Andrey Zvyagintsev has utilized vast number of methods to make his film completed and symmetrical as a circle and the goal is reached through focus of filming skills, fair background music and delicate designed details. The composition of each frame is flawless with a pleasing balance of colors and shapes; the original sound tracks in the film are perfectly matched with the story itself and those fine details add more elements and tips worth studying at. With the magic power of film languages, the director is capable of expressing his original idea better and stronger and has also managed to show us marvelous Russian countryside scenery.
Just like Bazin argued that films should be depicting what be seen as "objective reality" and advocated "true continuity" and preferred by many Russian film masters, Zvyagintsev has utilized a vast number of objective tracking shots in his own film. In an important sense, only if a director is fairly confident about the actors, the mis-en-scene and his cinematographer would he prefer to use this kind of shooting method. Iindisputable, Zvyagintsev is confident, especially after the Golden Lion awarded by the Venice Film Festival for his maiden work The Return in the year of 2003. His second film ---- The Banishment (Russian: Изгнание, Izgnanie) (2007) is a loose adaptation of a novel: The Laughing Matter, by the Armenian-American writer William Saroyan. Stylistically, the film draws on both the expressionist and the “silent, oppressive and philosophical” traditions of Russian films. The film represented as an impartial record of a turmoil relationship between the couple ---- Vera and Alex and its ultimate collapse due to the estrangement and mutual distrust.
Tracking shots in The Banishment are prevalently used. Since most of the movements happen indoor, track shots following the actors are of pivotal importance. Take one tracking shot of the couple’s little daughter Eva as an example, when she was brought to a brand new house the tiny creature showed tremendous interest about everything around her. The shot followed her, witnessed the scene she went up to her room and her chosen of a “more ideal” bed. Watching her deeds in the small room like patting on her bed, meditating by the window and blowing on the dust on them makes the audiences feel peaceful at that moment. The whole family is new to this village ---- the hometown of Alex who stayed away for 12 years which suggests somehow that their arrival would definitely wake up those dusted memories and make some stirs. The silence and peace of the village has got an enormous storage for anything: thrilling, sad or harmonic. Another impressive tracking shot is when the husband invited his wife to go for a walk in woods nearby to talk about the so-called “adultery” thing. The dialogue did not go smoothly while the camera focused on the wife’s face: her happiness after the husband expressed his willingness to start all over again and the sudden sadness and desperation when she was told to get rid of the baby. The husband went out of the camera for a deliberately made space for Vera in a noticeable seconds which may make the audiences feel free and happy for Vera having sometime to think about the whole lie-thing while this relief was broken soon by the re-entering of the husband which continued to give or even dense the pressure on his wife, the subtle violence and manipulation of the husband revealed clearly.
Symmetrical/coordinated tracking long shots are utilized as a powerful way of depicting changes of time in this film although they are usually acclaimed for their effects in completing the film structure and the aesthetic values. Here are three examples: Mark (Alex’s brother) turned to Alex for medical help at the beginning of the film, driving all the way from countryside to town while Alex drove the exact same way to track his imaginary enemy Robert down later after Vera’s death, passing the identical oak tree (this typical Russian film set kept reminding me of Tarkovsky and Angelopoulos’s films). Alex removed all the wood blocks to the windows when they first arrived at the house while the doctor (who was in charge of Mark’s funeral) shut them all down before he left the house. With these identical long shots ---- which were all placed inside the room, the director could emphasize the changes of lights in a more apparent way. Last pair of symmetrical shots is that (1)Kir (their son) asked about the dried spring in front of their house and (2)the longest shot in the film ---- rain started to fall after everything was back to silence in the autumn. The latter shot tracked the raindrops till them get together into a stream down on the ground, wiggling all the way through the house and reach at the spring. This shot is more like a metaphoric miracle, a baptizing ceremony for the sins and wrongdoings and a new start of love and life. This tracking shot may offer us imaginations and wonders along with a sense of final relief from Vera’s death.
Another typical usage of tracking shots is the ones that track in from a long shot to a medium close-up. This kind of shots in the film is intense and the power and energy it released are gigantic. This time in a domestic scene after Vera committed a suicide vividly underlined the condensed ambience of the film. The scene opens with a medium long-shot that gradually tracks in through a doorway. The shot is rigidly balanced as the frame of the doorway lines up perfectly with the sides of the film frame and the bathroom open-door is in the gradually opening center of the frame. A shiver of coldness arose through my spin when the shot closed in on Vera’s strength-less body in it. The camera stops at this point, with the deep, sad background music, this scene brings not only a condensed ambience, a feel of pressure/curiosity/fear but also a bunch of questions: What courage would this woman take to make the decision to commit a suicide, leaving a beloved husband and a couple of children? How much disappointments have she born for these years? All these questions could be explained by what happened later and the depressed shot plays a pivotal role in making up the fearsome atmosphere which showed a calling for love and care from a desperate wife.
