Juxtaposition

A movie is comprised of scenes which in turn, are comprised of a series of shots. These shots are cut together to make some form of sense or to elicit a certain feeling from the viewers, but what's important are the cuts. Everyone knows what editing is; the art of compiling footage to create a story, but we take it for granted how important this is to our visual mediums. While long takes are beautiful to witness (the mid-climax fight in Creed and the hallway fight scene in Netflix's Daredevil), a modern audience wouldn't sit through a full length film all shot through 1 take without any breaks, any cuts.

In 1898, Robert W. Paul released Come Along, Do! in which a couple go to look at an art gallery. Only 38 seconds of it exists today, but this short clip contains 2 different shots, the couple outside the gallery and then subsequently inside the gallery. This is considered the first example of continuous editing, a series of shots leading into each other creating a narrative, done by literally cutting the film and gluing it together. Those 38 seconds impacted the movie industry in a way that not many things have, every movie today using such a simple technique without a second thought.

In 1919 the VGIK: All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (A.K.A. the Moscow Film School) was founded by Vladamir Gardin in the hopes of teaching rising minds movie-making to support Russia's political agenda. Outside of the schools curriculum a group of students led by lecturer Lev Kuleshov, called the Kuleshov Workshop, focused on the theory of movie and wanted to delve further into the meaning of film. After D. W. Griffith's Intolerance was shown all over the country, the Workshop examined and dissected Griffith's editing style, even taking it apart and re-structuring it, placing the scenes in different orders to see how it affected the movie.

This led to the birth of the Kuleshov Effect. The Kuleshov Effect was an experiment where a man was filmed looking into the camera and cutting it with different shots such as a funeral, a bowl of soup, and a woman. Depending on what the shot of the man was placed with, audiences inferred different emotions from him such as hunger, sadness, or lust; even though it was the exact same footage. This is the art of juxtaposition, placing different pieces of footage together, whether related or not, to elicit a certain feeling and letting the audience fill in the gaps. Kuleshov gave depth and insight to one of the most important techniques in cinema, yet the theory of film is useless without the practical use of film itself.

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Adam McKay's Vice has been nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture as it tells the story of Vice President Dick Cheney and how he turned the role of V.P. from a passive and symbolic role to an active one. In a similar fashion to McKay's The Big Short, editing had a massive role in the construction and telling of the narrative but a major difference between the two movies is the narrative itself. The Big Short follows multiple characters, jumping back and forth throughout the 2008 real-estate bubble, whereas Vice follows Cheney, jumping back and forth through his life while following mainly a linear narrative.

Many scenes of Vice use juxtaposition in a very obvious and blatant way, combining completely unrelated shots to ensure that the audience grasps the visual ideas and intentions of Cheney. One of these scenes works perfectly as Bush Jr. is asking Cheney to be his running mate, while Cheney is manipulating Bush Jr. into accepting his terms. During the scene, we see cuts of Cheney fly fishing, reeling in his catch the moment Bush Jr. agrees, visually showing us the expression "Hook, line, and sinker".

We see the technique used again throughout the movie yet none work as effectively as the afore mentioned scene. During one scene we see a tiger hunting and catching a gazelle which immediately takes you out of the scene unlike Lars von Trier's The House That Jack Built, which uses the same exact juxtaposition perfectly. Vice's editing seemed flamboyant, over the top, and artsy for the sake of being artsy. Most of the techniques used in it weren't needed making them feel out of place and jammed in just to have something instead of letting the story run its course. While it is definitely worth a watch, it is certainly not Best Picture quality, especially after the expectations McKay's The Big Short left behind.