Over (2015)

 

Over is a film about the police and was released in 2015. Jorn Threlfall paints an interesting picture of

London suburbia. 

The film has 9 separate long and wide shots that are played in reverse sequence. With a couple brief

intermediary shots to show some of the possessions of the dead person.

 

Like Bear (2011) this film tells a story that keeps you guessing as to what it's about over the course of

the film until the resolution where the mystery is revealed. Whilst in Bear the purpose of this suspense

is to create thrills and comedy and ultimately a sense of resolution, in Over the resolution invites more

contemplation. Questions we might ask are, "why did the filmmakers decide to play those shots in

reverse order?" or "why was this done in this way?"

Certainly, as a film student, I’m delighted by films that invite you to explore them in order to find the

meaning, that lend more to analysis.

 

The film employs a technique called the democracy of the wide shot, because at any given time there

are multiple things happening in different segments of the frame it forces the spectator to choose what

to focus on. This once again entices the spectator to contemplate things more, where in Bear

everything was concisely presented and the filmmakers dictate what to focus on, here you have to

decide what part of the frame is most important. So the spectator is given more agency.

The film also has long uneventful takes which also give the spectator time to contemplate and to

wonder about the mystery of the film.

Many of the characters or elements of interest are obscured due to being very small in frame; this

makes the spectator have to exert extra effort to see details and thus accentuates the feeling of

investigation. The personal items of the victim are shown big in the frame but for a short time which

creates the same sort of feeling of obscurity but in a different way.

My biggest criticism of the film is the way the sound designer seems to forget about object

permanence, for example, when the cat at the beginning of the film makes a tingling noise that

abruptly stops as soon as it is obscured by a car, or most egregiously when a police car instantly

deafens as soon as it drives out of shot, it definitely should have still been audible for another second

>:(