Expressive movement unit 4

With the loud crack of the explosion of the bridge, also present in the next shot of Dane's and Todd's second throw, the transition is marked from the short moment of relaxation at the end of EMU 3 to tension exploding into chaos followed by the ecstasy of the group's desire for battle. The interplay of black-and-white shading and sound design and camera stages an intense tension that lasts on the return path to camp. Not until the cook’s last gunfire does the scene enter a stage of relaxation.

Three different movements – the movements of the American soldiers, the movements of the Japanese soldiers, who are difficult to make out in the nocturnal natural environment, and the movements of Dane and Todd, who are returning to camp – are edited in relation to one another: on the one hand to the battle between the groups of American and Japanese soldiers in chaotic reciprocal volleys of gunshots and on the other hand to Dane's and Todd’s return, as in a chase scene. Having in EMU 3 marked the path from headquarters down to the cliff as burdonsome, through the long duration of the slow ducked choreography of Dane’s and Todd’s movements, now increases the tension when, for example, they need a long time to climb up the rock at the same spot they needed quite a bit of time to climb down. 

The Japanese are staged as a collective power, indistinguishable from nature. Whereas the existence of the Japanese soldiers can only be intimated from the smoke coming out of gun barrels in the dark, the Americans are shown individually in close ups. The individual American soldier shoots, while the Japanese unit, scattered along the slopes, hidden in nature, positions itself and with the aid of floodlights searches for and shoots at the fleeing American soldiers. In this way a contrast is made between dark and light and between the Japanese enemy and the Americans. 

When the floodlight is shot at (and hit and thus destroyed), the battle is over. The Japanese are invisible again. And the preceding build of horror and ecstasy again transitions to a relaxed mode, realized through silence and the cook’s calm expression.