reichardt repeatedly stated that this film was character driven, and getting back to the question provoked, I think it’s the characters who answer it. The fact that Night Moves doesn’t focus attention on the victims and town surrounding the blast, but more on the characters intentions who caused it, it seems much more a statement of rebellion than an actual result.
This is a nice post, Jason. I like your reading of Josh in the context of the "caring for animals" sevens and the close analysis of the post-explosion scene. Well done.
This film had an eerie, apocalyptic undertone. At times I felt like I was watching a horror movie. At first I thought the victim of the horror was planet earth. The heavy eco-talk and desire to protect the earth had me rooting for the main characters to succeed and score one for the planet. Yet after the dam exploded, that uncomfortable feeling didn't go away. It was little things, like how Jesse Eisenberg's character addressed Dina. He was always very dismissive of her and her worries. Then, after the dam explodes and Josh and "Ed" seem to be alright with everything, Dena is still nervous. As the events of the film play out Josh tries to rationalize everything that's happened while not dealing with the guilt. He internalizes it, While Dena releases her pent up guilt haphazardly. Slowly the two's psychies begin to match up. Josh's earlier confidence is broken to the point of desperation. As we see at the end, Dena seems to be dealing with her issues. What struck me most was how this film seemed to be very pro-terrorism for a time, but as the results of the eco-terrorism appear the film begins to emphasize the more patient, safe approach of Josh's friend at the Eco-ranch. That is where the true horror is drawn from, the idea that one's actions could seem so right, but turn out so wrong.
I agree with you. It was tough seeing them lose it after the heist. However, throughout the process, I noticed that Dena was doing most of the deceiving and dirty work. She lied to the old man that sold them the boat about what she was going to do with it and then she was the one that was out buying the sodium nitrate fertilizer while "Ed" and Josh sat in the truck and wait. This got me thinking that was it because she was a girl so it was less suspicious? So, I guess that was why she held on to most of the guilt. Also, among the three of the characters, only Dena caught a bad rash after the heist. The rash could be a metaphor of her guilt that was building inside of her. We could see her scratching herself during the ride to the campsite so I suppose she was already feeling the guilt since then but it was left unnoticed, even by her. Then, eventually the rash got worst and visible just like her guilt.
What I found interesting about Dena, was that she started to get that rash immediately after they blew up the dam. In the scene where they get stopped by the cops I noticed her scratching her neck a lot. Like you said Nata, she was the one who bankrolled the whole operation, and did most of the "dirty work" so it was strange to see her lose her cool right away.
Like Reichardt said in her Filmmaker Magazine interview, this film is about character building, so that small detail of Dena scratching her neck really grabbed my attention. Then, as the film progressed and you saw the evolution of her rash it really showed the physical dishevel happening in her life, whereas Josh was mostly spaced out.
It allowed the audience to really connect to Dena's plight. Although Josh was the main protagonist and it seems that the film wants the viewers to get angry at Dena for telling someone about what they did, you still felt empathy for her. She was thinking about doing the morally right thing to do, and it reflects on how she changed throughout the film.
I love how Reichardt breaks the stereotype we have on different types of films. Everything in her film is far from the viewer’s expectation. A good example would be Meek’s Cutoff. The film false into the Western genre and usually the first thing that comes to mind when the audience think of Western films is cowboys, Red Indians, fighting and somewhat bombastic extra-diegetic sounds like the film, “The Searchers”. Meek’s Cutoff was far from that expectation. It was more of a calm and quiet film. Night Moves shared that same aspect as Meek’s Cutoff as was said in Tribeca, “As Meek's Cutoff was both of the Western genre but not quite in it, so too is Night Moves of the world of heist thrillers - as well as, to a somewhat lesser degree, Hitchockian suspense pictures - without typically hitting all the beats such films are expected to hit.” When it comes to thriller films, we expect blood and action but in Night Changes, we do not see much of that. The whole movie focused more on how the characters were before and after the heist and on how their relationship took a toll after the incident. There was not much emphasis on the bombing itself as well.
“In Night Moves, too, Reichardt presents us with a small pack of characters (two young ecoterrorists and their more experienced partner) and sends them zigzagging around a tightly circumscribed space (the rural outskirts of Portland), letting them bounce pinball-like off a string of fixed, immobile supporting players.” (Fellow Travelers 26)
I noticed that all three characters were loners that came together for a cause. We don’t really see the connection. It’s as if they were just obliging each other just for the sake of the heist and after, they would just go back being on their own. This reminded me of the relationship between Kurt and Mark in Old Joy. They seem disconnected even though they were really good friends in the past and that they are just playing along with each other just because they are out camping together. Then, after the trip, they just go on with their separate lives. Throughout the movie, we would always see Josh being alone in a crowd but at the same time, we do not see him trying to connect with them either. There is always a third person’s point-of-view looking at him from afar. I suppose that was how the society sees him? However, what was more interesting was the fact that this group of individualistic characters encounter various other individualistic characters such as the man that sold them the boat and the random trekker at the campsite. Only the random trekker tried to connect with them but ultimately failed and was shot down.
