2min chapter

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Ingourious Basterds - I WANT MY SCALPS!

They're Just Movies

CHAPTER

Film Review: Landa by Christoph Waltz

"There's always something to be darting at and it feels like my brain is constantly engaged," she said. "The choice of shots, like the first time in the, in that scene of the farmhouse that you get a straight on like medium close up of the face ... seeing a face is so much more stimulating."

00:00
Speaker 3
Like there's always a new information in the frame, but it's never overwhelming. There's always something to be darting at and it feels like my brain is constantly engaged. And I think that helps add to the suspense. Cause my
Speaker 1
brain is fully participating. And the choice of shots,
Speaker 2
like the first time in the, in that scene of the farmhouse that you get a straight on like medium close up of the face and there's, seeing a face is so much more stimulating, right? There's so much information in the face. The first time you get those straight ons of Landa and of the farmer is when they start talking about, you know, are you hiding Jews? Right. It's like it just ups, not only have the stakes been up narratively, but just visually now I'm like,
Speaker 3
it just heightens the whole situation. It's really like the depth of field is really only on their face. So there's like almost no other information. So all of a sudden your brain that's been working really hard to capture everything is like fully active and it's fully focused on one thing, which is
Speaker 2
their face. And the contrast in demeanor because Landa has been so, so cheerful and amicable and polite and then now his face is very grave and he's just looking straight out of him in the eye. I think that's probably the biggest thing to me that makes that scene special is not only kind of the,
Speaker 1
the framing and the blocking and the kind of environmental aspect of it, but also the writing and how things like gradually escalate. This was our introduction to Christoph Waltz's Landa and he's like just so perfect. He's such a perfect, as you say, like combination of politeness and then tension and terror when like it gets there. And so yeah, the scene goes from him being like, super polite even says like multiple times this is your house, you know, like he's trying to kind of, like he's, he's making, it's almost like a joke. Like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm saying you have power even though it's clear that I have all the power in this situation and that becomes more and more clear as the situation goes on and he disarms him with his politeness until he gets to this point where it's like you're hiding Jews.
Speaker 2
And we know that he's cunning because he says, you know, I can guess that since I haven't heard a reaction they don't speak English. And so on the first level you're like, oh, he's smart enough to deduce that. But on the second level it's like, he probably chose to speak
Speaker 3
English for that reason.

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