71 (Dir. Yaan Demange) 2014

Sebastian Black                                    Film Studies A Level                  Monday 30th November 2015

71 (Dir. Yaan Demange) 2014

71 is a historical action film with the themes of poverty, war & solitude. The film was directed by Yaan Demange,  produced by Angus Lamont & Robin Gutch & written by Gregory Burke. The production companies that were involved in this film were Crab Apple Films, Warp Films, Film4, BFI Film Fund, Screen Yorkshire & Creative Scotland. The film is based in 1971. The film stars Jack O'Connell, Sean Harris, Wilmot Richard Dormer, Paul Anderson & Charlie Murphy. The budget of this film was £8.1 million & it received 2.9 million at the box office. 

The location used in this film was North England however it was manipulated to look like Belfast.

The costume in this film is important because it represents who is who & it also allows the characters to tell the difference between who is who. Hook changes his clothes in order to blend in with the civilians however he did not change his boots & he is continuously recognised as a member of the army by his military boots. Another piece of item that tells the characters in the film that Hook is in the army are his name tags. He had them around his neck however it was taken away from him. It was used to prove that he was in the army & what sector he came from. This connotes that Hook is almost like a dog or any pet. Pets have name tags & the address they live at & should one find the pet, they will return it however, not everybody would return the pet & this is the situation Hook is in. The people around him aren't returning him.

Majority of the shots in this film have been handheld, this symbolises the movement of the characters & it also makes the audience feel like they are there, viewing or experiencing what is happening.

The editing varied depending on the scene. Scenes where Gary Hook is endlessly roaming around have been intentionally put together as a slow pace to add to the suspense. Fight scenes have been made faster to add to the excitement & to keep the audience attracted.

This film relies on non diegetic sound. There are various non diegetic sounds such as gunshots & ringing that resembles tinnitus. The tinnitus sound was used to to emphasise the bombing & it was used to represent what a person might hear when a bomb explodes within close proximity.

The performance is the micro feature that is important in this film because the performance given by each individual character has to convince the audience that there is something severely wrong & that they are suffering. The lack of dialogue is just as important as the dialog. The lack of dialog symbolises to the audience the loneliness & the solitude the protagonist (Gary Hook) feels. He is lonely because he doesn't know where he is & he doesn't know who to trust because from his perspective, everybody wants to kill him. Through the performance we gain the understanding that Gary Hook is a kind character who doesn't actually want to kill people. In order to save himself, Gary stabs someone however after stabbing the person, he hold him until he dies. This tells the audience that he's (Gary) is not a ruthless man, he does in fact care, regardless of religion or what the other people are trying to do to him.

This case study links in with the theme of living with crime. It is from an outsiders perspective, Hook is the outsider of Belfast & he is watching the havoc the citizens of Belfast are causing. This relates to the other case studies The Selfish Giant (dir. Clio Barnard) 2013, Fish Tank (Dir. Andrea Arnold) 2009 & My Brother the Devil (Dir. Sally El Hosaini) 2012. All three of the previous films do have fights in them, they're not on the same scale as a civil war however for the protagonists in the previous film, for them it is a civil war. Their disputes take over their lives, just like the disputes in 71.