“In the 21st century, it is essential for TV shows to offer multiple meanings” – evaluate this claim with reference to Les Revenants
Argument - in order to reach a larger audience, but in particular a devoted cult audience.
Key scene one
Camille comes home
- Non-diegetic soundtrack - establishes a creepy and oppressive atmosphere.
- A range of CU shots presented in standard shot reverse shot conveys to the audience and establishes that Camille and her mother are talking at cross purposes. This further establishes a binary opposition between the mother and daughter, creating conflicted responses for the confused audience.
- The mother climbs the stairs in a series of close up shots before knocking on the bathroom door. Her confusion and horror is immediately anchored by the sudden use of Mogwai's non-diegetic soundtrack anchors the interpretation that mother is potentially mad. This presents a confusing and potentially polysemic narrative to the intended cult audience.
- The family home setting is familiar to Camille and to the target middle class audience. However, a binary opposition is established between Camille's comfortable familiarity and her mother's absolute terror.
- Low key lighting emphasises the disconnectedness of the Seurat family. Also highly paradigmatic of the horror genre.
- OSS from Camille to the mother demonstrates Camille lit in high key lighting and her mother in low key lighting, further demonstrating the disconnect between the two previously close family members. Non of this is however made explicit to the audience, forcing them instead to form their own detailed and negotiated response
- Post production colour grading favours muted colours, which symbolically encodes the depressing and panic inducing nature of the scene for Camille's mother. Key theme is mortality and the inevitability of death. Existentialist philosophy, almost stereotypically french. The mother is horrified by her daughter's reappearance
Key scene two
Opening
- use of music - reaches a crescendo at the point here the butterfly emerges from the display, demonstrating to the audience a key symbolic code, helping them to understand the complicated narrative
- Low key lighting and desaturated colour grading in the scene where Camille returns home emphasises to the audience a potential hermeneutic code, and forces the audience to negotiate their own perspective on the narrative. This enforces a polysemic reading of the text.
- Camille has more screen time on the bus, and is consistently framed in a montage of close up shots which positions the audience with the young Camille. Camille's age allows teenage audiences to invest in the complicated narrative.
- The sudden and mysterious dip to black following the long shot of the traumatic bus accident is symbolic of not only the audience's own confusion and the show's primary theme of death and finality
- Establishing shot and the subsequent long shots of the bus establish an isolated and exotic setting for the secondary British and international audience. This emphasises the importance of Les Revenants adopting a polysemic narrative. It must mean different things to audiences of different nationalities.
- Generically highly unconventional of the supernatural/horror genre. Lacks generic paradigms such as corpses, blood, monsters etc. It is not until much later in the narrative Camille is established to be a very unconventional 'zombie'.
- Long shot static shot of bus flying off highway is accompanied by diegetic screaming, yet no other camera movement demonstrates to the audience that the show will take an unconventional perspective on death and other grand themes.
Cheers for this one R block!