Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects

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Japanese animator and director, Satoshi Kon, once stated that he ‘didn’t want to direct live-action films because his editing was actually too fast’, and that he could draw less information into the frame so that the audience could read it faster. While this is true in most cases of modern western cinema, there have been a few notable and subtle exceptions. For instance, a director who draws a significant amount of inspiration from foreign cinema in his works, Wes Anderson, has been known to use inserts of imagery in his films that last no more than a few frames. He does this in order to remove entire events that would slow the pace of the editing in a way that still allows the viewer to understand the action. Take “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012)…show more content…
In this sequence, our arguable protagonist, Verbal Kent, has finally been released from his questioning, and Kujan is left to reflect on the events that have transpired. When his commanding officer comments on the state of the office around them, Kujan begins to inspect a notice board on the back wall that had been sitting behind him throughout the course of the film. He begins to notice that details of Kent’s tory had been fabricated from visual cues that he found on the notice board, from names, to images and so…show more content…
These clips begin by relating to the visual cues we receive, but progress independently of the visuals. This is key to the discovery of the big reveal of the film, that Kent had been lying about his identity. Once Kujan has discovered that the story had been fabricated, he leaves the office in pursuit, and during this time, the audio clips continue, progressing along their own sub narrative, as we see Kent making his escape. The clips slowly begin to describe key features of the mysterious Keyser Soze, as the visuals force you to observe Kent’s possession of these features. The audience is forced into this chain of thought by the pace at which the information is revealed, and is allowed time to observe and progress these thoughts to reach the same conclusion about the scene, at which point, we are given a shot of Kent’s legs as he limps down the street. This shot slowly changes; first he stops limping, confirming he was lying about his identity, and then panning up, to show his confidence in contrast to his fake identity, and then we cut as he enters a car, to show Kobayashi, a character that we had assumed fake, but we had known to be working for Soze, waiting in the car for his boss, who the audience now knows as Kent’s real
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