Zombieland's movie review

(Zombieland, 2009)

Today, I am going to discuss about the theory that always used in the film, which is the tonal montage. Tonal montage refers to editing decisions made to establish the emotional character of a scene, which may change in the course of the scene. Tone or mood is used as a guideline for interpreting tonal montage, and although the theory begins to sound intellectual, it is no different from editing is akin to music, the playing of the emotional of the different scenes. Emotions change, and so too can the tone of the scene.(Dancyger & Dancyger, 2014) The reason why I discuss this theory is because of I found out this theory apply in Zombieland very frequently and it is kind of interested me.

Synopsis:

The story is about United States had became a Zombieland. The main character was all on his way back to Columbus from Austin. On his way back, he first met a crazy zombie killer who was also a Twinkies lover and took a ride with him. Then the pair met the sisters who had cheated their weapons and cars when they were in a grocery shop. Then they went to Hollywood, Tallahassee directed them to Bill Murray's Mansion. The main character accidentally shot Bill Murray because he thought that he was infected and became a zombie. Later, the main character and Tallahassee went to the Pacific Playland to rescue the sisters. At last, the main character found out that they had became a family like he always wanted to have.

 Analysis:

From the beginning, the main character, who called as Columbus, had narrated his situation and was hoping that he could met his family once more when the United States had became the zombieland. It does not had any strong emotion when Columbus first mentioned his family as he thought that it was because of his parents causing him to have phobia in almost everything. So when he said he wanted to have a marriageable woman to bring back to let his parents know, he rather want the marriageable woman took him back to let her parents know.

When Columbus and Tallahassee was finding for Twinkies in the grocery shop, they met Wichita and Little Rock. Wichita and her little sister had cheated Columbus and Tallahassee and took away all their weapons and Tallahassee's car. Later, the scene became Columbus and Tallahassee were walking down the empty street and talking about the zombie kill of the week.

While Columbus and Tallahassee were talking, Tallahassee found another great car as their transport. Then Columbus went to check the backseat and found out there are plenty of big guns and bullets for it. They drove the car. On the halfway, they saw Tallahassee's car that was taken away by Wichita and Little Rock was stopped there. Later, they met Wichita and Little Rock again and then the car that drove by Columbus was once again took away by Wichita and her little sister.

On the car along the way, Columbus and Tallahassee found out where were Wichita and Little Rock going, Pacific Playland. In the car, Columbus also had asked Wichita about how was the state of Columbus's situation. Wichita said the truth out that the state of Columbus was no more existed. When Columbus heard about the truth where the state his family live was affected by the zombie too, he felt sad and did not know his direction anymore. His first purpose of going to Columbus was to visit his family and now he realized that from now on he had no any family even though he wants to pretend that he still have a family.

At night, Columbus and Wichita saw a car was stopped at the roadside, Wichita told him to drove it to the state of Columbus to find out the situation. Columbus thought about what he really want and finally he knew that it was not that he had no place to go but was where Wichita goes he just wanted to be with her.

The scene that shows Columbus knew that his family was gone, it came with the sorrow background music to lead the audience more to the feeling of the character. Other than that, the scene is kind of like using close up shot to shoot the facial expression of the character to let the audience know that his feeling for that moment was bad.

Tonal montage is all about the editing decisions made to establish the emotion of the character. Music is counted in the area of editing, the sorrow background music that appeared when Columbus knew his family was gone was one of the editing decision that made to establish the character was feeling sad. The camera shot is also counted as the editing, so the close up shot had showed all the facial expression of the character to audience.

Conclusion:

The summary of my movie review is that tonal montage is used widely in films and television works, as nowadays most of the films and television works are having genre bending. Most of the tonal montage theory was used to represent sorrow scenes with the cope of sad music background and the films and television works will be having sorrow part.

Reference page:

Dancyger, K., & Dancyger, P. K. (2014). The technique of film and video editing: History, theory, and practice (4th ed.). Amsterdam: Focal Press.