Discuss the ways micro-elements of film are used to represent conflict and shape spectator response in the films you have studied. You must draw comparisons between the three films you have studied in your answer.

Battle of Algiers - sound and cinematography - the torture montage

Multiple CUs and ECUs of a weeping civilian positions spectator with the witness of the torture
The intradiegetic gaze of the witness and the torture aligns spectatorial response
The music is funereal and depressing. The music is non-diegetic
A complete lack of diegetic sound forces the spectator to focus purely on the torture, and is symbolic of the lost voices of the civilians being tortured
Without the anchorage of the sound effects, a sense of actuality is constructed
The handheld cinematography in combination with the use of zoomed in CUs and ECUs constructs a documentary mode of address
This recorded nature of the cinematography is cold, distant, and feels like a warning
A sense of abjection is constructed through the alarming MES of realistic blood

Wikus is visibly shaking on the phone, anchored with the MES of sweat pouring off his face constructs Wikus as increasingly abject
Wikus’s performance, in particular his deadpan delivery of “I did not have pornographic activity with a fokking creature!” reinforces the abject situation that Wikus is in and have been placed in by MNU, a shady multinational with the resources to frame him
The editing and cinematography of the claw amputation scene combine to construct intense spectatorial manipulation. The MES of the concrete slab reinforces the filthy and disgusting nature of this act. Furthermore, after the abject and disgusting imagery of the claw being severed in CU, we cut to a CU of Wikus’s screaming face. Followed immediately by an ELS of of Wikus screaming and isolated in the filthy township