Vengeance is Mine lighting part 4

This shot is shortly after the character’s leave the cinema. I chose this shot because it depicts the characters in a city street and therefore I can compare it to other city street shots in Taxi Driver. Enokizu in this shot is trying to leave the cinema without being noticed by the other cinema goers. He also seems to be trying to get away without Haru following him, but is caught off guard slightly when she talks to him about his crimes in a way which implies that his lies about his identity and his crimes have not put her off being close to him. The light in this shot changes as they walk down the street. I did wonder whether there was any extra lights used in this scene at all - maybe it just uses light already available in the street - but as the scene goes on there seems to be aspects of the lighting that seem quite deliberate. As the scene comes to an end for example, they walk into a dimly lit area where they are completely in shadow, which helps the narrative of the scene implying that they are successfully managing to slip away into the night. It would also be very difficult to expose film without extra lighting in a city street.

Throughout the scene Enokizu and Haru repeatedly go in and out of shadow as they are walking and talking, but all of the while you can see the city lights quite brightly in the background out of focus. This contrasts with cuts to another shot of a random cinema goer who seems to have recognised Enokizu from the public service announcement and is attempting to follow them in order to see if her suspicion is correct. The shot of the cinema goer following them is quite brightly lit in contrast to this shot. Therefore the brighter background in this shot may be to keep us aware of other members of the public who may recognise Enokizu to imply that this is in the back of the character’s minds as they are walking.