Aksuat...

Well, if I'm being honest, I didn't really like the film Aksuat all that much. Its not that it was a bad movie or anything, I just got kind of confused and had trouble following along with what was going on in the film. After a while, I started to catch on to the story in this film and the significance of the characters, but it just wasn't one of my favorite movies of the semester.

One of the things that I did find interesting in the film was the use of composition and lighting techniques to convey a certain tone for the characters. I wrote about this in my response paper in greater detail, but one of the scenes that stuck out was in Aman's home, about fifteen minutes into the film. Aman was sitting in a chair when Kanat and a friend entered, trying to convince Aman to loan his brother money to flee from his homeland. In the scene, Kanat and his friend were towering over Aman, and were casting imposing shadows on the wall behind them, and at one point Kanat offered to leave his wife Zhanna and his unborn child behind as collateral.

I thought that the dim lighting and shadows in the scene were really good at foreshadowing the ruthlessness of Kanat's character and the fact that he was going to be responsible for trouble later on in the film. Also, the character placement (Aman seated, Kanat standing tall and looking down on his brother) was an interesting way of showing the contrast between Kanat's agressive, selfish personality and Aman's passive demeanor.

I just thought that I would mention this because it is one of the things about this film that really caught my attention. I could be completely wrong about it, but this was my interpretation of the meaning behind the lighting and positioning of characters within certain scenes, this scene in particular being one example.