Film Analysis Video

Movie Scene Analysis, The Great Raid, Sympathy vs. Hatred

Evoking emotion in an audience is the goal of any movie director but the great directors find ways in which the can make the audience love one group of characters and hate another group at the same time. In the movie The Great Raid director John Dahl does just that in his horrific depiction of the World War Two Japanese execution of the Prisoners of War from the Palawan Prisoner camp. He was able to use a series of filming techniques to show how the Japanese belittled prisoners of war and thought of themselves as dominant over the men who surrendered while at the same time depicting the Japanese commander (who would play a major roll as the antagonist in the rest of the film) as ruthless and merciless in attitude towards the American prisoners.

Dahl’s used camera angles, costuming, and background music in a way to show how the American POWs (prisoners of war) were thought of as disgraceful by the Japanese. One way he did this was by contrasting high and low camera angles when showing the Japanese soldiers and the American POWs. All of the shots of the POWs were taken as high angle shots which make the men seem smaller or less powerful while the shots of the Japanese soldiers to show their superiority over the POWs. Another technique the director used to convey this idea was the difference in the costumes; the Japanese soldiers were wearing sharp looking uniforms while the POWs had worn uniforms and dirt smeared on their faces to show how they are not treated well by the Japanese. The director’s decision to use oriental style music during the scene adds to the idea that the American soldiers are at the mercy of and in an atmosphere controlled by the Japanese army. These effects all lend themselves to the feeling that the American POWs are insignificant to the Japanese and are oppressed.

Dahl also focuses on the Japanese commander who is ordering the execution and portraying him as ruthless and merciless towards the American POWs. Dahl uses various camera angles and shots including close ups on the machine gunners, reaction shots, and having him either in the foreground or background of certain shots that show the scene unfolding. The director’s choice to show close ups of the machine gunners and connect them to the orders of the commander portrays the commander as ruthless and thorough in the extermination of the POWs. Dahl also follows up the shots of the machine gunners and the Japanese soldiers killing the POWs with reaction close ups of their commander’s face to generate a relationship between the commander’s orders and the brutality in the minds of the audience. Another example of the director’s techniques for creating this relationship and characterizing the commander are certain shots in which Dahl places the Japanese commander in either the foreground or background of the camera shot depicting the execution as it unfolds. These various camera angles and shot structures not only connect the Japanese commander to the murder of the POWs but through that connection characterize him as brutal and unmerciful.

Dahl cleverly structures this scene to show how the American POWs are less powerful compared to the Japanese soldiers and at the same time characterize the Japanese commander as ruthless and unmerciful by connecting his orders with brutality of the execution. These two ideas suggest that John Dahl was trying to make the audience sympathize with the American POWs and connect with them on an emotional level while building a hatred for the Japanese commander to last throughout the film as he plays the part of the antagonist. The director would not have been able to evoke this emotion in his audience by communicating only one idea, he had to organize the scene to demonstrate many different ideas in order to evoke the series of emotions he wanted to generate in his audience.

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