Spatial reference in Films

Cafe Society
1

I’ve long had an issue with “spatial reference,” a phrase I think I’ve derived from Hitchcock, meaning “where exactly people are, in relation to other people and things” in films, particularly films of a large scale, such as war movies. I can never figure out what’s going on in war films and must assume a lot that I can’t visualize. For example, if a platoon is supposed to take a hill, I can never visualize that hill’s place in a larger context. Where is the hill, in relation to larger objectives in the battle? How far are the hill’s defensive reinforcements from reaching it? How many soldiers are now defending the hill? Stuff like that. They usually just show the platoon mounting an attack but an attack on what, exactly? Filmmakers just assume you already know this stuff, or that you don’t care, but I do care.

I think I need maps to understand what I’m talking about, but of course films can’t supply any of what I need. I must have seen half a dozen films about Gettysburg, and none of them are very clear about what exactly is going on, mainly because there are about six or fourteen mini-battles taking place within the larger battle, each of which requires its own movie (with maps?) to be understood properly. So I end up taking a lot on faith, and I never really get close to understanding what the hell is going on.

Maybe what I’m saying is that I need some sort of online tutorial that shows where every division, battalion, army and platoon is at every stage of the battle, instead of a movie whose aim is to show a couple of dramatic high points. Is there such a thing?

This is only an example of the kind of thing I’m addressing. Really, any war movie does the same thing to me, confusing me and making me wonder where these people are. A larger scope film, like A Bridge Too Far, is simply hopeless, but even non-war movies that take place anywhere outside of a sitting room mix me up. Is this a frequent issue with film directors—do they care if the viewers don’t have a clue where the film is set? How far apart things are is a frequent problem. “I’ll just go there” one character says, and I often wonder, “Okay, how far away is ‘there’?” Walking distance? Hiking distance? Driving distance?

This can be one reason I don’t even enjoy reading novels set in places I don’t know well–the authors assume I have a clue where some town is in relation to another town, and I’m wondering is this like a trip from Seattle to Yakima or more like a trip from Pittsburgh to Tucson. Does anyone else have a similar problem with spatial references?

2

Some movies make it clear, setting things up on a very clear day, with everything in the open. The final battle in Spartacus (1960) makes it obvious exactly where the slave army and the Roman legion is located relative to each other. But one reason they could do that is that they had a huge costumed cast that they could put out on the field. A lot of movies don’t have that kind of budget (like the BBC production of War and Peace, for instance), so you only saw the very few costumed soldiers – enough to set the scene, but not to tell you what was going on.

Similarly, in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia there’s a sweeping shot showing the invading Arab forces attacking an unsuspecting Aqaba and showing the large guns that were concentrated on the Gulf and (as Lawrence pointed out) “couldn’t be turned round”. Lean had to insist on those guns being there t – others thought it an unnecessary expense. But Lean’s point was well made. You saw that scene and you understood why Lawrence’s plan worked. It required conscious effort to depict the scene in such a way to make the strategy clear and to make the point.

So I suspect that you don’t get a clear idea of what’s going on because they often don’t have the resources to depict things clearly, and because it takes an effort to render the situation comprehensible when economic forces push you the other way.

In many cases, a schematic shot of the battlefield, either made for the audience’s benefit, or seen as part of a “war room” map could make things more evident, but I have to admit I rarely see that used. C.S. Forester’s book The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck is filled with page-sized maps showing the situation, but I don’t think they showed a single one in the film adaptation Sink the Bismarck!. His The Hornblower Companion has loads of maps showing what was going on with the ships, but I don’t think the Hornblower movie or the later A&E TV series ever howed any.

3

You just need to play a game…

4

I think an example of that is action movie scenes where people in a car are endeavoring to chase down a desperate, fleeing individual on foot. I’ve seen this go on for ten seconds (give or take) without the car, somehow, catching up to and running over their target. Even Carl Lewis in his prime, and even starting from a stopped position, could not outrun an accelerating car, especially in that time span.

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The error here is expecting that any of that geographical knowledge is necessary to the storytelling.

A real platoon taking a real hill neither knows nor cares where the rest of the battle is. Their focus is totally on their hill and they take it on unconsidered faith that the rest of their army is doing useful stuff someplace nearby that is synergistic with their work on the hill.

