This scene reminds me of the movie Into the Wild when Alex sets out on his journey across the continent
Which then takes me to my need for adventure and desire to not end up in Billings, Mt for the rest of my life. So I set out for Seattle.
Although I didn't hitch hike like Alex I did carry a HUGE backpack like his.
Zoom in on his back pack then zoom out to realize that it's not his backpack anymore but mine.
The difference is that he leaves the city for the Wild while I leave the wild for the city.
Longing for the wilderness of Montana, but still loving the life in the big city.
Two things stand out to me about this response of yours (and both are interesting). First, I like the way you sum up the mood/experience conveyed in the beach scene from 400 Blows. By describing the key paradox bound up with this image (moving ever closer toward a final barrier or frontier), you isolate the element in question in a manner that might allow it to be conveyed (within the context of your own scene) in any number of ways. What your description reminds me of is the philosophical notion of "Zeno's paradox": If with each step a person moves halfway closer to a final destination, they never actually get their (they simply "tend" toward this destination, as in the plotting of an irrational number along its "Y" axis, if you happen to remember your high-school geometry...)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this is the same feeling that often gets expressed in various sorts of anxiety dreams...It's not just that you can't move (to escape the monster or the serial killer, or whatever), but rather that each effort takes you precisely--and only--half-way toward your goal. This is sort of like the inverse opposite of the function of the coast in your life story: Seattle is (for you) the space between your position and the "Y" axis.
As for cinematic renderings of this paradox, a technique that comes to mind is the so-called zoom-dolly shot (or "zolly shot"), a technique in which a character or actor maintains the same size and position while the background appears to change size and proximity. It's hard to explain, but the feeling it evokes is a lot like that evoked by Truffaut's beach scene (so the zolly shot could provide another means of mapping this feeling from Truffaut's scene to yours. There's a famous zolly shot in the film Goodfellas occurring in a diner--you can find it on Youtube if you're interested.
The other point: The basic inversion of your circumstances (in relation to those of the protagonist in "Into the Wild")--your move from Montana to Seattle. This kind of reversal/inversion is one of the more interesting components of "unification," the collective body of signifying mechanisms that Freud locates in jokes (as discussed in our readings).
Nice work.
100/100
CS