Split/Screen

I love this device. Mostly because I love the 60s and that's when it became very vogue to split screen multiple events or even just moments, through multiple images on the screen at the same time. Thomas Crown Affair (1968) was my was my favorite example until I saw The Boston Strangler (also 1968), but it's been featured in films such as the cutesy Pillow Talk (1959) to the trademark look of the intense, thriller tv series 24 ('01-10). Aside from the regular split telephone conversation the split is simply stylish, used to pump out more information at a faster rate, and sometimes it's chosen to reveal important juxtapositions, which is when I like it best.


Two films which utilize the juxtapose split nicely are the relationship dramas Conversations w/Other Women (2005) and (500) Days of Summer (2009). If you haven't seen them, watch them!

Stalker (1979) Andrei Tarkovsky

I finally checked this out, after years of wondering what it was. I chose not to learn anything about it and just watch. It's an amazingly slow, amazingly shot, lofty film about existentialism in the Soviet Union.

Synopsis: Three men, the Stalker, the Writer and the Professor go into "the zone", where an inhuman object crashed and started messing with the fabric of reality. Inside the zone is a room which will unleash your ultimate desires, and the threat of tricky reality traps along the way, along the lines of the "paradox" in Inception. Although it's closest relative I can think of would be Aronofsky's The Fountain, there is very little visually which suggests Stalker as a fantasy film.

IMDB lists that there were three cinematographers: Aleksandr Knyazhinsky, Geogi Rerberg and Leonid Kalashnikov, but it sounds like there was drama on the set and Rerberg's work wasn't in the final project. Kodak stock.

Desaturated color for most of the film and high contrast/sepia tone while the men are in the city, with a very expressionistic feel. There's a nice sudden "Ahhh!" moment when suddenly the landscape is bright, natural green. Nothing but textures, as each wide shot packs the screen with objects sprawled around the characters, jutting out at every angle. 

Although it's fairly avante garde in the storytelling, the film works for me and has influenced plenty of filmmakers in their surreal-philosophical art. Did I mention it was 3 hours long? Even if you want to put it on in the background at a party, it's an interesting visual piece at least.