Amerikatsi uses space to showcase a juxtaposition between the worlds present in the film. This will be proven by analyzing the scene showcasing all three worlds according to its use of sound, lighting, imagery, camera movement, and coloring to craft the spaces.

The film follows Charlie Bakhchinyan, an Armenian man who fled the Armenian genocide as a child that returns to Soviet Armenia. For a brief moment, he was able to connect to his homeland. However, he quickly is arrested and taken into a gulag.

Despite the sickening circumstances, Charlie maintains a strong sense of hope through the story as he creates a world for himself within the two by two prison walls. A story that is reliant, on the bare breadcrumbs of Armenian culture that he can get through his cell window.

The chosen scene being analyzed in context of the film’s use of space showcasing a juxtaposition between the three worlds, takes place thirty six minutes into the film, lasting two minutes and thirty seconds.

The scene begins with a wide shot of Charlie re-entering his cell. The grim atmosphere is shown with torn walls, dirty furnishing, and all around desaturated coloring joined with low lighting. The sunlight from the window while not dim, it barely brightens up the room. Sound is purely diegetic at first, with the steel door closing and the atmosphere while quiet, is noisy in how quiet it actually is.

Quickly, non-diegetic sound; playful music begins to play. This is representative of Charlie’s eagerness to jump onto the bed, place his food on the cell window’s frame, and escape with his mind into what he sees through the window. While he’s physically in prison, the film creates a unique space using sound that illustrates not the physical conditions but rather Charlie’s mentality. We also hear the sound of the apartment across the street which while it is impossible for Charlie to literally here, it is sound that he imagines thus being non-diegetic.

With the playful music playing, the scene switches to a closeup of Charlie looking through the window while having his meal on the window’s border. Lighting is split, showing bleak desaturated artificial lighting on the inside of the cell, and bright natural lighting on the outside.

Obscured by the prison bars, a wide shot of the apartment across from Charlie is shown. This unlike other shots showing Charlie in this scene, is filmed with a handheld in order to not only represent his head movement, but also to represent time passing while he’s observing his neighbors whereas in the cell it feels like time feels still and thus those shots are static.

Imagery of the apartment is vivid with beautifully colored walls, Armenian paintings, vintage furnishing, and bright lighting. This creates Charlie’s space; a world he can only see through the steel bars of a small prison window. Yet with vivid imagery, lighting, music, & camera movement, the film constructs an immersive space showcasing Charlie’s perspective.

As the scene progresses, it consistently showcases the two worlds seemingly merged in Charlie’s mind to the extend of creating a parasocial relationship. The sense of space is even more evident when it’s disrupted by a family member closing the curtains in the apartment because right after that, nearly each element from sound to lighting, shot design, and imagery changes.

Switching from immersion to reality, the playful non-diegetic sound slowly fades away before entirely ending in the diegetic sound when Charlie tosses his bowl onto the tray. A close-up to his right displays mostly negative space on his left, of pure darkness accompanied by his disappointed expression, diegetic bird sounds, and the light emitting from the window losing its influence on Charlie.

An over the shoulder shot showcases once more the window, with the view. This time however, it shows the full reality of what Charlie sees; a frame on the other side, in front of it a large wall that is part broken, and through that broken part is the apartment which behind it in the distance is the beautiful Armenian landscape.

Using the very same locations but changing the lighting, sound, imagery, and composition, an entirely different space illustrating not the immersiveness of Charlie’s imagination but rather the reality of his grim situation is created.

A few minutes later, the curtains open once again. The sound does not change back to non-diegetic playful music but rather, to diegetic bird noises. This is because now having for a few moments last the bare breadcrumbs of Armenian culture he can get, he’s trying to not take it for granted as he consciously takes it in.

Non-diegetic sound slowly returns, only as Charlie imagining what sounds would be present inside the apartment. The combination of sound, imagery, and lighting creates a third cinematic space that is more rooted in reality yet also imaginative. Charlie is once again immersed in the activities he’s observing but this time, more so anchored in reality as indicated by different sound design.

With Charlie immersed, dancing, a peephole shot is shown obscured by the prison door’s shot of prison guards looking at him. The diegetic sound of the hatch opining up switches to smooth confrontational music as Charlie looks behind him, awkwardly.

The camera switches consistently between closeups of both Charlie and the guards. Noticing them calling crazy, Charlie plays along as to avoid arousing suspicion. He continues his coping mechanism of the parasocial relationship with those in the Armenian apartment across the street. A spark of hope, in a grim reality.

Using lighting, sound, imagery, and camera movement together in harmony, Amerikatsi creates a strong yet shifting sense of space for its lead character. The sense of space shifts from playful immersion to a confrontation of the precarious situation, to a more grounded immersion to the Armenian apartment across the street.

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Citations

1 Tololyan, K., 1990. Exile government in the Armenian policy. Journal of Political Science, 18(1), p.6.

2 Percheron, D. and Butzel, M., 1980. Sound in Cinema and its Relationship to Image and Diegesis. Yale French Studies, (60), pp.16-23.

3 Sesonske, A., 1973. Cinema space. In Explorations in Phenomenology: Papers of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (pp. 399-409). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

4 Hopkins, J., 1994. A mapping of cinematic places: Icons, ideology, and the power of (mis) representation. Place, power, situation, and spectacle: A geography of film, pp. 47-65.

5 Caquard, S. and Taylor, D.F., 2009. What is cinematic cartography?. The Cartographic Journal, 46(1), pp.5-8.

6 Simonyan, A., THE ARTISTIC DECORATION OF THE BIBLE OF PETROS LATINATSI. OF SOCIAL SCIENCES , p.221

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Artificial intelligence was not used at any point in the creation of this review, nor is it used in the creation of any works created by me or published on this site.