Filmmaker Jacob T. Swinney’s First and Final Frames, Part II, above, is a rare sequel that upholds the quality of the original.
As he did in its predecessor, Swinney screens the opening and closing shots of dozens of recent and iconic films side by side, providing viewers with a crash course in the editorial eye.
What is being communicated when the closing shot replicates—or inverts—the opening shot?
Will the opening shot become freighted with portent on a second viewing, after one has seen how the film will end?
(Shakespeare would say yes.)
Swinney is deeply conversant in the nonverbal language of film, as evidenced by his numerous compilations and video essays for Slate on such topics as the Kubrick Stare and the facial expressions of emotionally revelatory moments.
Most of the films he chooses for simultaneous cradle-and-grave-shot replay qualify as art, or serious attempts thereat. You’d never know from the formalism of its opening and closing shots that Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train at the 1:00 mark is a comedy.
To be fair, Clint Mansell’s universally applied score could cloak even Animal House in a veil of wistful, cinematic yearning.
Given the comic sensibility Swinney’s brought to such supercuts as a Concise Video History of Teens Climbing Through Each Others’ Windows and a Tiny History of Shrinking Humans in Movies, I’m hoping there will be a third installment wherein he considers the first and final moments of comedies.
Any you might recommend for inclusion? (Hold the Pink Flamingos, por favor…)
Films featured in First and Final Frames, Part II in order of appearance:
Sunshine
Snowpiercer
Biutiful
21 Grams
The Prestige
All is Lost
Take Shelter
The Impossible
United 93
Vanilla Sky
Ex Machina
Inside Llewyn Davis
Dead Man
Mystery Train
Melvin and Howard
Fury
Full Metal Jacket
A Clockwork Orange
Eyes Wide Shut
Eraserhead
The Elephant Man
The Fall
The Thin Red Line
The New World
Road to Perdition
Snow Falling on Cedars
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Imitation Game
Flight
Hard Eight
Inherent Vice
World War Z
Wild
The Double
The Machinist
Born on the Fourth of July
Brideshead Revisited
Maps to the Stars
The Skeleton Twins
Mommy
A Scanner Darkly
10 Years
Milk
Lost Highway
Boxcar Bertha
Badlands
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Ratcatcher
Ida
Raise the Red Lantern
Gattaca
Kundun
Bringing Out the Dead
A Most Wanted Man
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Social Network
Jack Goes Boating
Submarine
Half Nelson
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Babel
Django Unchained
True Grit
Vertigo
Oldboy
Apocalypto
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Gladiator
Mad Max: Fury Road
World’s Greatest Dad
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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play, Fawnbook, is now playing at The Brick Theater in New York City. Follow her @AyunHalliday
Thank you for this…….I was sceptical of the approach and how wrong was I…….the piano music was beautiful also