For characters that don’t have much dialogue this was really a character-based film. Reading the Q&A with Kelly Reichardt and Tribeca it really exposed her goals she had in mind for the characters. She talks about how we just jump into their lives and their stories aren’t really told. Although, if you look at the shots she creates and pay attention to detail the audience is given everything they need in order to understand them. Reichardt says, “The language of the movie isn't its dialogue, though… So they don't need to tell each other what they're doing.” I find that is the beauty in all her films. She allows for the actors to develop and create the characters to be these amazing creatures. Jesse Eisenberg’s ability to create that neurotic, creepy character and run with it is something that allows the film to go where it wants to go. Same with Dakota Fanning, her subtleness in the way she creates so much voice without actual dialogue. My eye was constantly drawn to her. Even though she wasn’t the main character Fanning to me, will always catch my attention because she is such a good actress.
This film really makes you think about what is right and wrong. The amount of problems that are going on in this world and then there are people who are trying to stop or change them. It makes you wonder if they were right or wrong in blowing up the dam. The ideas of terrorism pop up in discussion and in the film, it is just a scary world today and back in 2013 that creates these rebellions or insecurities. It makes me wonder about the communities I am involved in. The film really opens up to allow the audience to interpret and be apart of the film making it so we are critiquing their world as well as ours.
I want to build on a few of the posts above and talk about the characters' development throughout the film and how that lead to a bigger message. The 3 main characters felt they were doing something 'right' in a world full of 'wrong'. The characters are so set in their ideals that they can't imagine backing out of their plan. We learn Josh may have taken into account the dangers of what could go wrong when he asks Dena "what did you think was going to happen?" This raises the question 'when, if ever, do ideals and convictions warrant illegal and dangerous behavior?' The most powerful scene in the movie for me was when the 3 main characters were driving away from the damn as it exploded. Watching their faces as they experienced fear, discomfort, and uncertainty in their convictions was beautiful acting without dialogue. Although this scene and movie as a whole didn't answer the question it raised, it showed how serious the repercussions can potentially be. This is especially fitting in the age we live in where there are political, environmental, and religious extremists seemingly everywhere.
I was most interested in the switch of genres the movie seemed to have. They start out planning their attack in a to-do list kind of way. The movie is set up to be a heist movie. First half planning the attack, and the second half running away from authority. After the dam explosion, Reichardt seems to start using things from the horror genre.
The first example is when the police have a checkpoint on the road and Josh steps out of the car to reveal mud on his shoes. It was a vital clue that could lead to their arrest, and the whole class gasped. Another example is the paranoia that sets in on Josh. He is always checking his back and normal sounds like footsteps, cars driving by, and doors opening and closing seem sinister.
The best example of the use of the horror film genre is definitely when Josh kills Dena. The camera shot when we are watching Dena through the window is definitely a sign of what is to be expected. Then the escape scene where Josh grabs her foot. Lastly the somewhat flawed logic of hiding instead of running away that ultimately costs Dena her life.
The switch between the Heist movie feel and Horror film seemed smooth at first and only noticeable towards the end.
There were a few details in Night Moves that I wanted to analyze. The first would be Josh’s hands. One of the first few scenes of the film, Josh wanders off into his safe place, his comfort zone - the woods. While enjoying the peace and calm of the wilderness, he sees a small bird’s nest on the ground, the shot is a close up of the nest and his hand enters the frame to pick it up, examine it, and then the camera, still following his hands, watches him gently place it on the branches of a sapling that it must’ve fallen out of. Similar to this action was when him and Dena were on their way to Harmon’s place and they pass by a dead deer in the road. Josh pulls over to move it out of the road, we watch his hands again touch the belly of the deer to which he points out it’s a doe and she’s pregnant. This illustrates the circle of life. We then watch him push the deer down the creek, we hear it but don’t see it. In another scene, Josh is out in the woods again by himself, plucks a sprig from a tree and the close up on his hands again, he opens his palms up the the camera, they are dirty, he seems to not recognize them or not know what they are capable of. His hands turn from gentle to terrifying as he grabs Dena’s wrist in the truck and eventually strangles her.
