Zack Snyder's Justice Lube 13: Backstory'd
/
Scene 12: Two Statues, One Arrow (44:23 -45:29)
When you’re a Wonder Woman, what do you do when you’re not chasing briefcases and vaporizing terrorists in front of schoolchildren? You work at the Louvre as a preserver of antiquities, preferably in the most impossibly tight-fitting white dress possible.
I’m not mocking anyone here; Gadot’s all-white garb is clearly meant to align her with the historical statues that she preserves. It’s a call back to the supposed classical perfection of Greek aesthetics, never mind that those statues were actually painted in a riot of colours that would probably strike the modern eye as garish. You’d think Diana of Themyscira would be schooling her colleagues about this. But then, Snyder’s work is always about the signification of colour, which is partly why the desaturated tones and cobalt shadows of Justice League are so important to the movie’s effectiveness.
I also want to call attention to the opening interior shot of the scene: Diana and the statue (is it of herself?) in forced perspective in the the foreground, with a wide depth of field that keeps the background mostly in focus and lets us draw conclusions about the relationship Diana has with her colleagues (ie. separate, on a literally different plane). The dialogue, in which Diana quietly shuts down an inquiry about her personal life, reinforces the language of the shot. It’s a quietly excellent piece of cinematography: visually interesting, rich and detailed, an updated Gregg Toland bit of deep focus with enough shallow depth of field to emphasize Gadot’s profile and set her apart a little more from the background.
It’s also unusual for a Snyder movie to lead a scene with a shot this sophisticated. He tends to favour slow tracking shots of close-ups on objects and faces, mixed with tableaus of figures arranged on a parallel plane to the camera. Having seen this image in the theatrical release, I had assumed that this was filmed by Whedon’s crew, but here it is in the Snyder cut (not that Whedon would have come up with a shot like this either - his dialogue may be rooted in classic screwball comedy, but his visuals are mostly stuck in the world of ‘90s television).
The camera starts to rotate, keeping Diana in the sharp-focus foreground (and perhaps getting a little leering as it shows off the neckline of the dress and her hip bones pressing against the fabric) while her colleagues unspool the necessary information. All told, the shot lasts about 48 seconds, but it’s subtle enough that you don’t see how much work it’s doing.
Finally it cuts to a shot from Diana’s point of view: a television screen with the Arrow of Artemis burning away. The angle reverses and pushes in on Diana’s face, looking from the point of view of her colleagues (or is it of the image of the burning arrow on the screen?). She says “Invasion” and that’s that. A scene with only four shots* that does what it needs to do and does it with unshowy virtuosity.
Compare and contrast: This scene appears in JWJL, but in a truncated form that robs it of its elegance. The establishing shot is missing and the camera movement has been edited out. It does its job but not particularly well.
*In order: an exterior shot of the Louvre; the minute-long shot of Diana and the statue; the television; Diana’s face.
