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Wisconsin Death Trip
In the movie, Wisconsin Death Trip, the filmmaker uses a variety of techniques to portrait the desperation of the characters, and the sense of fear and hopelessness that they lived with everyday. Wisconsin Death Trip takes place in Black River Falls during the 1890’s, which was a very hostile place. The people of Black River Falls during the 1890’s lived in a very unstructured society, where people had to take care of themselves. There was almost no law enforcement and if there was a fire department, it was probably made up of local volunteers. Living in a society where you are responsible for your own survival, causes people to live with a sort of desperation everyday that surrounds your life and seeps into your personality. This sense of desperation is portrayed well by the filmmaker.
The combination of still photos and motion picture conveys a strange message of self pity. Almost all of the still photos were close ups of characters faces. Almost every character, when shown close up, was not smiling and showed little if any expression in their face Mary Sweeny, the window smasher, was shown several times in still portraits as well as several times in video clips of her smashing windows. The still portraits of Sweeny show little or now emotion. Mary Sweeny was once a law abiding citizen, but after years of working hard everyday to barely make ends meet, she began using cocaine heavily and ran away to escape. Most of the characters were either employed and made just enough to get by, or they were unemployed and lived in poverty. There weren’t many wealthy characters in the film. This all leads to the general feeling of self pity throughout the film. . Perhaps that is the result of living in a society such as this, where most people work hard their whole lives, with little or no reward in the end.
The low angle camera shots, used by the filmmaker, show a sense of humiliation in the characters. A good example of this is in the beginning of the film when a man in shown hanging by his neck from a tree. But the camera angle is so low; all you can see is the man’s feet and the tree above him. In Black River Falls during the 1890’s, there was a general sense of humiliation among the residents. This may have been due to the small size and population of the area. Also long distance communication was not as easy during the 1890’s, so the residents of Black River Falls communicated more with each other. As a result there was much gossip and everyone knew everyone else’s private secrets. This humiliation that was felt by the residents of Black River Falls during the 1890’s is represented well through the low camera angles selected by the filmmaker.
The use of black and white, by the filmmaker, gives the film a [next page]