The other thing I wanted to note about Josh was that he doesn’t follow the news or is involved in any form of the media. He’s unaware of any of the events that are buzzing about the bombing and it’s unclear whether this is helping his nerves or making them worse. It was also interesting to see how specifically Dena and Josh reacted to the man who disappeared near the river after the bombing. It shook their worlds. Of course, no one was supposed to get hurt but they should’ve known that was a possibility. I spent a lot of time trying to weigh the life of the man who disappeared by the river after the bombing. In the beginning, they like they needed to make a statement about the condition the population has put the environment in. The documentary stated such scary facts about ruining our ecosystem but it seemed like the one person who died in the accident as a statement to the environment was more substantial than the death of the environment from a large mass of people.
I loved how Kelly Reichardt didn’t take the time to show all of the details of their plan or how they came up with it. We were just along for the ride and the film didn’t slow or dumb it down to make sure we understood every single piece. We see the execution happening piece by piece and how each preparation is important. Reichardt doesn’t baby her audience or walk them through the entire piece, she lets her work and the mise-en-scene say that all for her. “[Josh, Dena, and Harmon] ride through a river filled with dead trees that was once a forest, surrounded by clear-cuts. So they don’t need to tell each other what they’re doing.” she says in an interview by Zachary Wigon. Just as she leaves out the narrative of what happened in the planning, KR also rejects any sort of genre saying that “even using the genre gives you this frame that people are familiar with, and working against what your expectation is, the expectation one has going into a thriller or a heist film, not delivering on that expectation has a certain kind of subversive thinking effect.” I noticed this genre-neglect in Old Joy too because I felt the film could’ve taken a horror film turn at any second and it was quite the opposite.
What I found interesting about this movie was how there was a clear cinematic shift as a result of the damn explosion. “If the first half of Night Moves is defined—thematically and visually—by the cluttered, overgrown space of Harmon' s middle-of-nowhere cabin in the woods, where the team prepares for their single momentous act, the film's second half keeps returning to the Utopian world of the produce farm: its daily rhythms of harvesting and packaging, its compromises with the greater world, and its aversion to grand gestures.” (Nelson 2014) Certainly the imagery is something that greatly changes in the film. The first half we are witnessing the atrocities that have happened to the planet as a result of human interaction. We see burned down trees, cut down trees used for lumber and deforestation, and we see a world in pain. This pain is added with the fact that the diegetic soundtrack is playing in a melodramatic minor cord. Minor cords of course are a popular musical trope to signify pain, loss, or darkness of some sort. Now in the first half this soundtrack is repeating in it’s haunting melody anytime the trio boats past or witnesses the reason they are bombing the damn. However in the second half of the film we only see this music being used when Dena is upset about their part in the bombing or when Josh is worried about being caught by the police as a result of Dena.
ReplyDeleteNot only is the same music being differently in the first and second halves of the film we notice that the imagery is completely different. As stated in the Nelson article the second half greatly differs from the first almost to symbolize that the trio’s efforts on the damn really had no effect on creating this huge change. The locations shot in the movie show this too. In the first half we see a lot of juxtaposition between nature and humanity. These examples can be seen when the children are playing in the field of dead trees, the trash heap with a lush forest in the foreground, and the man-made nature (the waterfall) seemingly mocking Josh with it’s artificial nature while he is buying the boat.
The last and final thought I had on this binary mode the film takes with it’s first and second half is the idea of purpose. In the first half of the movie we are seeing this trio with such purpose, and even though they are eco-terrorist they still seem, at least from my point of view, to have good intentions. This is partly because the first half of the film is focusing on Dena, who is far more up beat then her male counterparts. However the second half of the film, which is focusing more on Josh, seems to leave this regret in the air as a result of their fear. Our upbeat trio attempt to save the earth quickly shifts to three individuals split up viewing their own existence as criminals, not saviors of the earth.
Reichardt’s film, Night Moves, once again shows an astonishing amount of nature in her film that symbolizes a lot to the point she is making about eco-terrorism in her film. In the beginning of the film Josh and Dena are overlooking the river, which becomes the main symbol in the entire film. One specific scenic view in this film, is with two kids playing (0:45 mins) and the mountain is in the background, the camera is not moving but we can see the boat moving. As they are driving the boat, it makes you feel like you’re driving the boat and looking over to the side where the trees are. Another scene in the film that makes you feel a part of the scene is during the bike scene, which feels like you’re riding a bike behind him. You can assume the camera man in this scene was on a bike because the camera is moving and is not steady. Reichardt manages to make this film somewhat suspenseful/thrilling for example; the camera view of lights reflecting in Josh’s mirror(1:26) as haunting music is being played and the scene keeps going back to the review mirror as the car passes him, makes the audience feel fearful for Josh himself.
