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Sometimes you come across a film scene that puts you in a trance. I’m not talking about montages or dance numbers or action sequences. These are scenes that just hypnotize you into watching, but nothing really happens in the scene.
Let’s take a look at three scenes that have no reason to be as long as they are, but are hypnotic nevertheless.
You watch a scene, completely mesmerized, unaware that nothing is actually happening. You’re drawn to it anyway, like a moth to a flame.
This only happens if you’re watching the film in a cinema (or at least a quiet home theater setup). It’s hard to keep focus if you’re talking to friends or checking your Instagram or whatever.
Enjoy my list!
3 The “Dance in a café scene” in Bande à part
Directed by Jean Luc Godard
This is a film about three individuals who are close to each other for all the wrong reasons. On their route to a catastrophic ending, they find themselves in a café, with time to kill.
And then they start to dance. For no particular reason, with steps that don’t really belong in any dance textbook.
One of the ways to make a scene hypnotic is to repeat things in a rhythmic way. But doing just that makes it boring, and is a dead giveaway. Once you’re aware of it the scene loses its hypnotic effect.
The trick is to make it rhythmic but not repetitious.
How did Jean Luc Godard achieve this? Let’s break down all the important elements here. The first is the dance, which is the movement of the actors. The second is the music, and the third is the camera.
The steps in the dance are actually repetitious, but every other round the actors mixes things up. This keeps your interest going, because you are expecting something surprising. It appears that a few times they get the steps wrong, or they are distracted by something or somebody, and it’s this flawed choreography that makes it appear very realistic.
The next is the music. In the first round it’s one set of instruments. The second round another instrument takes over, giving the music urgency. The third time around the music stops. For a voice over which I feel is the weakest link in this scene. The fourth time the music starts again, but it’s different. Then it stops again for yet another voice over. Then the music starts again and stops again abruptly, like a game of musical chairs.
The last couple of times the music plays in full strength, until Franz stops. A small while later Arthur stops, so you can see they don’t all stop at the same time. Finally Odile stops after one more round and that’s that.
The last part of this puzzle is the camera. The camera stays in one place, at one height. Just like an observer. It follows them around, but with a slight delay. You can tell because Franz, the fastest one being closest to the camera, is always ahead and gets chopped off quite a bit. Since the choreography is rhythmic, the camera movement is also rhythmic and hence hypnotic. It doesn’t fight the other elements.
To me the only thing that fights the natural progression of the scene is the voice over, but even the voice over comes in and out three or four times, in a rhythm.
The beauty of this scene within a scene is you just keep on watching. Will any of them do anything different? What’s going to happen? You just wait and wait, but all that happens is the scene ends and the spell is broken.
2 “Into the Zone” scene in Stalker
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Early in Stalker our three protagonists escape into the Zone. Once they leave the danger behind a long scene ensues, that lulls us into a hypnotic-like state.
I’ve analyzed this particular scene in great detail in The Cinematic Glide, which is available to Wolfcrow Lifetime Members:
What happens is the combining of the three important elements – actors, sound and camera. The three don’t fight each other, and I’ll talk about that later.
The actors look left and right, which has significance. The sound is rhythmic, that anyone who has travelled in a diesel train can understand. Its rhythm is almost soothing, and this is exactly what happens in this scene.
The camera does what I call the “cinematic glide”, moving back and forth. The director also cuts between his characters rhythmically, and this sets it apart from the dance scene.
The trip to the Zone is tougher to execute due to its complexity, and the end result is you feel you’ve been on a spiritual journey before the Zone presents itself. It’s like you never realized when reality ended and the Zone arrived. The journey is a blur. It’s a cinematic miracle.
Only perfection can beat a miracle. And that’s what number one is.
1 “Woodcutter walks into the forest” in Rashomon
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
This scene is very early in the movie, where the woodcutter, an important witness, enters the forest to go about his daily routine.
You are completely fooled by this scene. You just follow along, and you don’t even realize you’re tricked into entering a trance-like state that ends so gracefully you never feel you’ve been on a trip at all.
The woodcutter walks without changing anything except direction. Then there’s the camera.
The beauty of this scene is there are so many camera movements, really complicated and long dolly shots, low angle shots, high angle shots. His walk is shot like a major event, an operatic journey deep into the forest.
The forest in Rashomon is a character as well. The camera goes into long shots, mid shots and close ups from different angles, and all you see around him is the forest. It’s as if he’s in a Bermuda triangle-like zone in the forest, with no escape. It’s that kind of place and time, which led to the events that day, where memory can no longer be trusted.
The last part of the scene is the music, which surprisingly is somewhat repetitive, Not entirely, but enough. The actor and the music holds straight, but the camera gives us the variation here.
How to make a hypnotic scene?
In Bande à part the music changes, while the actors and camera move rhythmically. In Stalker it’s the actors who do the moving, while the sounds and camera glide along. In other words, they don’t fight or have personalities. In Rashomon, the actor and music are rhythmic, while the camera gives the variety. Three ways to achieve a hypnotic effect.
Camera, actor blocking and music/sound. Only one of them can dominate to make a hypnotic scene.
The other two departments are repetitious and do not distract.
If all three are the same, it’s boring. If two of them change too much, they’re fighting each other and that breaks the spell. How cool is that? There’s a formula to this!
Rashomon is the best because you never realize you’re in a trance, while in the other two you’re sort of conscious of it, at least after the fact. Also, Rashomon is special because there’s another scene later where the wife uses the dagger. She moves forward and backward not sure where her fate lies. An incredibly bold piece of filmmaking, and these two hypnotic scenes are not even 20% of the surprises that are Rashomon.
If you’re interested, my analysis of Rashomon is also available to Wolfcrow Lifetime Members:
I found you found this interesting. Let me know of other hypnotic scenes in the comments below.
