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.

Into the Blue: Transposing the Frame in Derek Jarman’s Blue

Edwin Miles·

Issue 90: Frames

Derek Jarman’s Blue is a film that pushes the limits of cinematic expression, an unwavering blue screen accompanied by a layered soundscape of voices, music, and lyrically written dialogue.

The Hunt for Red October (1990) | Paramount Pictures

Some Things in Here Don’t React Well to Bullets

Sarah Welch-Larson·

Issue 90: Frames

In this single shot, The Hunt for Red October presents its stakes: the struggle between an individual and the vast and powerful forces that threaten to swallow him.

Waiting For An Unnatural Disaster: Still Life

Cheng Mun Chang·

Issue 90: Frames

Watching Still Life with this new perspective, I forced myself to look at every long take, to think about the passing of each period of time within and outside of the film.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In The Infinite Glow

Fran Hoepfner·

Issue 90: Frames

A throwaway joke in a 105-minute film watched nearly four years ago in a city I’ve only been to twice stands firm like a monolith in the wavy goop of my brain. It is nothing; it is everything.

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.