ReplyDeleteIn Night Moves, Kelly Reichardt wants the audience to discuss this mysterious film as whether or not it was worth this extreme action of blowing up a hydroelectric dam and living with the guilt? I like how Elle points out the ethics of this eco-terrorism story and how the film is sectioned into two parts. The first half of the film and the second half of the film focus on different characters but you can tell the fear that they have. Every time Josh was outside working and heard a car passing by, he was in fear that the car was a police officer coming to arrest him. An important scene in the film is when Josh comes back from his trip and the father (not Josh’s) and the son are talking about the news. The father explicitly makes the argument that blowing up one hydroelectric dam on one river was not worth it, considering that there were many more hydroelectric dams on that one river. What makes it worse for both Josh and Dena was that someone died during this explosion, which is not what they wanted. The argument here is, though the three characters wanted to prove a point, they ended up killing someone, and not changing anything except their lifestyle.
Now, Josh looks for a new job, as the closing scene of him looking through the mirror, this theme is similar to Reichardt’s other films in whether or not there is some type of hope for her characters that are lost. Josh getting a new job could be a sign for hope and new beginning after he “accidentally” killed Deana out of fear. Similar to finding the tree in Meek’s Cutoff, or leaving the dog in OLD JOY, Reichardt leaves the endings of her films up to the audience, and then they can assume what will happen next, whether it is positive or negative.
If Meek’s Cutoff (2010) is a revisiting of the western, then Night Moves (2013) is a revisiting of the horror genre. Rather than using surprise factors or on-screen violence, Night Moves focuses on outside action, and what is on the periphery of vision. The film does use various tropes of the genre, both visual and auditive, in a traditional way, but that alters the overall result. For example, off-screen sounds, and music build emotion and anxiety, as expected. However, in one instance, when they stop to look at the dead doe, rather than show the bloody carcass—which would be a more direct approach—the off-screen sliding down the hill sound gives the scene the uncomfortable tone by prolonging the sound and making the viewer wonder just how deep the ditch is.
ReplyDeleteAt its most obvious point, the sound of the explosion is the only indicator that their plan succeeded. In practical terms, using this technique allows the production to remain low budget, and within genre tropes, it creates a more impactful result by letting the audience use their imagination. Still, there are no periodical pictures of the aftermath, or Internet visuals, which would be cheap ways to produce visual impact, but the film refrains. Even at its most climactic scene, the film blurs the visual portrayal of killing, not letting the viewer too close. By being in the steam room, the visuals, through relatively short, close-ups of Dakota Fanning’s face, are overshadowed by a motionless foot, and not taken into the darker aspects of the genre.
While tropes such as the stalking scene, flashing his high lights at Fanning after work, and their representation through Jesse Eisenberg’s point-of-view shots, visually ground the film within the horror genre. What makes Night Moves different, is that despite working within the genre constrains, it continues to have the “Reichardt-style.” Her signature long-takes, and thematic visuals, such as the tracking shot of the cut-down trees at the lake, or Eisenberg’s manual labor, continue to present the sense of preparation and process into the film. Even in this revisiting, it imbeds the film with the passing of time and everydayness that resonates in her other films.
About halfway through Night Moves, I felt that nagging feeling of de ja vu. It took me a couple minutes to figure it out, but I soon realized that Night Moves is eerily similar to one of Christopher Nolan's very first films: Insomnia. Nolan is an auteur like Reichardt, but that's almost exclusively where their similarities in filmmaking end, so I thought it'd be interesting to spend this post comparing the two films.
ReplyDeleteI'll briefly summarize Insomnia for those who haven't seen it. The main character is a middle aged detective from LA. He has an excellent reputation as a detective and so he is sent to Alaska with his partner to help solve a murder case. Upon arriving in Alaska, his partner reveals that he knows some information about the main character that would end his career and feels it's his responsibility to share that with their department as soon as they get back to LA. The film moves past this and on to a chase scene between the suspected murderer and the two detectives. They are all on foot near a small lake, off of which unimaginably thick fog rolls. The fog makes it impossible to see anything. Our main character falls and hits his head, disorientating him, gets up, sees someone nearby and shoots. Another shot rings out at about the same time. He runs over to the person on the ground to find it's his partner. It's unclear if it was the shot from his own gun or the murderer's that killed the partner, who has a wife and child back home. The guilt our main character feels eats away at him and interferes with his work. It becomes obvious that in his disoriented state, he's not sure if he saw that is was his partner and shot him on purpose, to save his own career. The guilt of not knowing ultimately leads to his demise.
