In the Quest for Fire the director, J.J Annaud has made the
movie an extraordinaire in its time. With the many great film techniques used
and with no dialogue apart from the occasional grunt made it a quite different
movie from any other film. In this passage I am going to outline some of the
best film techniques in the movie and tell u why they were so effective.
When the film begins as the camera pans across a huge,
barren hillside with no real light, very little colour and as if it, the
hillside, was trying to look as dull as it could, until the panning finally
comes across one tiny light, a fire. At the time of the panning the background
music is really daunting and you can here wolves growling and the wind howling
and all combined together it makes the land seem very eerie. But when the
panning comes across to the fire the music lightens slightly as if this fire is
important. I find that this is an excellent start to a film because it really
gives you a good idea of the scenery and showing how big the land is and how
tiny that fire is. It makes it look as if that fire is the only true bright
light in the world. As we find out in the movie that to the caveman it’s not
just a bright light, its their life.
After Naoh has stolen the fire from the cannibals and is
quite badly injured, they are surrounded by the cannibals with no likely chance
of escape, when from behind them a loud grunt pierces the air. Naoh and his men
slowly turn to see that they are looking straight into the eyes of a small herd
of the planets biggest land mammal ever, the mammoth. They are completely
frozen in fear but Naoh realizes that to get past the cannibals they will have
to use the mammoths to their advantage so he slowly approaches the mammoths
with a handful of grass. His whole body is trembling with fear. When he finally
gets to the lead animal he puts the grass out for it to it. The mammoth sniffs
it cautiously and eventually accepts the offering to Naoh’s’ delight. Throughout
the exchange between the two the director has made it look as if the camera is
looking directly up at the mammoth making it look very big. And it the camera
is almost directly above Naoh making him look very small. The way the high
angle shots and low angle really shows the difference in Naoh and the mammoth really
showing who the dominant beast was. I believe that in this scene the director
is showing the start of animal domestication and this might have been the time
that the cavemen realized that animals aren’t just hunks of meat, they are much,
much more.
After Naoh is captured by the homo-sapiens he is shown how
to make fire. One of the humans take him to a cave dug into a rocky outcrop
sits Naoh down next to a pile of twigs and logs. The homo-sapien then sits down
and begins to rub a stick end on into a log. Naoh has a puzzled expression sown
across his face but the human continues to rub. In the background a soft piece
of music is being played. Soon a faint wisp of smoke begins to protrude from
where the stick is rubbing and Naoh begins to show a slight bit of
understanding. The music in the background begins to get louder. When the small ember turns into a flame Naoh
is flabbergasted and his face is like a bowl of emotion. The music has now
turned into a huge crescendo. The way the music does this makes me believe that
this is an important part of the movie so the music is really showing this.
This information of how to start a fire has really brought the cavemen’s
predicament down a bit.
I feel that this film is very powerful. With the lack of dialogue
it was surprisingly easy to follow. This movie proves that you don’t always
need words to make a message because this movie certainly had some very
powerful messages in it.
