Bonnie and Clyde (analytical)

Please don't read this before watching the movie

If you want to see the death scene please go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhIZ9URHlrQ (I take none of this as mine)

Alright. Let's go dive into the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde. So at first we are seeing Clyde get out of the car via Bonnie's view. We then cut to the conversation. This shows that she is cut off from the conversation for if they continued to shoot it from behind her back we would not be emotionally invested when Clyde died but at the same time we would have gotten the shock factor. We also clearly see that she is having a hard time hearing their conversation because we cut for a split second towards Clyde and CJ's dad (Ivan) and then back to Bonnie who is squinting her eyes.

We then see the camera cut from Ivan looking towards the road to a car back to Ivan and then to Clyde and then birds fluttering out of the bushes back to Clyde and back to Ivan. It certainly picks up the pacing of the movie. We are left in confusion.

Bonnie picks her head out of the car and we see her smile. We see her face for a couple seconds more than Ivan or Clyde. Then the birds continue to fly. Then we see Ivan look towards a bush. They cut to the bush then to the car. Then Ivan drops. They cut to Clyde looking at Ivan and then to Bonnie looking at him. I was looking at him. It was almost as if they were predicting the audience would look at Ivan in that same way. The tension builds with all these weird cuts.

Then their facial features drop with a close-up. Clyde frowns. Bonnie frowns. In my heart I said "oh no." Cut to the bush cut to Bonnie cut to Clyde cut back to Bonnie back to Clyde back to Bonnie BAM!! The cut to the bushes shooting at Bonnie and Clyde builds up to this point. The point where it's sudden. It's not supposed to be long. This is quick (and not so clean).

The camera cuts to gunners popping out of the bush then to Bonnie then to Clyde getting shot. Then the camera goes into slow motion. The slow motion here mirrors the slowness of what the audience is feeling. Now is not the time to be making the audience tremor in their seat but rather to just watch--and absorb the fact that Bonnie and Clyde are getting mowed down by bullets.

Then the gunners stop. Then we see Bonnie lying still and the camera cuts to Clyde lying still(which is mirrored by the audience's reaction). Then there is a shot of both Bonnie and Clyde. This one shot of the both of them is on the screen for more than any other shot in this whole scene.

Then we see that the car was actually two random men in a car. It's almost like an afterthought. We then see the camera cut to the gunners to the two men in the car and then to Ivan. They are all looking at them just as we looked at them. The cutting is more sympathetic. It doesn't raise questions but rather lets the audience see what the characters see.

The reason I analyzed this scene was because of the disjointed cutting. All of it was choppy and the choppiness of it all is rare now and it also grabbed the audience and let the audience see what was in the eyes of the character. The editing was important in this scene and allowed the audience to see meaning in the pacing of the movie.