The most obvious parallel between Insomnia and Night Moves is the theme of guilt and the destruction guilt causes. Outside of the obvious, though, the tone of both movies is almost exactly the same, that of tension. This is built using mise en scene.
First off, both films are dark in a good number of the scenes. The lack of lighting almost instinctually makes a viewer feel uneasy. The characters are also isolated. In Insomnia, this is simply a part of the setting. There are fewer people to talk to in Alaska, and he doesn't want to reveal to anyone what he might have done. In Night Moves, our characters can only release their feelings of guilt by talking to each other, which they are not supposed to do. They are separated spatially; in the second half of the movie, they are rarely seen together. Josh, our POV, prefers to be by himself most of the time. The one prop they have that brings them together is the cellphone, and the conversations they have by phone typically feel unfinished and do not satisfy any of the tension the viewer feels. In fact, the phone conversations mostly add to that feeling.
Finally, there's there's the feeling of being watched, which is made palpable to the viewer by the camera. In Insomnia, Nolan uses the fog to obscure most of the frame with shadows moving in and out. Reichardt, as we've discussed, likes to allow characters to pass through the frame rather than panning to follow them, so when she does pan, it is noticeable to the viewer and gives an overwhelming sense of being watched from afar. We see this specifically in Night Moves when Josh watches Dena leave her job as he sits in his car.
It would appear that all of our directors that we have watched this summer, are all in in a certain sense, genre film makers. Now, with Night Moves, Reichardt joins into a small genre that some of the best directors, from Petzhold and Assayas to Fassbinder and many others, namely, the terrorist film genre. Although the rest of the filmmakers i mentioned made terrorist genre films about marxist, left-wing organizations, and Night Moves is about eco-terrorists, the films are very much in the same genre.The characters in the these terrorist films are often focused on small local acts instead of large grand master plans of terrorism. These directors also participate in critiquing the terrorist enterprise in some way. In Carlos, the protagonist eventually ends up becoming a fat faded fraud in someways, who is revealed to not actually care as much about the terrorism as about himself. In Night Moves, Reichardt pulls a similar critique. One of the characters on the farm, upon hearing of the news of the damn, is quick to fudge that the terrorist act was useless theatre, and in many ways all acts of terror are. And again, as we see the dark rabbit hole that Jesse Eisenberg, through reckless idealism blindly ventured into, we also sees another critique of terrorism: spend your life trying to kill monsters, sooner or later, you will become one.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking something along these lines while watching this film, Kyle. What separates "Night Moves" from the rest of Reichardt's films that we've watched was that it felt like she was actively trying to promote a viewpoint, for once. I hate to continue to hark on the aspect of "openness" in Reichardt's films, but because "Night Moves" had the least of it in the four films we watched, she is able to convince the viewer of an idea. I'll touch briefly on what I think she's trying to say, and how she convinced me of this.
DeleteIn short, I think Reichardt is trying to show some of the failures of ecoterrorism (or maybe terrorism in a general sense). She certainly thinks that their goals- the promotion of ecologically sustainable practices- are good. We can see this by some of the good ways they're carried out in the film, like the farm. The filmmaker in the film, who said that she's focussed on a bunch of small plans (for sustainability) rather than a big plan, I saw as Reichardt directly placing her voice in the film.
As such, I'd say that Reichardt wants the viewer to think that eco-terrorism is counterintuitive. The plot- which is far more structured than her previous films- has enough reasons to think this. Sean outright critiques the plan's futility. Their killing of the camper is the exact opposite of what they want to do- help people. The emotional turmoil and Dena's subsequent death serve to this end as well.
To close, I want to touch on one more thing I found interesting about the film that's tangentially related to this. "Meek's Cutoff" was a very quiet film, which served to amplify the isolation they felt in the frontier. The viewer makes of this what they want, but in the end the viewer has to make a lot of judgements about the tone of the film. The extradiegetic music in "Night Moves" informs us a great deal about the tone. It told us when we should feel suspenseful, scared, and so on. Similarly, it tells us when is a good time to agree or disagree with the actions of the characters. To this end, Reichardt drives home her own point of view.
