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Secrets and Lies/We Need to Talk About Kevin - Coggle Diagram
Secrets and Lies/We Need to Talk About Kevin
Narrative
Formalism
Causality = cause and effect.
Secrets and Lies: linear narrative, easy to identify with characters
Character driven = characters have clear goals and motives - dialogue
Helps us to identify with characters
Kevin: no clear causality, harder to identify with characters
Not character driven - visual focus on film poetics
Told from Eva's perspective - Kevin's character isn't fully developed
Non-linear narrative/flashbacks - fragmented memories,
Experimental film conventions
linear
Structuralism
Binary opposites - provide conflict, rooted in ideology
Kevin: Motherhood vs. Fatherhood
Eva's pregnancy subverts traditional representations of women
Low angles - show invasion by a foreign 'thing' - her uncomfortable expression
Franklin's bond to Kevin made his death more shocking to the audience
Hospital Scene
Harsh, uncomfortable, bright, clinical lighting
Long shot of Eva empty and emotionless - non-traditional representation of new mothers - loss of identity
Kevin shown off-centre with Kevin - taking on the traditional nurturing caregiver role
Secrets and Lies: Class
Cynthia's house - dark lighting, closed frames, dark colour palette - cramped, cluttered
Monica's open, light colours, spacious house, open frames and compositions
Café Scene
Temporal Editing
Kevin: No denouement/open resolution: we don't find out why he did it
Experimental genre convention
Non-linear/chronological narrative: flashbacks show Eva's trauma
Trauma of remembering the past
Bathed in red light - inescapable hell
Blood of victims - guilt
No clear causality - harder to identify with characters
Secrets and Lies: shown in linear/chronological
Closed resolution/denouement
Clear causality to identify with characters
Time skips
Lots of info we're not told
Eva's fragmented memories
Audience has to work harder
Alignment
The audience aligns with Eva for most of the film
Told through Eva's perspective
Only see her part of the story
Kevin's character isn't developed enough
End scene - first time Kevin shows emotion
Sympathy - potential shift in alignment?
Todorov - Narratology - 3-act structure
Equilibrium, Disequilibrium, Reparation
Kevin
S+L
Performance & Mise-en-scene
Café Scene
7 minutes/actors never met in real life - authenticity
Cynthia - anxious and insecure - shaking cup, talking lowly of herself, emotional and impulsive
Vs. Hortense held together, posture, dialogue
Binary oppositions - both share the same loneliness
Class separation
Absence of score - audience not manipulated to feel a certain way - raw and real emotions
Social realism genre
Hortense - well spoken, articulate, leads the conversation, formal
Cynthia - colloquial, casual
Massacre Scene
Long shot of Kevin, arms out - on stage, a performer, end of a show
No dialogue - an accepted fate
Foley sound of screams disguised as cheers - adoration, performer, his want to be recognised
Police siren lights as stage lights - performer, success, achievement, victory
Precision and neatness - ties to his personality
Epic soundtrack - strings, religious connotations, adoration
Death of Franklin and Celie as the 'Final Act'
Slow motion shots - build up - creates dramatic tension
Positioned like a stage - neat, perfected
White curtains - religious connotations