adactio

{Skip navigation}

• Journal
• Portfolio
• Articles
• About
• Contact

Silent witness

Re-watching some Ridley Scott movies on DVD recently, I noticed a recurring motif: pivotal death scenes featuring a passive, non-human observer:

• Alien: Jones the cat looks on as the xenomorph claims its first post-natal victim in Harry Dean Stanton.
• Bladerunner: A genetically engineered owl—of course it’s not real—pays scant attention to the brutal killing of Dr. Eldon Tyrell at the hands of another of his creations, Roy Batty.
• Gladiator: During the combined patricide and regicide of Marcus Aurelius by his son Commodus, the camera comes to rest on a bust of the emperor within sight of the murder.

…or it could just be a series of coincidences.

Friday, November 2nd, 2007 12:57am

Tagged with film analysis

Illustrations

Thanks to the magic of machine tags, you can illustrate this post by tagging a picture on Flickr with:

Related

Technorati

Is anybody linking to this?

Find out what other people are saying about film, analysis, etc. according to Technorati.

Flickr

More information

© 1998 - 2008 Jeremy Keith.

Veni, vidi, validatio. Et tu, CSS?.

Accessibility statement