In Reichardt’s Night Moves, the fundamentalist characters in this film are mysteriously thought provoking. The question: “Was the bombing a useful blow or useless theater?” was brought up during an interview between Filmmaker and Reichardt. This question was also ingrained in the film itself, provoked by Josh’s organic farm leader after he reads the news about the bombing. This is a valid question to ask, considering who the characters are and what their intentions were. For one, the people that Josh is essentially trying to protect, on the same hand as the outsider, he cannot even connect with. Throughout the film he is portrayed as the outsider in every community that he surrounds himself with. I ask, what can this disconnection say about his ideals if he cannot truly relate to the society he’s supposedly trying to help?
ReplyDeleteJosh seems to be leading the other two characters along. He tells Dena what to say many times, and berates Harmon with questions about their plan. Josh has no family to speak of, a robotic personality, and is devoid of any emotion until he cries with regret towards the end of the film. His extreme act of violence near the end also shows what he truly cares about, which is protecting himself. However, in the beginning there are small sentiments that Josh’s character actually does truly care about nature. Two distinct scenes show us his half-hearted attempts to care for animals. Near the beginning, we watch him replace a fallen birds nest back into a tree, and later, push a deer that had been hit by a car and left half on the road back into a ditch. Josh may seem to dislike injustice, or things being out of place, which are small details that build on his ideals, but interestingly, the birds nest is empty and the deer is presumably dead already. So his lazy attempts to care actually seem late, or better yet, meaningless. At these specific points, he protects nothing, especially compared to if the deer were still alive, or if the nest was shown full of eggs. This all meaning to say, his intentions about blowing up the dam, based on the ideals given, are also meaningless. I would say rather then trying to protect, Josh is looking for something to take his anger out on.
Another beautiful cinematic moment is the reaction shot after we hear the bomb explode at the bridge. Reichardt gives us a medium driving shot, head on facing the characters side by side. After the explosion happens, we witness the emotional contrast between each character. The menacing look on Joshes face, the subtle regret of misguided Dena, and judging from the laugh, Harmon seems to enjoy hearing the fruits of his handy work. These are just a couple great examples of Reichardt’s expertise on building her characters without using any dialog.
Reichardt repeatedly stated that this film was character driven, and getting back to the question provoked, I think it’s the characters who answer it. The fact that Night Moves doesn’t focus attention on the victims and town surrounding the blast, but more on the characters intentions who caused it, it seems much more a statement of rebellion than an actual result.
This is a nice post, Jason. I like your reading of Josh in the context of the "caring for animals" sevens and the close analysis of the post-explosion scene. Well done.
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ReplyDeleteThis film had an eerie, apocalyptic undertone. At times I felt like I was watching a horror movie. At first I thought the victim of the horror was planet earth. The heavy eco-talk and desire to protect the earth had me rooting for the main characters to succeed and score one for the planet. Yet after the dam exploded, that uncomfortable feeling didn't go away. It was little things, like how Jesse Eisenberg's character addressed Dina. He was always very dismissive of her and her worries. Then, after the dam explodes and Josh and "Ed" seem to be alright with everything, Dena is still nervous. As the events of the film play out Josh tries to rationalize everything that's happened while not dealing with the guilt. He internalizes it, While Dena releases her pent up guilt haphazardly. Slowly the two's psychies begin to match up. Josh's earlier confidence is broken to the point of desperation. As we see at the end, Dena seems to be dealing with her issues. What struck me most was how this film seemed to be very pro-terrorism for a time, but as the results of the eco-terrorism appear the film begins to emphasize the more patient, safe approach of Josh's friend at the Eco-ranch. That is where the true horror is drawn from, the idea that one's actions could seem so right, but turn out so wrong.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. It was tough seeing them lose it after the heist. However, throughout the process, I noticed that Dena was doing most of the deceiving and dirty work. She lied to the old man that sold them the boat about what she was going to do with it and then she was the one that was out buying the sodium nitrate fertilizer while "Ed" and Josh sat in the truck and wait. This got me thinking that was it because she was a girl so it was less suspicious? So, I guess that was why she held on to most of the guilt. Also, among the three of the characters, only Dena caught a bad rash after the heist. The rash could be a metaphor of her guilt that was building inside of her. We could see her scratching herself during the ride to the campsite so I suppose she was already feeling the guilt since then but it was left unnoticed, even by her. Then, eventually the rash got worst and visible just like her guilt.
DeleteWhat I found interesting about Dena, was that she started to get that rash immediately after they blew up the dam. In the scene where they get stopped by the cops I noticed her scratching her neck a lot. Like you said Nata, she was the one who bankrolled the whole operation, and did most of the "dirty work" so it was strange to see her lose her cool right away.
