Issue 90: Frames Archives - Bright Wall/Dark Room

Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams | Universal Pictures

In the soft focus of his gaze, Costner shows us a man seeing his own life superimposed onto itself, the uncanny vertiginous struggle to reconcile your existence as someone’s child with your existence as someone’s parent, the effort to locate your own life through triangulation between lives spent and lives just beginning to unfold.

A close up of a hand flexing in Pride & Prejudice

Intimacy, Touch, and the Perennial Beauty of Hands

Lainey Wood·

Issue 90: Frames

There are a number of striking, iconic frames in Joe Wright’s 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice—but I want to talk about that shot of Darcy’s hand.

Nosferatu the Vampyre | 20th Century Fox

Plague Comes to Town

Andrew Piechota·

Issue 90: Frames

So it is that Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre ends its world—swiftly, and yet by inches.

The Wrestler (2008) | Fox Searchlight Pictures

A Sickness of the Heart: On The Wrestler

Alexander B. Joy·

Issue 90: Frames

A father and daughter dance in the ruins of the New Jersey boardwalk.

Bright, Burning Desire: The Piano in Frame

Dorothy Bendel·

Issue 90: Frames

Here, on the beach, Ada and Flora don't appear to be waiting so much as creating something new. Looking at this frame now, as a global pandemic distorts the hours that fill our days, I see a kind of hope and perseverance in how the characters interact with time.

A Door Between Worlds: One Frame from John Smith’s Home Suite

Michael Scoular·

Issue 90: Frames

John Smith's Home Suite showcases not just the formal tension of the speaker’s narration at odds with an ephemeral image, but the actual stress of his particular circumstance, where the stability of the act of making a film is a last attempt at verticality against the flattening, devastating forces waiting outside his door.

Even Though It’s Breaking: On Barbarism and Barbers

Frank Falisi·

Issue 90: Frames

To be bold, to dare to be stupid: this single frame in The Great Dictator is the most essential frame occurring in Charles Chaplin’s filmography. It is the most elegant and achy navigation out of comedy, straight through tragedy, and into something like the human struggle ever captured by camera.

A painting from Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) | NEON

I Also Felt Your Absence

Lindsey Trout Hughes·

Issue 90: Frames

It's a fleeting moment in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a shot of a small canvas bathed in shadow which horizontal brushstrokes have primed a deep brown. The image of Marianne’s hands at work, Héloïse and Sophie slowly appearing on her canvas, is a rejection of solitude and an embrace of the vulnerability that true sorority requires.

The Beautiful Blankness of Alain Delon: Purple Noon [01:56:17]

Eric Langberg·

Issue 90: Frames

That ineffable quality that made Alain Delon a star, before all of the ugliness crept in, is suspended in this frame forever, in our memory always and indelibly empty, hollow, and blank.

“You Give Me Fever”: Mermaids and the Art of the Projectionship

Sydney Urbanek·

Issue 90: Frames

I like noticing new things in Mermaids—about Charlotte, about Joe, about Charlotte and Joe—with each pass of the film, realizing that there’s no real villain in their story, and that neither can claim to be the hero.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) | Fox Searchlight Pictures

One Nostalgia Later

B.C. Wallin·

Issue 90: Frames

I remember The Grand Budapest Hotel, and I remember those swirling lights and the clutched breath and the deep longing. I think about this frame of Agatha, frozen in time, holding her lover’s gaze—holding our gaze—as the darkness briefly clouds her face.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) | MGM

With Eyes Like Ripening Fruit

Elizabeth Cantwell·

Issue 90: Frames

You’ve seen the image online or you’ve seen it in your dreams. The gaping mouth, the white of the eyes. The finger pointing straight into the lens. The terrible moment of mirror revelation: I know what you are.