Saturday, April 18, 2015

Blancanieves - 22:00 - 24:10

The scene starts out at 22:00 into the movie where you see Carmenita under a table looking sad. Carmenita is in the immediate foreground of the scene, and in the background directly behind her is a bright, white table cloth draped down. The sides of this shot clearly show the legs of the table she is under. As she pets Pepe the chicken, she looks to her right and sees a vision of her mother, Carmen, dancing as one of Carmen's songs starts to play. As Carmen is dancing, Carmenita begins to smile. Something to notice here is that the vision of Carmen takes up the left side of the screen (dominant) and Carmenita takes of the right side of the screen. I think this is a way of showing that her mother is always with her and that she is strong because of who her mother was. This is evidenced by Carmenita's immediate mood change upon seeing her mother.

The table cloth is then lifted as (what appear to be) Carmenita's grandmother appears smiling and laughing while looking at Carmen. The grandmother takes the place of where the vision of Carmen was in the background.

The grandmother then takes Carmenita outside to what appears to be some sort of event with many people around here. Carmenita is standing with seemingly no mood on her face as the camera angle shifts to show the grandma dancing the exact way that Carmen was in the girl's vision. Carmenita gives in and begins trying the dance that her grandmother is showing her. As this happens, the camera is shifting between close-up shots on both Carmenita and her grandmother. Between all of the rapid close-up shots, we see many people in the background clapping as the two dance.

Next we see the camera capturing the record player that was a gift from Carmenita's father playing a record for just a few seconds. The camera cuts back to show only the grandmother dancing very quickly as everyone watches in excitement. Suddenly, a series of back and forth flash shots show the crowd of people clapping and Carmenita's grandma dancing even faster than she was. Her grandma then falls and (seemingly) has a heart attack. Here, the flashy shots are meant to show that something bad is going to happen, and very quick. The grandma does in fact have a heart attack quickly after that, and she is dying on the ground as the shot goes slowly back and forth from Carmenita, the audience, and her grandma. Just as the grandmother dies, the record stops playing. I believe that the camera showing the record still spinning in the last shot of the scene without music playing is there to show two things. First, that a big part of Carmenita's life has come to an end. Not only has she lost her mom but her dad left her and now her grandmother is dead. She now has nobody left, so he life is going to change. It's a new beginning. Second, I believe it shows the record still spinning to show that Carmenita's life/journey must continue despite tragic setbacks.