‘Visual culture is a way of studying a work that uses art history, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. It is intertwined with everything that one sees in his day to day life – advertising, landscape, buildings, photographs, movies, paintings, apparel – anything within our culture that communicates through visual means. When looking at visual culture, one must focus on production, reception, and intention, as well as economical, social, and ideological aspects. It reflects the culture of the work and analyzes how the visual aspect affected it. It focuses on questions of the visible object and the viewer – how sight, knowledge and power all are related. Visual culture analyzes the act of seeing as ‘tension between the external object and the internal thought processes.’
(Georgetown Inventory of Visual Culture) – Leah Houston
Introduction
The Grand Budapest Hotel, even if I just watched it, it cannot stop my shock about its excellence. When I open my player and watched its begining, I was deeply attracted by the shots and color of this film. And at the end, I was moved by the characters and incredible scipt. In this essay, I will express how the director Wes Anderson put a real, cruel into a pink, cute hotel building in five aspects.
Mise-en-scene
Setting
If you have watched what Wes directed before, you must know You must know that he is a director who likes to use symmetrical composition. As a result, many people joke that he is a super compulsive disorder.
Space
Of course, there are a large number of balance in symmetrical composition to emphasize the balance of two subjects.
Props
The most improtant prop is absolutely the painting, Boy with apple.
The apple is the forbidden fruit of desire in the Bible, and in European languages, it also means the reward of labor. The metaphor of this painting is to show that the jewish people as a whole have spreaded their wealth from Jerusalem to the world and have gradually inherited the material and spiritual wealth of Europe, which they deserve.
Costume
As the film that won the Best costume design award at the 87th Academy Awards, I just give an example to illustrate the beauty of costume design in this film.
The hotel staff mainly wear clothes with three colors, purple, gold and white. Obviously, Gustave was dressed in purple and white, with a large proportion of white, which not only highlighted the beauty of the modified suit, but also emphsize his identity, because he needed to stand out.
Zero as a lobby boy, talked about being invisible in the movie, so he just used gold font to hightlight his identity of a lobby boy.
Lighting
There is a interesting lighting at the begining, when the author begins to talk, a light suddenly appears on his right side. This is because the next shots which shows a little boy coming from this side. This is the light that indicates the development of the story.
Visual metaphor
When I watched the movie, I noticed that one shot was interesting. Because there were close ups of a couple of people who dress different kinds of clothes and utilize diffferent guns as they shot each other, After bowsering Internet, I understand the meaning of this shot shown.
For example, what Dmitri uses is PPK which always was used in Nazi army.
And the first man who looks like Stalin uses PPSH, which is made by the former Soviet Union.
Then the second man enters the shot with a British revolving, who looks like a former US president Thedore Roosevelt.
The last man probably likes Chamberlain, the former British Prime Minister who uses a Mauser 1910 or Mauser 1934. The reason why he use this German gun is that Chamberlain signed a aggrement to make peace with Hitler.
So as we know, this story is not only talk about a hotel manager but also whole Europe.
Asthetics
While we are often taught that the best way to draw or shoot a film is to use a three-point composition, this film shows that plenty of symmetrical compositions are also beautiful. So, how did Wes manage to use so much symmetrical composition without boring the audience. I believe is colors and the actions of characters.
The reason we use three-part composition is to highlight the main subject, so Web’s symmetrical compositions are. For example, in this shot, the background color is blue, so the main subejct uses a yellow phone booth to distinguish it from the background, creating a contrast between warmth and cold.
Colour compostion
The color of this whole movie is warm and high saturation, which shows it’s a comedy. However, some terrifying scenes will use high contrast and low saturation.
Rhythum
I don’t know much about music, but I think the score of this movie is particularly good, especially the chase scene in the middle of this movie in one minute, with drums and orchestral instruments, which leads the audience into a ridiculous world. At the end, they all think the lawyer has escaped, but a very loud drum beat brings the audience back to reality.
Conclusion
So, I really recommend this movies and wish I can explore more interesting visual culture.