Jungle battle and the machine gun nest*

Classification in categories

• Battle and nature
• Battle and technology
• Suffering / victim / sacrifice

Metadata

The scene first develops two dynamic processes through the way it is staged which both counter and build upon one another. In the beginning, increasing tension is built through camera movements, silence and an increase in editing frequency and culminates in a moment of soldierly sacrifice (> EMU 1). The moment of shock connected to this is the starting point of an ecstatic outburst of visual and auditory events, a figuration of disorientation whose audiovisual excess is reined in by the camera and in the end transitions to a decreasing dynamic.(> EMU 2).

The thus established principles of acceleration and deceleration, staged as the sensatory equivalent of struggle in battle, are now, in a complex curving series of variations that refer to one another, brought together in an emphatic image of heroic sacrifice (> EMU 3).This seeming climax and culmination of the battle transitions finally to an epilog in which the dynamic relationship of  image and sound is modified, while this modification provides the background for a final second of fright at the moment of the seemingly hard-won calm —as in a horror film. (> EMU 4).    JHB

Expressive movement units

Materials about the scene

Position of scene in film