Mother (2009) - The Telephoto Profile Shot

Hi, my name is Tony

and this is "Every Frame a Painting",

where I analyze film form.

There's actually a lot of
great videos on the internet

analyzing movie content or themes,

but I think we're missing stuff
about the actual form -

you know, the pictures and the sound.

Anyways, the movie
I want to talk about today

is a fantastic example
of craft and art.

This is Bong Joon-ho's film
"Mother", from 2009.

If you haven't seen it,

it's kind of a wrong man murder mystery,

and if you don't know Bong Joon-ho,

he's awesome.

Dude is seriously the best.

Be forewarned, there are
major spoilers for the whole film.

If you don't want to be spoiled,
stop watching this and go watch the movie.

Ready? Okay.

So there's two techniques, combined,
that I want to bring up today.

The first is shooting important
story moments in profile.

The second is doing that
with a telephoto lens.

So normally, you shoot an actor,
you want to see their face.

If you bring the camera around to the front,

it's generally a better way for us to
empathize or to see their emotions.

If you play something off
the profile of someone's face,

it's a little bit stranger.

It has a starkness to it.

Like this.

Versus this.

God. Stop. Oh god!

Now here's the weird part.

You throw on a telephoto lens,

and that compresses space.

We do it all the time
in movies for close-ups.

It's more flattering

and it blows out the background,
it gives this nice little bokeh.

But when you do it in profile,

it's not really a beauty shot.

It hides something.

Add a little camera operator shake,

and it's like we can barely keep up.

A lot of the major events
in this film are shot

telephoto, in profile.

Actually if you watch the movie again,

you'll see that Bong very subtly

gives away the important plot points

versus the red herrings.

So when Mother meets the junkman,

who will turn out to be very important,

watch the lens.

Before that, when Mother
goes to apologize

to the dead girl's family,

watch how this
important moment plays.

There's actually a nice
hidden cut in there.

Check that out.

If you're wondering whether
this is a particular quirk of Bong's,

the answer is: kinda.

This is the big Act I turning point

in his monster movie "The Host".

Again: telephoto, profile.

But here, you can
kinda understand why.

This is a point of view shot
of another character,

and there's actually a nice visual rhyme.

Head on.

Head on.

Profile.

And I don't wanna suggest that
it's unusual to shoot things like this.

For example…

Man, that's awesome.

But it's still really weird
to use it in "Mother".

I mean, who's watching?

Why's the director
playing so many big moments

of his lead actress at right angles
to the camera, in close-up?

Then you get to the climax.

Big spoilers ahead.

We find out that the son,

Do-joon, who we've spent the whole movie
believing is probably innocent?

Well, he actually
did commit the murder.

The only witness is the junkman.

His mother kills the guy.

And then she tries
to clean up the blood.

Oh hey, look at this shot.

So that's why he shot those
big moments telephoto, in profile.

It puts us slightly further away
from the characters.

It reminds us that we don't know
everything in the story;

that a lot is hidden from us,

or it's far away and it's hazy to see.

It turns us into witnesses
who can't do anything about it.

But once we do see it,

we know what we saw.

In fact, that's kinda
the great thing about this film.

You start the movie watching
a character you've never seen before

dancing in a field.

You can see her face,

but you don't understand
why she feels this way.

You just trust that
the movie will explain it.

Then at the end,
you see her dancing again.

Telephoto, in profile.

And you don't really understand her
any better than you did at the beginning.

For two hours,
the biggest bedrock of this movie

is that we know, for a fact,
that she loves her son.

And at the end, we see all this
has brought on her.

If you can't tell, I'm a big fan
of this movie and of Bong Joon-ho.

I also really wish more
mainstream directors

would be ballsy enough
to shoot their big plot moments

like this.

Instead of like this.

Agh. God!
I gotta get a drink.