Expressive movement unit 4

Metadata

The composition of the gestures and movements of a desperate, senseless sacrifice form a closed circle and ends the triumphant pathos of the scene. Breaking into the resolution of the tension and the silence, Hardy’s gestural and verbal agitation increases: "I should have been in that plane!" This initiates an expanding movement which, however, increasingly exhausts itself in the course of the construction of echoing interruptions and new beginnings.

Hurried music underscores Hardy’s weaving run into the jungle. The latter’s impenetrability is conveyed by a cut to a long shot of a chaotic pattern of flecks of light and shadows and dark areas into which Hardy quickly disappears and yet reappears. This winding movement is contrasted with a conflicting opposite movement in which Eeps and Todd hold back Sailor, who is gesturing wildly. The three form a cluster and become still.

In the following shots, no point of view is staged of or towards other characters. The origin of the shots as well as the direction of Hardy’s gaze and his hand grenades remains off screen. What remains is merely the unmoving presence of the jungle, underlined by the top view and the spatial restriction, which limits the figure to one axis of movement and one space of action—in this sudden stillness an impression of absurdity develops.

Absurdity is also created through the construction of a mirror in the sense that a temporal discrepancy, a bracket between cause and deadly effect is produced. The return of the fast, jerky movements in the diagonal towards the bottom left of the frame, and the gunshots that hit Hardy and stop these movements are mirrored in his final collapse; Hardy changes direction and returns to exactly the spot at which he was first shot and a single gunshot is heard. At the center of this mirror on the temporal level, and the cause-and-effect bracket thus created, is Hardy’s maniacal laughter on the ground, an act between the poles of his freezing and looking around with wild spastic movements. The music anticipates each of these steps: deep strings announce Hardy’s collapse while he throws the second hand grenade and mourning music overlays his manic laughter.

Hardy’s slowly going limp on the log and the gradual fade to black become an echo of the stillness and his wild jump into the jungle from a similar position at the beginning —only now the front view is mirrored by a back view.