Suzhou River Essay Sample

The film Suzhou River by Lou Ye tells a story of a young courier who knows the city of Hong-Kong very well and never asks questions. Having spent a lot of time on the banks of Suzhou himself, Lou Ye knows very well what kind of mood prevails there and is aiming to recreate this atmosphere in his film.
The very beginning of the film is marked by the complete darkness and female voice asking a male voice questions. The voices are calm and somewhat monotonous; however, they are clearly defined as not being lively or happy but rather tired. Even when the female voice concludes that a male is lying to her, it does not do so in a manner one would expect to hear someone saying that they are being lied to. The voices create an entrance for the cinematographic picture that follows which corresponds a lot to the manner of their speaking: bleak and colorless.
The first scene is a greenish water plane, filled with trash floating on its surface. A boat is visible at the top of the frame, suggesting that the source of the trash that is floating around is not so far. The frame starts with moderately saturated colors which then get more and more burnt, giving place to gray color which prevails for the rest of the scene.
As the frame showing the green water fades in at the very beginning of the scene, the shot looks zoomed in not particularly focused on any object in the frame. The brief exposure of the green water then cuts into another water shot, this time grey, fast moving and unfocused which makes it look cleaner and, probably, colder. This very shot seamlessly proceeds to portray the workers demolishing bare walls and floor of the building just across the canal: the shot finally gets a clear focus and becomes relatively stable for the first time in the introductory sequence. It becomes evident that the camera is positioned in a boat which is moving through the canal. In order to emphasize this frame does not get stabilized; instead it is floating together with the boat the crew is on. This and the sudden zoom-ins and outs are the techniques used throughout the whole intro sequence.
Mise-en-scène in the introduction is the natural, or, better to say, artificial and industrial environment around. As the boat moves through the canal, the viewer is presented with the inhabitants of the area who are working, moving around in their boats, walking the bridges across the canal. The industrial scenery and the bleak, lifeless colors are helping to create an atmosphere of a big industrial city, and Shanghai, in fact, is one.
Some sequences in the introduction are abruptly cut and changed for another shot; some get continued after the cuts and the cuts create a sense of a rushing city and the troubled people in it. All of the above contributes to the gloomy and somehow desperate and hopeless atmosphere of the scene.