DeleteLike Reichardt said in her Filmmaker Magazine interview, this film is about character building, so that small detail of Dena scratching her neck really grabbed my attention. Then, as the film progressed and you saw the evolution of her rash it really showed the physical dishevel happening in her life, whereas Josh was mostly spaced out.
It allowed the audience to really connect to Dena's plight. Although Josh was the main protagonist and it seems that the film wants the viewers to get angry at Dena for telling someone about what they did, you still felt empathy for her. She was thinking about doing the morally right thing to do, and it reflects on how she changed throughout the film.
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ReplyDeleteI love how Reichardt breaks the stereotype we have on different types of films. Everything in her film is far from the viewer’s expectation. A good example would be Meek’s Cutoff. The film false into the Western genre and usually the first thing that comes to mind when the audience think of Western films is cowboys, Red Indians, fighting and somewhat bombastic extra-diegetic sounds like the film, “The Searchers”. Meek’s Cutoff was far from that expectation. It was more of a calm and quiet film. Night Moves shared that same aspect as Meek’s Cutoff as was said in Tribeca, “As Meek's Cutoff was both of the Western genre but not quite in it, so too is Night Moves of the world of heist thrillers - as well as, to a somewhat lesser degree, Hitchockian suspense pictures - without typically hitting all the beats such films are expected to hit.” When it comes to thriller films, we expect blood and action but in Night Changes, we do not see much of that. The whole movie focused more on how the characters were before and after the heist and on how their relationship took a toll after the incident. There was not much emphasis on the bombing itself as well.
ReplyDelete“In Night Moves, too, Reichardt presents us with a small pack of characters (two young ecoterrorists and their more experienced partner) and sends them zigzagging around a tightly circumscribed space (the rural outskirts of Portland), letting them bounce pinball-like off a string of fixed, immobile supporting players.” (Fellow Travelers 26)
I noticed that all three characters were loners that came together for a cause. We don’t really see the connection. It’s as if they were just obliging each other just for the sake of the heist and after, they would just go back being on their own. This reminded me of the relationship between Kurt and Mark in Old Joy. They seem disconnected even though they were really good friends in the past and that they are just playing along with each other just because they are out camping together. Then, after the trip, they just go on with their separate lives. Throughout the movie, we would always see Josh being alone in a crowd but at the same time, we do not see him trying to connect with them either. There is always a third person’s point-of-view looking at him from afar. I suppose that was how the society sees him? However, what was more interesting was the fact that this group of individualistic characters encounter various other individualistic characters such as the man that sold them the boat and the random trekker at the campsite. Only the random trekker tried to connect with them but ultimately failed and was shot down.
In her previous films, Reichardt tends re-use the music or sounds such as the sound of the squeaky wagon wheel, Wendy’s humming or the sound of the radio. Her other movies were more quiet and only depended on the sounds of the surroundings. However, there were more use of extra-diegetic music in Night Moves and different ones too throughout the film depending on the scene. The extra-diegetic was particular intriguing to me during the scene where Josh broke into the shop where Dena works. When Dena saw the door open and she just proceeded to close it and continued on was somewhat a horror-movie cliché. From there, the audience should already be expecting her to be murdered, which she then was. The extra-diegetic that was used when Josh was looking at her from afar was zen-like and calming. So, that was a slight hint to the audience that there was not going to be tension – yet. Only when he exits the shop the extra-diegetic became thriller-like.
For characters that don’t have much dialogue this was really a character-based film. Reading the Q&A with Kelly Reichardt and Tribeca it really exposed her goals she had in mind for the characters. She talks about how we just jump into their lives and their stories aren’t really told. Although, if you look at the shots she creates and pay attention to detail the audience is given everything they need in order to understand them. Reichardt says, “The language of the movie isn't its dialogue, though… So they don't need to tell each other what they're doing.” I find that is the beauty in all her films. She allows for the actors to develop and create the characters to be these amazing creatures. Jesse Eisenberg’s ability to create that neurotic, creepy character and run with it is something that allows the film to go where it wants to go. Same with Dakota Fanning, her subtleness in the way she creates so much voice without actual dialogue. My eye was constantly drawn to her. Even though she wasn’t the main character Fanning to me, will always catch my attention because she is such a good actress.
ReplyDeleteThis film really makes you think about what is right and wrong. The amount of problems that are going on in this world and then there are people who are trying to stop or change them. It makes you wonder if they were right or wrong in blowing up the dam. The ideas of terrorism pop up in discussion and in the film, it is just a scary world today and back in 2013 that creates these rebellions or insecurities. It makes me wonder about the communities I am involved in. The film really opens up to allow the audience to interpret and be apart of the film making it so we are critiquing their world as well as ours.
