Expressive movement unit 3

Connected to the diegetic music, which can be heard continuously in the background, the image previously created of pleasurable camaraderie (>EMU 2) is developed further in the interplay of the editing with choreography, dialogue, facial expressions and gestures from a happy group portrait to a relaxed fellowship of individualized figures.

Again there is a change in the form of spatial staging: After a disassociated (>EMU 1) and clearly framed (>EMU 2) narrative space there follows the staging of two spaces connected by the editing.  First there is a cut to a medium long shot of Feingold, sitting in an indeterminate space on a rock above a pond. The lighting corresponds with the outdoor shot at the scene’s opening (>EMU 1), only the center of the image is slightly lit. Nevertheless, the spatial figuration is changed: The continued diegetic music creates a spatial connection outside of the visual image; the music creates a unified soundscape that allows the viewer to spatially grasp the medium long shot of Feingold although it can not be located on the visual level. At the same time, the now recognizably lower volume of the music marks a change in the staging. The changed spatial figuration is directly connected to a gesture of relaxation: Feingold takes off his boots and cools his feet in the pool. The length of the shot stresses the duration of the gesture, which has its highpoint in the pointed use of Feingold’s change of expression to an accentuated relaxed expression that adds a comical dimension to the gesture.

This is followed by a new change in the spatial staging. In alternating long shots and jumps in, the space in front of the hut is again staged as a narrative space. On the level of shot composition, a choreography unfolds of pointedly unconnected, seemingly uncoordinated, intersecting movements of the protagonists in the image space. The individualization of the figures created in this way is supported by a sequence of medium close ups of individual soldiers, organized on the temporal level by the dialogue, while on the gestural level—the soldiers lying in the background—the motif of relaxation is retained which was established in the prolonged shot of Feingold. The musical connection of the singular space taken up by Feingold with the narrative space taken up by the group creates a common spatial figuration that stages the compatibility of individuality and relaxed camaraderie.

This relaxed camaraderie is linked on the one hand with the staging of the almost family-like situation of eating together and on the other hand, through the dialogue, with the previously developed theme of a reminiscential relationship (to home).