And today we're doing a one scene breakdown of the courtroom scene from the movie.

Nor I have to say that your account that this marriage takes place in an alternate reality by suddenly moving to L.

A and insisting on an L A residents the call is withholding.

Henry alienated him from his father, just turned Charlie's world upside down.

It seemed that's mentioned a lot to me about the movie is the scene, actually, that comes after this, which is the scene where Charlie Nicole and of having a fight in Charlie's apartment.

And I've done many discussions and breakdowns of that scene.

But actually, I think that scene really relies on this scene, because this scene is where the lawyers sort of take control of the situation and Charlie Nicole both, in essence, lose their voices.

They've hired these people to speak for them, and it starts to go beyond where anyone could have imagined there voiceless, even though they're being given voice, which is was an irony in the sea.

The principal reason people came to the theater well, that may be true 10 years ago.

Because Charlie Nicole are largely silent in this sequence.

I deliberately didn't put in a lot of direction for their characters.

I tried to keep it very spare.

So, like, you know that the things it's a lot of just physical, like Nora turns and stares at Charlie.

Nora turns to Nicola shrugs.

You know, here we said, Charlie looks humiliated.

The judge wipes his runny nose and interrupts.

It's a lot of just very physical direction on.

I did that deliberately because I don't I didn't wantto push emotion even in the script, onto the actors.

I wanted them to be present for what was being said and to bring themselves to it, which, of course, we see that they do.

In the movie, the call is withholding.

Henry alienated him from his father, which just turned Charlie's world upside down.

It amounts to an ambush holding J.

Just one thing to point out is, that's the first time we hear the judge, which is the only time we suggest that there's somebody else in the room with them, because the experience of watching it is almost a Ziff.

It's just these people.

Chris Carbo Seo did the sound with May.

There's some coughs you hear place like little squeaks of chairs because, you know, we didn't want to make it so intimate, but we don't see anybody except for them.

Up until this point, most often the focal length is gonna be on the lawyers, and you're gonna have the protagonist, Charlie Nicole are often out of focus in the background, which I do like in these sequences because Laura and rare, so dominant and also just such powerhouses is actors that you're watching the lawyers.

But if you actually think toe loca or do look, there's almost this sort of slightly out of focus expression in the background, which I think, in a way, is more effective in Maur moving because it does make you project a lot onto them of what you think they must be feeling or thinking.

Actually, when we were rehearsing it that we had even sort of played around with Nora standing, too.

But we found that Nora Away was gonna be more powerful staying where she was, and Laura came up with the great taking off her coat and that something came in a costume fitting when she was like, Maybe I could have this coat and I could take it off so she and some sense of reflexes or power there, Where's Ray?

Cut?

It needs to stand in point, and his character is more aggressive in that way and more physical in that way, alienating well, those are fighting words, and it simply false and does nothing to further this settlement.

Recap of the situation is outrageous, and although California is without doubt a no fault state, it bears mentioning in the accurate recap of this situation that Charlie had had extramarital affairs.

An extramarital affair.

Actually, a movie that we looked at as reference for this sequence was Dr Strangelove, The Stanley Kubrick movie.

Partly because you have so many people at tables in that movie, there's all that suffered the War Room, and going into this movie, we knew we were gonna have a lot of scenes of people in either mediation conference rooms, courtroom and that movie.

Obviously, it's a different tone, but it it is both absurdist comedy and horror at the same time, and I feel like what these low angle shots have that we did our versions of If it's Railly owed up.

There is a kind of both, I think, an absurdity and also a menace to it.

And here with Charlie or with Nicole, I think there's more pathos in it because you really feel them sort of at the mercy of obviously the situation.

But also these rooms, you know, this room is no windows, those lights, asbestos, probably up there on the top of the ceiling.

It's just so impersonal.

And so, you know, again, one way of describing the sequences intimate.

But it's also so unintimidated the same time.

Do you really want me to go there?

Also, the scene posed a challenge both in the writing and the directing, because I feel like we've seen so many courtroom scenes.

I wanted to figure out a new way of shooting a court and really place it in the experience of both Charlie and Nicole.

So Robbie, the DP and I.

What we did is we always had the camera was always going down the table, both directions, which always keeps you both in Charlie and Nicole's perspective.

Always, which is something that's true in the whole movie.

But it's maybe more notable in this scene.

because you don't see anyone behind them.

You don't see the judge until the end of the sequence and its people in a row, so they're all facing outward.

It's almost proscenium like, which also spoke to sort of themes of performance that are part of this movie.

They come from a theater background, and in this case it's the lawyer's performing in a sense.

But there is a sort of sort of formalized way where everybody's standing, looking forward.

But they're all talking down the table.

So by flattening the space, and it actually puts Charley Nicole closer together, in a sense, even when they're far apart.

And I wanted to connect them always so that you really do feel this connection, you know, even though everything in the space between them is designed to break this connection.

