Daniel - Sidney Lumet

Halayla yaşama klibi: Sevgisizlik, sığıntılık. Annenin mektubunun düşmesi. Görüntüyle ses arasındaki o muhteşem tezat. zaman geçişini sağlayan ve zaman parçalarını bağlayan ses. güçlü olmasının bir sebebi de çocukların içinde bulunduklar durumun tam da böyle bir şey olması, berbat bir hayat ama o hayatın üzerine düşen annenin teskin edici sesi.

daniel'in filmin başından sonuna, elektrikle ilgili bilimsel bilgiler vermesi. başında, sonunda, ortasında. olağanüstü güçlü. olağanüstü bir kontrpuan. anneyle babanın elektrikli sandalyede idam edilmesine istinaden. bu anlamda idam sahnelerinde elektrikle birlikte, ölmeden önce kasılıp titremeleri. hayat ve ölüm. daniel ve susan.

abi kardeş eski evlerine gittiklerinde susan'ın eşikte altına işemesi. evin içini görmüyoruz bile. sadece bir geçiş olarak görüyoruz. oysa yolculuk her haliyle var. işemenin bir anlamı da gözyaşı olabilir mi? yaş. susan çok küçük, çok korunaksız, çok fazla, "sizi ne zaman öldürecekler" diye soruyor annesine, "nasıl öldürecekler?" ergenliğinde kendini korumak için elinden geleni yapıyor; uyuşturucu, din, en son anne babası gibi komünist olmak. hiçbiri kar etmiyor: "they are still fucking us daniel, did you get the picture?" ve melankolinin kucağına bırakıyor kendini: "I forgot what you are supposed to expect from being alive." ve sonra da ölüyor. I am bile değil, you are. melankolinin kucağı. kucak.

aralarında en az on iki sene olan iki cenaze arasındaki paralel kurgu. birinde susan var, diğeri ise onun cenazesi. daniel zaten baştan söylemişti, "bizim aile hayatlarını yarım bırakmak konusunda ustadır". eşzamanlı iki cenaze. anne babanın ve sonra kardeşin. daniel'in cenazeleri.

anneyle babanın hapishane sahnesi. babanın böcek koleksiyonunu çocuklara göstermesi. her ikisinin de inkarı.

bir şeyler daha vardı, unuttum.

bugünden daha ağır bir geçmiş, geçmişin ağırlığı altında ezilen bir bugün.

he bir de müzik kullanımı. o da olağanüstüydü. hep bir shine. kilise müzikleriyle hippie müziklerinin birlikte kullanımı. ama hep boğuk , kasvetli bir erkek sesiyle. umudu dillendiren umutsuz bir ses diyebilir miyiz? umut etmek istiyor ama edemiyor. ve nihayet en sonunda "ben bu ışığı büyüteceğim" şarkısında tatlı, umutlu bir kız sesi söylüyor şarkıyı. ben bunu daniel'in susan'ı hatırladığı, "hani bir ihtimal vardı" sesi, daniel iç dünyasındaki susan olarak görme eğilimindeyim. daniel kaldı, daniel yaşıyor, daniel'in bebeği doğdu, daniel halledecek.

Sidney Lumet'in notları:

"I used to think of it as the story of a young man digging himself out of his own grave."

"

The sun’s rays and the chemical composition of movie lm are not a happy marriage. Untreated, any

day scene shot outdoors, in cloud or in sunshine, will come out an almost monochromatic blue. To compensate for this, we put an amber-colored lter in the camera. This corrects the light so that the lm emerges with normal colors intact. This lter is called an “85.” When we shoot on an interior location with windows that let daylight in, we put enormous sheets of 85s over the windows to accomplish the same thing.
F o r Daniel, Andrzej suggested that we shoot all the scenes of the grown-up children without the 85. It gave everything a ghostly, cold,

blue pallor, including esh tones. For consistency in interior scenes, we added blue gelatins to the lights.
The parents, on the other hand, trapped in an idealized past, were treated in the amber glow of the 85s. It was added to their scenes, interior and exterior. At the beginning of the picture, we used double 85s on them. As Daniel slowly comes back to life, we started adding 85s to his scenes and removing them from the scenes of the past with his parents. With the parents, we went from double 85s to single 85s to half 85s to

quarter 85s. On Daniel’s scenes we added quarter 85s, then half 85s, then full 85s. Finally, in a scene toward the end of the picture, when both children visit the parents in jail, we were back to normal color. Daniel had purged himself of his obsessive pain, and life could now resume for him."

"In Daniel, the palette was critical. Every color that was used for the parents had to be compatable with the heavy use of 85s that gave the parents’ scenes the golden, warm amber glow we were after. The scenes with the grown-up children had to allow an emphasis on the blue or cold side. A warm brown would have fought against what we wanted to achieve with the grown children, and blue would have hurt us in the scenes with the parents."

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There were two scenes where Daniel visits his sister in a psychiatric hospital. The second scene, where he carries his now catatonic sister around the room, wasn’t as moving as I’d hoped. I eventually realized that nothing was wrong with the scene. The

problem lay in the way the rst scene between them had been edited: the scene had emphasized him. As a result, the second scene provided no new revelation about him. It seemed redundant. After the rst scene was recut to emphasize the sister’s pain, both scenes played much better. She was very moving in the rst scene, and we still had something new to discover about Daniel in the second."

"Like everything about Daniel, the score was easy to conceive and hard to execute. For the only time in one of my pictures, I used music that already existed. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use Paul Robeson recordings. He was perfect for the period. He was right politically, since it is at a Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York, that one of the leading characters has a traumatic experience. But which songs, and where to spot them? Through trial and error, the score shaped itself. The rst song, “This Little Light of Mine,” didn’t occur

until halfway through the picture. It was reprised at the end, when Daniel, restored to life, attends an enormous antiwar rally in Central Park. Only this time around, it was played and sung in a more modern, Joan Baez arrangement. For his sister’s funeral, “There’s a Man Going Round, Taking Names” worked wonderfully. Editing had to be changed to accommodate the already nished recordings, since the changes we were allowed to make in them were very limited. We could cut a chorus, but that was about it. Two other Robeson recordings were used, including his

magnificent “Jacob’s Ladder.”"