Finding Forrester

A Review of Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester. Dir. Gus Van Sant. Pref. Sean Connery, Rob Brown, F. Murray Abraham, Anna Paquin, Busta Rhymes, April Grace. Columbia, 2000.

My favorite cinematic device is camera work. I find it very interesting how a director can change or alter our perception of a scene just by the camera angles they choose to use. I also find it interesting that the distance of a shot can alter how emotionally involved we become in a film.

In Finding Forester Gus Van Sant uses a variety of shots and camera movements to help draw the audience into the film and to queue the audience into some of the underlying themes in the movie. In Jamal’s initial interactions with Forrester the director almost always has the shot setup to that Forrester is shown to be standing over or above Jamal. Van Sant does this using a low angle shot if the view is from Jamal’s perspective or a high angle shot if from Forrester’s perspective. Most of these scenes are done with Jamal sitting in Forrester’s apartment while Forrester is standing. This clues the audience into the fact that in his apartment, and in the world of writing Forrester is the master and teacher. Contrast that to the when Forrester is out of his apartment. When Jamal takes him to a game at Madison Square Garden Forrester gets separated from Jamal and becomes scared. When Jamal finds Forrester Van Sant uses a high angle shot from over Jamal’s shoulder looking down at Forrester. This implies that in the outside world Jamal is the one that has more knowledge of what to do and he is the teacher in this setting. As the movies proceeds the two are shot using more eye level shots ending with Jamal and Forrester walking down the road side by side. This tells the audience that they are more of equals now rather than teacher and student. These same high angle and low angle shots are used in Jamal’s interactions with Crawford. The first time Jamal is in class and Crawford asks him to stay...