I want to build on a few of the posts above and talk about the characters' development throughout the film and how that lead to a bigger message. The 3 main characters felt they were doing something 'right' in a world full of 'wrong'. The characters are so set in their ideals that they can't imagine backing out of their plan. We learn Josh may have taken into account the dangers of what could go wrong when he asks Dena "what did you think was going to happen?" This raises the question 'when, if ever, do ideals and convictions warrant illegal and dangerous behavior?' The most powerful scene in the movie for me was when the 3 main characters were driving away from the damn as it exploded. Watching their faces as they experienced fear, discomfort, and uncertainty in their convictions was beautiful acting without dialogue. Although this scene and movie as a whole didn't answer the question it raised, it showed how serious the repercussions can potentially be. This is especially fitting in the age we live in where there are political, environmental, and religious extremists seemingly everywhere.
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DeleteI was most interested in the switch of genres the movie seemed to have. They start out planning their attack in a to-do list kind of way. The movie is set up to be a heist movie. First half planning the attack, and the second half running away from authority. After the dam explosion, Reichardt seems to start using things from the horror genre.
ReplyDeleteThe first example is when the police have a checkpoint on the road and Josh steps out of the car to reveal mud on his shoes. It was a vital clue that could lead to their arrest, and the whole class gasped. Another example is the paranoia that sets in on Josh. He is always checking his back and normal sounds like footsteps, cars driving by, and doors opening and closing seem sinister.
The best example of the use of the horror film genre is definitely when Josh kills Dena. The camera shot when we are watching Dena through the window is definitely a sign of what is to be expected. Then the escape scene where Josh grabs her foot. Lastly the somewhat flawed logic of hiding instead of running away that ultimately costs Dena her life.
The switch between the Heist movie feel and Horror film seemed smooth at first and only noticeable towards the end.
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ReplyDeleteThere were a few details in Night Moves that I wanted to analyze. The first would be Josh’s hands. One of the first few scenes of the film, Josh wanders off into his safe place, his comfort zone - the woods. While enjoying the peace and calm of the wilderness, he sees a small bird’s nest on the ground, the shot is a close up of the nest and his hand enters the frame to pick it up, examine it, and then the camera, still following his hands, watches him gently place it on the branches of a sapling that it must’ve fallen out of. Similar to this action was when him and Dena were on their way to Harmon’s place and they pass by a dead deer in the road. Josh pulls over to move it out of the road, we watch his hands again touch the belly of the deer to which he points out it’s a doe and she’s pregnant. This illustrates the circle of life. We then watch him push the deer down the creek, we hear it but don’t see it. In another scene, Josh is out in the woods again by himself, plucks a sprig from a tree and the close up on his hands again, he opens his palms up the the camera, they are dirty, he seems to not recognize them or not know what they are capable of. His hands turn from gentle to terrifying as he grabs Dena’s wrist in the truck and eventually strangles her.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I wanted to note about Josh was that he doesn’t follow the news or is involved in any form of the media. He’s unaware of any of the events that are buzzing about the bombing and it’s unclear whether this is helping his nerves or making them worse. It was also interesting to see how specifically Dena and Josh reacted to the man who disappeared near the river after the bombing. It shook their worlds. Of course, no one was supposed to get hurt but they should’ve known that was a possibility. I spent a lot of time trying to weigh the life of the man who disappeared by the river after the bombing. In the beginning, they like they needed to make a statement about the condition the population has put the environment in. The documentary stated such scary facts about ruining our ecosystem but it seemed like the one person who died in the accident as a statement to the environment was more substantial than the death of the environment from a large mass of people.
I loved how Kelly Reichardt didn’t take the time to show all of the details of their plan or how they came up with it. We were just along for the ride and the film didn’t slow or dumb it down to make sure we understood every single piece. We see the execution happening piece by piece and how each preparation is important. Reichardt doesn’t baby her audience or walk them through the entire piece, she lets her work and the mise-en-scene say that all for her. “[Josh, Dena, and Harmon] ride through a river filled with dead trees that was once a forest, surrounded by clear-cuts. So they don’t need to tell each other what they’re doing.” she says in an interview by Zachary Wigon. Just as she leaves out the narrative of what happened in the planning, KR also rejects any sort of genre saying that “even using the genre gives you this frame that people are familiar with, and working against what your expectation is, the expectation one has going into a thriller or a heist film, not delivering on that expectation has a certain kind of subversive thinking effect.” I noticed this genre-neglect in Old Joy too because I felt the film could’ve taken a horror film turn at any second and it was quite the opposite.