Z dala od innych… Pejzaż w drodze
Far from the Others… A Landscape on the Road

Author(s): Barbara Kita
Subject(s): Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: desert landscape in cinema; desolation as film motif; film theory on landscape
Summary/Abstract: The author proposes a way of interpreting desert landscapes and other desolate places of North America. For years now they have constituted areas considered attractive as film settings (especially for westerns), by meeting the ideas of wild nature unspoilt by human activity. The fundamental role in shaping this wild desert landscape is played by the following cinematographic techniques: tracking/travelling shots, panoramas, long shots, high‐angle shots, as well as silence. Three (feature) films are analysed in the article, whose protagonists journey for hundreds of miles, often on their own, and in silence, struggling with the inconveniences of the journey, thinking their lives through, which is sometimes enabled by the desert surroundings. Due to this specific type of narration and peculiarity in terms of landscape, both the characters and viewers have a chance to experience nothing short of immersion into the images presented. They become autonomous particles making up the landscape, releasing memory and oblivion, and assisting the characters on their path to self‐identification.

• Details
• Contents