The tragedy that launches Bambi's journey
The film Inja uses a variety of shots to portray the story since the film has minimal dialog and it is in a different language. The second shot of the film we see a young boy playing with a puppy. As the camera pans to follow them playing, we are able to see the love they both share for each other. The next scene with the flag, we see the young boy looking up at the flag, but the angle of the camera is from above. This creates a feeling that the flag is looking down on him and since this is during Apartheid this shows how this young black boy is a lower class than others during this time period. Also, during this scene we see the boys hand struggling to tie the rope around the flag pole. This shows us also the struggle that the boy is having in his country and that current state that Apartheid put them in. Later on in the film, we see that the flag has changed to the current South African flag, after Apartheid. We see the same shot of his hand as we did earlier except he is much older and it isn’t a struggle anymore to tie the rope around the flag pole. Just like how it isn’t as much of a struggle in his country now that Apartheid is over. These shots and angles allow us to understand that without it having to be explained using words.
Another film we watched in class was the intro to Bambi. Just like in the beginning of Inja the characters are introduced in a happy setting. In Bambi, his mom and him are eating grass and enjoying their freedom and happiness and in the beginning of Inja, the young boy is happily playing with the dog. Throughout the movie of Bambi, Bambi is trying to figure out life on his own and each decision that he makes helps his character develop and this is the same as in the movie Inja with reference to the boy.
The setting of Bambi is portrayed as a bright happy place except for the scene when his mom dies and in Inja the setting is also a bright happy place except when the boy is deciding whether to kill the dog or not at the end of the movie. In both of the movies, you only see little parts of their world, mostly where they live and that is pretty much it. In Inja we mainly see the front of the house and in Bambi we only see the small part of the forest that he lives in.
In both movies we see an array of shots though out the movie. But in Inja, we see mainly close up shots because this helps portray emotion the best. In that movie the director wanted wanted the audience to feel exactly what the young boy was feeling as a slave during that time. He did this effectively by having extreme close up shots. In Bambi, there is a lot of wide and panning shots. These allow you to see how small Bambi is in this big world that he is now alone in.
In both of the films, the pace and editing style is quick cuts. The flag pole scene in Inja, like I talked about above, is quick short cuts. This style also happens in Bambi. This allows the audience to be kept on their toes and their eyes glued to the screen. It also helps the movie flow better because there is nothing unnecessary being showed.
Finally, both Inja and Bambi use sound extremely well to tell the story. In Bambi, we don’t see his mom get killed but we hear the sound of the gun so we know what has happened. Also in Inja we don’t see the dog actually getting kicked but we hear the dog whimpering and we hear something hard getting kicked. This created the sense that something was happening. It made you feel like extremely sad and it was very hard to watch because you knew that a dog was getting abused.
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