Casualty evaluation

The scene starts with a presumably married couple laying in bed, back to back as far as way as possible to each other. The gloomy light infers that the relationship between the male and female is unstable, and they are not happy. As the scene progresses, you can see the couple don’t see eye to eye. You can tell the woman is determined to do things her way and for herself, as she rejects the man trying to help her. She is very passive towards him, using one or 2 word answers. The other family involved in the scene contrasts to the first couple. A family in the kitchen, enjoying their breakfast with children playing. The father then leaves for work, a happy family man. The next time we see him his personality has changed to a unstable, nervy man. He takes a meat cleaver out of his briefcase, and ascends a block of flats as if he knows exactly where he is going. At the same time as this happens, an elderly woman is hallucinating in her flat; she hears a disturbance and goes to check it out. This makes the audience think the father is breaking into the woman’s flat, however he is actually breaking into a black mans flat that we saw earlier in the scene. In effect, it is a red herring because it manipulates the audience into believing something that doesn’t really exist. The woman’s hallucination is controversial because the clown can be seen as diegetic, but also as non-diegetic because no-one else except the audience and old woman can see it. The black man is startled by the forced entrance of the estranged father who is holding a knife, and doesn’t have much time to react before the butchering begins. As this happens, the camera moves to the left, which leads it behind a glass door. This shot is extremely effective because the glass is translucent, and so the graphic nature of this attack is masked by the translucency of the glass, but still leaves enough transparency to see the movement of the father, and the blood dribbling down the glass. The attack scene was ‘censored’ because of the time casualty is shown. It is shown relatively early on during the night and so the brutality of the attacks can not be very high. Later on the scene goes back to the father and the black man. The black man is clearly very seriously hurt and is slumbering round his flat, to suggest this. As we saw earlier on, the father seemed extremely unstable and he still shows this, by realising his actions with a very scared expression upon his face as he drops the knife, and proceeds to pick up the phone; possibly to ring 999.