Editing Analysis

For this section on “Editing Analysis,” I decided to examine a scene from the film, The Darjeeling Limited, by Wes Anderson. In this scene, you’ll see a businessman (played by Bill Murray) running, as he attempts to catch his train. Then suddenly out of the blue, Peter (played by Adrien Brody) makes his first appearance into the film by running alongside of Murray, attempting to catch the same train. The scene ends up with Brody’s character successfully making it aboard, as Murray’s character, unfortunately, is seen drifting farther and farther away from the camera.

I chose to specifically focus on Adrien Brody’s running sequence. What I liked most from this scene was the slow-motion cut. While the cuts in this particular scene are obvious and not seamless, it still nonetheless clearly tells what’s currently going on well. This scene also maintained a direct screen direction of Brody’s character as he was running. Though while the entire scene was slowed down, the style made everything look so graceful, as it was shown on one continuous take until his character boarded the train. In addition, the colors in this scene were all warm toned, signifying, what I felt, as a light and graceful scene.

There’s always the thought of whether or not there is a “right” place to cut in a scene. For instance, for the scene I chose, I felt that the shots shown were cut in a particular order that I would’ve done myself. The only shot I wish they’d capture in the film were medium, close-up shots for both Murray and Brody’s characters as they were running towards the train. Other than this, there wouldn’t be anything else I’d change in the film as it was all a work of art to me.

Link for scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYK8r3anY6I