While the mass utilization of tracking shots enforced the atmosphere for the film, some other shots which were full of specific details have provided more clues for audiences to analyze and to learn the couple’s attitude toward their children ---- the riff between the couple grows but the two try to keep up appearances in the presence of their children. Like those shots on the train to express the covered love between the families though the close-up of Vera’s face did bring in some disturbance. The struggling mind state of Alex when he was driving after he was told he was not the father. That single shot from his back showed his fear, anger and reluctance simultaneously. When Alex drove together with his son and got to know that Robert may be the man, the medium shot occurred with a facial-expression of resentment and a firm will to revenge on Robert revealed. Close-up shots in the film served a practical effect too. First one, after a talk between Alex and Vera in which Vera argued: I know what Kir is going to be…Just like your father and you brothers…The shot then jumped to a photo frame on the wall in which were a single close-up picture of Alex’s father ---- an old dark man and a larger one of Alex and Mark standing in front of the house. This is a side hint for the hidden lines, with another clue which was shown at the start of the film that Mark was shot in arm; audiences could conclude easily that there is the subtle but definite indication of a mysterious and possibly criminal past in the family. Another one is also about photo, a photo shown to Robert while Vera murmuring: “I don’t want to be alone…Why he stopped talking to me?” after she was rescued, in which Vera’s bright and smiling face before she married was showed. This close-up illustrated well about the ice-cold relationship between the couple, with the acknowledgement of another related clue that Vera has never showed her smile like this in the whole film, we gradually get to know and understand Vera’s sorrow and desperation. Male bonding pervades in this family and women’s role in it is just like some birth machines. Vera loves Alex, however, love without returns turns to be the most difficult one to pursue. When the children were sent to friends’ house, Frida read the very famous paragraph from the Bible about love: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. The close-up of Frida’s silhouette in a dim light allows only one word to describe her ---- seraph. Zvyagintsev made a girl speak out the definition of love in the Bible to remind us to bear, to believe, to hope and to endure. Love and relationship are the main theme of the film and the use of suitable cinematography skills enforced them. Without as many lines as Hollywood blockbusters usually have, images in this film mean everything.
Only three top shots were used in the whole film, which indeed is a small number. These chosen shots have got substantial and metaphoric meanings along with their delicate and perfect composition. When examined from this point of view, they all serve as hints of the story clue. The most pleasant one is that when all the children were gathered on the carpet and tried to finish a puzzle of St. Mother Maria while Alex prepared to get his wife aborted. The scene first started with a tracking shot moving steadily from the dark doorway where Alex talked to his friend on the phone to keep his children their’s for the night because of the undergoing abortion plan, the shot was set at the level of a child’s height and move to a medium living-room view where had got abundant of light and joy. The tracking shot is a prefiguration of dark and “filthy” plan of adults, the dark telephone-dialogue and the bright game scene contract sharply to indicate the hidden secret and the destination of Vera’s. The top shot appears then, above of the carpet, showing a warm, clear and bright picture of children. Top shot can be seen as an angle from the heaven. Children represented innocence and hope and St. Mother Maria’s portrait added some more religion meanings here. St. Mother is there to watch, to bless and to mercy. All the fear, distrusts, estrangement are wrong. Contrary thoughts mean utterly alternatives in life. A second top shot is the scene when a postman sent Vera her pregnancy test result from the hospital. This is a turning-point of Vera’s life which made her more reluctant of giving up her life and ended up with the decision of testing her husband’s love. The story actually begins here, she started to reconsider the relationship, think about the future of her kids and whether the love she offered to him means anything. Those mess thoughts have eventually pushed her into a dilemma of “to be or not to be”. Love is to sacrifice. The moment she knew that her love was banished by Alex, she made a final decision, and only with her departure would Alex understand the intact true virtue of love. Alex never listens. After times and times of communication failures, she just gave up and she had to. The third top shot coordinates with the previous one closely ---- an old worker is digging, for Vera’s coffin, which represented the end point of Vera’s tragedy life.
Mirror-shots are as important too. They have always been taken as a kind of supplements to the story and the composition of images. What impressed me most in the Banishment is that Zvyagintsev has created a brand-new transition method with the help of mirror-shot. Other methods like the use of sounds, music and cut, etc. have been considered as traditional ways of transition while Zvyagintsev used “time” itself and the mirror-shot to finish the transition task. When Alex appeared in the mirror of the doorway answering a phone after Vera sent Robert away the same place in the same scene, the transition has finished, perfectly clear and refreshing as well. This delicate shot could be counted as one of the most excellent part of its cinematographic designs.
