1. How do iconic film directors critique the Zeitgeist from which they come?
2. How do directors create a desired effect (especially tone or theme) through their cinematic choices?
Film directors critique the Zeitgeist from which they come by placing the viewers into the shoes of a character who is experiencing the negatives of a time. For example, in the movie Forrest Gump, Zemeckis uses Forrest to help the viewers understand the nature of the times. Forrest travels through all walks of life, and his naive, ambivalent attitude allows the viewer to understand the craziness that was the 1950s to the 1980s. Forrest is a tool for Zemeckis to critique the Zeitgeist that he comes from.
Additionally, in the movie Back to the Future, Zemeckis again puts the viewer into the shoes of a character. Marty McFly is used to show how the love of the earlier days (the 1950s) is misguided. Zemeckis can show how society’s view of its own Zeitgeist and Zeitgeists of the past is poor. When Marty goes back in time, he sees bullying, conformity, and things that aren’t perfect. Even the scenery helps critique this Zeitgeist. In the 1950s, the town is perfect, very uniform, but the time the McFly comes from is very different. It is very diverse, sometimes chaotic.
Directors use all the techniques accessible to them to create their desired effect. Specifically, Robert Zemeckis is a lover of visual effects. Throughout all his films, he has pushed the boundaries of what VFX can do, while still telling a darn good story. In his movies, the VFX isn’t the headliner. Transformers is an example of a movie that has overused VFX, but for Zemeckis, that’s just wrong. Zemeckis produces movies that tell a story through the usage of VFX. The VFX adds to the tone of a movie. Instead of having to spend a large quantity of money on practical effects, Zemeckis is able to use VFX in order to get his point across. This allows him to make other cinematic choices because he has more money for them.
Additionally, his VFX allows him to make more grandiose cinematic choices. In many of his movies, he is able to display the grandness of things. In Contact, showing the huge machine that is created, or the tunnels that the main character travels through, Zemeckis truly conveys what the characters are going through. Zemeckis also can create the desired effect (which is almost always an immersive story) by enabling the fantasies of the world to be understood through VFX. A lot of his stories aren’t reasonably told through practical effects. A plane that is flying upside down, the entirety of The Polar Express, or many of the scenes in Forrest Gump where he meets famous individuals would not be possible without VFX. So, Zemeckis’ cinematic choice to use VFX allows him to tell stories that otherwise would be difficult to tell.