Carrying Home In Your Pocket, Essay 3

 

Carrying Home In Your Pocket

While globalization leads us to new directions in thinking and ideology of our own methods employed, we must take on certain sources to broaden our horizons.  Timur Bekmambetov, Russian film director, took on the Hollywood scene by directing the film Wanted (2008).  His experience with directing films in his home country has been an application to the films he has/will produce in Hollywood.  What I want to analyze is how his local production, Night Watch (2004), is very similar/different in styles with Wanted on the basis of background/plot structure, editing/cinematography, and mise-en- scene.  By analyzing these elements, drawing conclusions can be possible to the relation of the director’s influence taken from his local cinema to the Hollywood stage.

 

Night Watch is an Action-Thriller, Supernatural-Thriller, that takes place in Moscow, Russia, Timur Bekmambetov’s native country.  Wanted is an Action-Thriller that takes place in New York City, New York.  Both films have highly acclaimed actors, in Night Watch, Konstantin Khabensky and Vladimir Menshov are very respected actors in Russian Cinema have forty plus movies accredited to their name, with many global nominations.  Wanted stars Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, very respected actors in Hollywood cinema who have dozens of movies accredited to their name as well.  The plot structure of Night Watch cannot fit into one film, but an epic trilogy.  Night Watch is, “truce between Light and Dark that allows the world to continue, the two sides have organized themselves into competing, mutually policing safety patrols called the Night Watch and the Day Watch” (NY Times).  As the story follows, there is a telling about a person, who would end this truce, disrupt the balance, and measure out entirely who would control the world, good or evil.  Wanted is a movie about a regular white collar worker, finding out he’s an assassin, and goes out to train with a “fraternity” of assassins to unlock his true power.  What we can see is the action-thriller scenario in play.  Both movies take place in cities, involve characters who seem to have destined purposes from the start of the movie, go against what is threatening them/their organization, and contain a great concluding destiny for the main characters.  Timur Bekmambetov took the epic elements of Night Watch, and placed the same elements described into Wanted, to give the same feel that the characters go through a large struggle throughout the film, and in the end, receive their greatest achievement.  It is typical in Russian Literature that the stories involve unlikely heroes coming from the farthest reaches of innocence to take on the present oppression.  Timur captured this same image when he was creating the plot to Wanted.  The characters were also tough to capture to the audience in both films.  Night Watch had really shady, quiet, violent characters who were tough to get in touch with by the “main” character.  Anton, the main character in Night Watch, being shady himself, had a tough time with the other, quieter yet intriguing characters to get along with.  In Wanted, Wesley is the white collar worker who had a tough time adapting and getting along with the fraternity of assassins he joined.   The only difference in the plot structure, is that unlike Wanted, Night Watch is an epic trilogy that really does need to be told in three stories as Wanted has no sequel to succeed.  Wanted was \by a comic, as Night Watch was made from a series of graphic novels.

         

Timur Bekmambetov has been known in his previous films, to bring out incredible cinematography/editing techniques in which he has received many awards toward.  “"Night Watch"… its visually saucy director, Timur Bekmambetov, who wrote the screenplay… akin to Russia's answer to the Ridley Scott of "Blade Runner." Many of its visual effects… are snazzy and original.” (Ny Times)  Timur applied his local approach to Night Watch, and placed it into Wanted, “"Wanted" devilishly ups the ante to a new level in adapting violent graphic comics to the big screen… high-tech new ways to kill people onto traditional dramatic themes involving professional assassins and family revenge, Kazakhstan-born Timur Bekmambetov assures himself the distinction of becoming the first modern director to emerge from Russia” (Variety).  What viewers of Wanted will not see however, is the cinematic elements Timur uses in Night Watch, Night Watch uses more fantasy elements, “magic” so to say, as compared to in Wanted, he uses real life objects and dials in on the relativity around them.  But really, he did the same thing, just elevate the presence of the objects   Medium-shot angles were a huge characteristic in Night Watch.  Timur wanted to express the thoughts and emotions of the characters visually because the characters never really expressed their feelings vocally.  Anton, and the people he must protect in Night Watch, were always so gloomy, hard to understand, so Timur emphasized the visuals to help the audience better adapt to the film.  In Wanted, this was the same application as well, Timur’s characters do not express their thought or their emotion so he took the visual approach and made a lot of the movie with Medium-shot angles, while editing in other surprising visuals.  A key to Timur’s visual effects were the tiny pieces of what was going on in the scene.  In Night Watch, when a large battle was going on, Timur put that as the back drop, and instead, focused his camera on a falling screw.  In Wanted, when Wesley hits one of his co-workers with a keyboard, the camera doesn’t view the hit as a whole, but watches as it zooms in on the little keys fly off the keyboard, and close up right where the camera can also capture the letters.

 

            Turning from the editing and cinematography, the camera notices the backdrop, the mise-en-scene of the movies.  When Timur wanted to do Night Watch, a novel about a war going on in Moscow, Russia, he did just that, “It's also the first apocalypse-minded franchise that's earned its downbeat mood. The action, for starters, is post-Cold War, post-Chernobyl, post-perestroika. Darkness is so much a part of the Russian psyche.” (Boston Globe).  The snow, darkness, gloomy side streets all brought out the characteristic of Moscow, Russia as it is today.  All of Timur’s editing and cinematography boasting really came down to the fact that his emphasis on Mise-en-scene was important as well.  In Wanted, Timur emphasized New York City as busy, wrecked, crazy, just like the dangers the characters and assassins faced throughout the film.  It was this keynote, that helped Timur hit a hard ball every time with his critics.  When Wesley was working at his desk job, the scene pictured him strangled, approached and hate by many, uneasy, and that’s exactly the kind of setting Wesley had himself into.

 

            Wanted and Night Watch became two incredibly successful movies to their respective countries.  Night Watch, which is the first movie to Day Watch, and upcoming Twilight Watch, set a global standard for Russian cinema.  Russian cinema has had a tough time in cinematic competition against other nations after the Cold War, but Timur broke the barrier to that frustration, and was able to make a success with his production company.  Knowing his success, Timur worked on Wanted just as he did in Night Watch.  And when he did this, producing the same elements of plot, mise-en-scene, and editing/cinematography as he did prior, he was able to turn out another successful film, in Hollywood territory.