Last night, my wife and I had a rare night out. With two kids, we've really only got one non-family babysitter we trust, and she happened to be available on a Tuesday, so we took advantage of the situation. After a nice dinner (it's amazing how roomy a restaurant table is without all the stuff that accompanies a couple of young kids!), we went to see The Bourne Ultimatum (Flash-enabled loud site, sigh).
We both enjoyed the first Bourne movie, though we found the second disappointing (too much like a two-hour MTV music video). But we'd heard good things about the third, so we were anticipating a couple hours of decent entertainment. And generally speaking, that's what we got: I'd rate the third movie as the best of the bunch; there are some amazingly well done scenes, including a tense seen in London's sprawling Waterloo Station. If you enjoy spy/action movies, this one is worth seeing, even in light of what I'm about to discuss.
There were two things I really disliked about the cinematography in the Bourne Ultimatum. Taken together, I found them so irritating that I actually "watched" many minutes of the movie with my eyes closed.
The first thing that bothered me can be seen in the image at left (click for a much larger version). I created that composite using frames from the Bourne Ultimatum trailer, as it included quite a few good shots of what I found irritating. In each of those shots, the main subject has been framed by placing them offset from some large, fuzzy object in the foreground. In many cases (lower right image, for instance), only a small portion of the subject's face is visible.
While this style of cinematography is probably supposed to add to the excitement and realism of the film, the end result (to me, at least) is nothing more than annoying. It seems my mind works overtime, trying to find and focus on the subject while stripping out the large fuzzy blobs in the foreground. Instead of just being able to watch the movie, I find myself working very hard to separate the foreground junk from the background subject. For me, this makes trying to follow a dialog between two characters, for example, very difficult as my mind isn't really hearing the words as it's working on processing the images--and almost every dialog scene in the movie was shot in this manner.
If this technique had been used alone, I probably would have been OK with it. But it wasn't. It was combined with the "let's give the camera to the 10-year-old kid on Jolt cola and cotton candy" style of camera work. This technique has been popularized by 24, which uses it to good effect on TV. But on a 50' movie theater screen, instead of a 50" television set, small jumps in the camera lead to large, visually jarring, jumpy effects on the screen.
Watch the trailers and you can see what I mean in many spots; I took a five-second snippet from the trailer to show both the jumpy camera and the 'hide the subject' issues I have with this movie:
Given that I had to make this quite small, it won't be nearly as hard to watch as it was in the theater. For a better effect, download the HD trailer from the above link, and then watch it in full screen mode. In particular, watch the scenes at 0:09 - 0:14, 0:34 - 0:36, and 1:11 - 1:29. While I fully appreciate that the hand-held camera adds to the sense of realism, I think the effect is not at all appropriate for a dialog between two people.
Again, as with the 'hide the subject' technique, the end result is that my brain spends quite a bit of time trying to focus on the subject, and rarely succeeding. During an outdoor chase scene, this technique is fine--there's enough open space and action that it really is a nice effect. But come on, we have to watch caffeinated camera jostling while two folks chat in a café? After trying to watch the first such scene, I just closed my eyes any time two characters started a dialog. Without the oddly-focused subjects and jumpy camera effects, it was much easier to follow the conversation, and made for a more enjoyable movie.
As noted above, I do think the movie is very good, and well worth the price of admission. I just wish they wouldn't have felt the need to force so much "excitement" and "drama" into what should have been simple scenes of people talking. Or perhaps, and to quote one of my favorite comedies, I'm just "getting too old for this sh*t." Is it just me? Or does cinematography like this bother others as well?
Your not alone. Thanks for the heads up.
I saw this movie in Mesquite last week and really enjoyed it. I did remember thinking they overdid the hand held shots a bit. I really did like the aerial shots of the various cities. Also, I was impressed with the perseverance and professionalism of the Tangier police department.
That would drive me absolutely nuts. I remember watching parts of 24 with my eyes closed for the same reason. (Mind you, that had its own difficulties; the conversion from NTSC to PAL resulted in frames that weren't quite all there, so when the characters nodded you could see ther nose appear to move at different speeds to their face. But I digress.)
I was looking forward to this film, and even thinking of going to see it in the cinema. I might still get it on DVD. But I'm definitely not going to go to a 50ft screen which is going to make me seasick by the end of it.
I appreciate the warning; thanks.
I couldn't agree more. And most everyone I talk to has the same opinion.
Done in moderation the effect leads me to believe that it's me there in the action. Done to excess it's just someone using a technique without concern for its purpose.
The same technique has been used for decades to successfully show a lurker or murderer watching someone from a hidden location.
Though challengingly different, I liked the the quick, look, focus, on what's relevant shots as it pushed the action directly foward. Its really an altered experience of cinematic reality, and it achieved its effect. You have to let go of the impulse to savor and control what appeals to you in the screen because you are rushed right into it which is more like real life and in this life adrenaline is everything. This is not a contemplative film, yet it is a scathing critique of what we have become as a society. It just gets to it in a different way. Rather than be self servingly preachy, it simply shows the end result of where we are so rapidly going. I think people who work in film might well be annoyed at this loss of control. But for the $8.50 I paid at the matinee I felt it was a real roller coaster ride and quite well done.
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