Even on Rotten Tomatoes this movie has the “so bad its good” reputation. I would be lying if I said this film wasn’t a guilty pleasure of mine; before I took Screen Aesthetics that is. Now that I have been brought into the light of what aesthetically pleasing really means, I don’t think I can ever go back. For example:
Before taking my Screen Aesthetics class, this scene gave me goosebumps. Her voice creates that effect as well as the anxiety and build up to this scene. You know what doesn’t give me goose bumps? The horrible aesthetics of this scene. Now, all I see when I watch this scene is one cut after another after another when all I really want to be looking at is the woman on stage who is finally getting her chance to show her talent. Instead we get a pointless view of the curtain rising and falling and ill timed long shots that give a view of the entire stage and the audience when again, all I want to be looking at is her.
Another thing I find aesthetically displeasing with this scene is the cuts within the scene don’t flow with whats actually going on, the music, or the general feel of the scene. We have undeniable build up to the moment when she first sings. You know that the curtain isn't just going to fall and that will be that. However, when she finally does belt out her first note and the room goes quiet, the amount of cuts start increasing. For me, this would be a perfect time to slow things the hell down. Keep the tension high. This kind of scene should make you hold your breath but the fast paced cuts throws off the entire feel of the scene. Finally when the band starts to play along with the singer and the music gets faster, that’s when the cuts slow down. This should have been done the opposite way around.
The movie seems to have all sorts of little things like this that make it hard to watch. Not to mention the bad acting and fluff of a story line but these are things that could be categorized as “so bad its good” while bad screen aesthetics are just bad.
Now, lets talk about this scene:
I wanted to focus on one particular shot that maybe you noticed too.
This shot seems completely pointless in this scene. Personally I don’t think there is any point for it and yet we see shots like this a handful of times throughout this movie. Humans like repetition. I feel like I could give more credit to this long shot if it didn’t just occur once in the scene. Maybe we could revisit this shot so we could get the feeling like we are sitting in the back of the club watching. This would make it feel less random and it would help us believe that it was put there for a purpose that added to the meaning and aesthetic of the film.
Let’s go back to cuts.
In this scene every shot is about 2 to 3 seconds long. The music and the atmosphere didn’t quite seem to match with amount of cuts they used. Its like the director was trying to create tension where tension wasn’t needed but, lets dive into this cut alone.
Something interesting that we talked about in Screen Aesthetics looked something like this.
The rule of this axis was to never cut when there was less than a 30 degree change, in this case you can use a pan shot. However, Burlesque makes this mistake more than once throughout the movie. The gif above may be a little more than 30 degrees but you still get the vibe of it being useless. When watching the movie, you hardly notice it because of the amounts of cuts you become accustomed too throughout the film and how it was cut on movement. This was also something we touched on in class. The cut becomes less noticeable because you are looking at something that is moving so your eyes are fixed there. I have to give it to them, this film does a good job at that. This film could have been immensely more aesthetically pleasing without the ridiculous amounts of cuts. Another thing that good films seem to do that this film lacked was the ability of the camera to tell part of the story for us. We don’t need the CSI dialogue where everything is 100% mapped out for us if you have a skilled director. This movie has the CSI dialogue.
With all the talent in this movie, I think it deserves a better wrap than it has but looking at it through a simple aesthetic point of view, its flawed to the point of it being unwatchable. However, I am still in the stage of having to force my brain to see the aesthetics instead of the plot so when a movie like this comes on, I can turn it off and enjoy a truly bad movie.