In a movie, if the camera’s POV is as if it’s a platoon member or an embedded news reporter / observer, then the story teller = movie director has decided that you, the audience member, also have no need of that larger context. You’re supposed to be focused on what you can see; the immediate up close action.

If OTOH the movie is about a general and their decision-making, then maps and big-picture info about the total battle will be a much larger part of the story.

Movies are about what, not why. If you want to understand what really happened at, e.g. Gettysburg, read a book; don’t watch an entertainment that happens to have chosen Gettysburg as their scenery.

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Sometimes you don’t even need to show the battlefield:

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One of my favorite films is the original 1970s Gone in 60 Seconds because its epic car chase can actually be followed on a real map and makes complete sense to someone familiar with LA’s South Bay. It was made by an inexperienced filmmaker who thought geographic accuracy was actually necessary.

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As a SoCal native I admit it’s distracting when a show blatantly ignores local geography I’m familiar with. The various Jack Webb Mark VII productions excelled at ignoring reality. San Fernando Valley to Orange County all on the same shift. Riiiight.

OTOH, they can film a chase in e.g. Cleveland all geo-crazy and I’d never know the difference.

But for areas substantially nobody is familiar with, say the jungles of South Vietnam, or the streets of Falluja, Iraq, providing geographic context, and especially accurate geographic context, is often immaterial to the storytelling.

9

I think what you’re desiring is called an establishing shot.

A large scale one that comes to mind is the overhead views of the battle at Minas Tirith in Return of the King.

Smaller scale ones are like the wide shot of Marion’s bar in Raider’s of the Lost Ark showing where all the characters are before the bar fight are also very effective.

10

Not so much through a single “establishing shot,” but rather throughout the series in how scenes and locations were intertwined and discussed by the characters, I though the 2008 series John Adams did a good job of relating the decisions and actions to the geography in and around colonial-early American New York and New England.

(It probably helps that I’m a geographer who grew up around there, though).

11

One of the the most spatially simple films ever made is Das Boot and, honestly, half the time I have no idea whether a scene in taking place in the bow, stern or amidships…but it really doesn’t matter unless you’ve actually lived on a submarine.

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True – but knowing they were passing through the Straits of Gibraltar heightened the tension for that scene (for example).

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Which is delightfully described by an analogy in the dialog.

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Remind us, if you could.

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There’s Dogville, where the movie took place on an actual map of the area it takes place in:

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Ario: We have to get to the Macaronis first! Gibraltar! Stick a finger up your ass to get the idea. It’s as tight as a virgin. We’ll need vaseline to get through.

17

Ha! Yes.

18

1992’s Dien Bien Phu had a good sense of where everything was going on.

The Red Badge of Courage was the opposite, but the protagonist’s confusion was the whole point.

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Although that’s a bit of a BS line.

The strait is significantly deeper than the max diving depth of the U-boat. They can’t hit the bottom; they’d have been crushed by the water pressure already.

The strait is ~7-1/2 nm wide and the sub’s max underwater speed is ~7-1/2 knots. With 5 or 6 knots being more typical. So even if they somehow got totally sideways at the narrowest point, it’d take an hour or more to drive from beach to beach. Lots of time there to recognize and correct their error.

It is true that being narrow, it takes very few enemy surface ships standing guard there to put any passing U-boat in weapons range of at least one of them. But it’s also the case that the bottom configuration there was quite a problem for WW-II surface sonar, making it hard to detect U-boats with sonar.

OTOH, underwater position fixing and course-holding was pretty rudimentary back then. The biggest worry would be starting way off to one side and/or encountering unexpected currents and ending up bumping the sides. Oops.

Here’s some interesting discussion about the situation between U-boats and geophysics: Strait of Gibraltar - Water Flow - Wikipedia

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In the Lord of the Rings films, there were several scenes which used maps of Middle-Earth to help the viewers – particularly those who weren’t already very familiar with the setting – understand the relative positions and distances between the locations depicted in the films. This example, from The Two Towers, shows two of the characters from Gondor outlining where their enemies are, as well as describing (and locating) the battle between Saruman and Rohan at Helm’s Deep.