Other lessons: Lesson 2, Lesson 3
All Gold Canyon
A lesson in introducing and ending a film.
All Gold Canyon by Mario Cordina (Anidroc)Slide 1/2: All the 6 vignettes that make up the Coen Brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs come up in the shape of a book with colour plates and text that are featured before and at the end of each story.
The nature of colour plates (just as Charles Dickens used his illustrations) is to give part of the story away before it even starts.
"And in all that mighty sweep of man he saw no sign of man, nor the handiwork of man."
Slide 2/3/4: The first shots of the canyon are indeed shots of wilderness untouched by man. The sun rising up behind the hill or mountain tops, a birds eye view of the plain and stream below. This we will learn is the owl's point of view from the trees. It also obviously implies that someone is watching. We watch fish in the stream and butterflies pollinating the flowers. A stag comes to drink. An owl flies and settles on a branch overhead.
Slide 4: Suddenly the stag looks up. The Owl's feathers hackle up. Nature is being disturbed. The butterflies fly away and the fish scatter.
Slide 5: A thick forest undergrowth. A man's singing voice. He comes through the ticket. Looks at the scene below and returns for his donkey called Lucky. Notice how the man and the donkey walk in at the right of the screen and move downstream.
Slide 6: At the end of the story the man and the donkey move upstream and uphill and disappear through the same thicket the way they entered.
Slide 7: The canyon returns to normal: No signs of mankind. The stag returns, the owl too. The butterflies fly back to the flowers and the fish swim back. We are back to the colour plate statement: "And in all that mighty sweep of man he saw no sign of man, nor the handiwork of man." And yet the stag sniffs at the mound of earth which is where a man has been buried and gold has been stolen from the earth.
Slide 8: The book ends the story.
So we have been following a gold prospector digging holes hoping to find gold: which he calls Mr.Pocket. The boredom and loneliness of this digger have built up most of the story. Action is sparse and non-existent till he finally does strike gold in the scene below.
Notice how the story is told through the character's face: He is celebrating his find and then his face clouds and the gold dims.
Notice how the murderer notices the owl flying away.
Notice where the gold digger has been shot.
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