a moving painting not a movie : GREAT

I agree that there are much better films that also have a certain beauty about them, but mother and son had a unique beauty about it that I haven’t really seen before.

I came on the message board to start a thread about similarities between this films visuals and painting, but that’s obviously been done already. Still though, I can’t help but reiterate just how marvelous the whole concept was.

I’ve seen most of tarkovskys films, for example. Many people have compared his work to that of a painting, or to paint drying, rather, but I never really bought into that. Tarkovsky seems to implement a lot of pans, or tracking in many of his long takes. So, rather than having a static image similar to that of a painting, the image is consistently moving. That’s why I think the original poster was incorrect in his description of mother and son as a “moving painting”. I don’t think that’s quite accurate. From my experience, I found that most of the shots that most closely represented a painting were those that were static, with trees, clouds, roads, hills, and other landscapes strategically placed in the frame. What I’ve noticed in these shots, however, is that it is not the frame, or the painting that is moving, but only the characters. It almost gave the illusion of the characters being inserted into a painting, rather than actually being a part of the painting. At least that’s how I perceived it.

I’d really be interested to see how they ended up giving the film the look that it had – misty, almost oily (similar to that of a painting!), and almost lacking any sort of depth of background. In many shots things seemed skewed. Not sure if anything was done in post production, or if certain lenses were just utilized in new innovative ways.


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