If something we always talked about that this sort of presence of love is is in every scene you know, no matter what.

In this case, I think it is more.

It does have humor in it.

For sure.

You also these, like take out coffee cups and the water cups, just sort of all the transitional rooms where there are all these people just doing their jobs.

But for you, for Charlie Nicole, it's their lives.

So even having like just these coffee cups that are gonna make a journey through this room and then just be thrown out on the way out, I find something touching about that.

Let's go there.

Okay, Nicole has admitted toe hacking Charlie's computer and reading his emails, which, if proven, is a felony.

And no, I don't think you'll be too happy if I asked the coal about your alcohol consumption.

We shot the movie in 166 which is a slightly narrower on the sides aspect ratio.

When we were testing, the movie really was shots like this.

That led us to that decision because I find it frames the faces just beautifully.

And this is a shot that is not dissimilar to shots that we've seen previously in the movie, where Charlie is out of focus in the background and you know Nicole is is in focus, or vice versa.

You feel Charlie bear, even though he's really just a blur of even just his hands there, you know.

But this is also something I mean without these two actors thes shots are kind of meaningless.

You have, I mean, just how much they convey an express.

Silently.

I think it's really beautiful.

And this framing is not new at this point in the movie, too, because even in earlier sequences, even when it's just Charlie Nicole in a room, we've often lined them up in profile one of the opening scenes in the movie when they come home and relieve the baby sitter and there's early tension between them, they're standing quite far apart from each other while they're having conversation.

And we shoot very deliberately threw her face to him in his face to her, of course.

Then at times we go very close on them.

In a way, I feel like we almost go like inside them.

I mean, it was like we get so close that you could really project it toe what they're thinking consumption in the evenings.

What?

She could fight it in Charlie one night recently, having just carried Henry to bed that she was having trouble standing while walking down the staircase.

I actually generally don't like Rack focusing because it's I feel like it's used so literally.

There was something about this scene that I felt almost pushed us to the point that we had to do this, that because of the previous shot we're looking at where this sort of notion of connection, even if one person's out of focus in the background on one handed or so with Scarlett and her interiority.

But again, Adam is sort of just suggested in the background.

And then here we go and we kind of match it with Adams interiority, and you deceived the feeling in the the depth of feeling on his face.

It is one of those things where sometimes I feel like a movie pushes you and challenges you to change style.

The emotionality of the movie freeze something up technically, that we're able to do something that we weren't able to do previously, and that's what happens here.

It's gotten to a certain point in this scene where I felt like I want to see her and in connection with him, and I want them both in focus, but we can't keep them both in focus.

And unless, of course, he did a split Diop to which we're not gonna D'oh!

It's almost like the camera is trying to keep them both in focus but can't like we're technical and emotional meat rack Focus.

I always liked from another movies in The Graduate.

When Elaine discovers that her mother and Benjamin have been together, she turns around and we rack focus to Anne Bancroft, and then she turns back around and she's in the foreground.

It doesn't rerack yet, so she's out of focus.

But we know and can project what her reaction is now discovering that her mother has been in a relationship with her boyfriend.

And so when it does catch up to her, it's it's more moving.

It's very emotional.

Iraq we did.

It's not doesn't imitate that, but the you know, the earlier sequence is a kind of projecting onto the person you can't quite see.

We're having this moment between the two of them.

It's quite intimate, or at least our observation of it is.

But meanwhile, all this crap is going on in the middle there, still talking, receive in their hands like raise hand in Laura's hand that they're all still going at it and saying stuff.

And we have this sort of silent moment that it isn't even really between them.

It's It's our connect connecting them.

It's not them being connected themselves.

This is not an isolated event, so you let me know.

Nora will go there as needed.

Charlie, can I ask you how you expect to have more time with Henry when you don't exercise the time you already we've seen previously in the movie all their sort of everyday events of these people's lives that are now being used as sort of weapons by the lawyers in this scene, things earlier in the script where they're trying to put the car seat into the car, or Nicole confesses to maybe have had a little too much wine because she was nervous before she had to serve Charlie and I watched both core proceed roles and also thrillers.

I watched a lot of Hitchcock movies just because I wanted to see sort of how things were layered in things that are gonna come back later.

And so, like I'm paid 51.

When Nicole and Charlie are walking down the stairs, they both had down the stairs.

Nicole Sue's for second clutches the banister.

Charlie takes her arm way shot it very particularly.

And you know, you see her foot go down because I wanted it unconsciously to be something that would stay in the audiences memory because it's going to come back later in the courtroom that she drank too much is going to become again weaponized, whereas at this point, this is, you know, too human beings, you know, just having regular conversation.

He's totally understanding, he says.

I can imagine stressful time on Dhe, but then later it becomes this other thing.

No, it's not What's not the seats not connected.

The other thing that's mentioned where Charlie now has come back out to L.

A.

And he's got a rental car.

And Nicole discovers that the seats not connected and Charlie leans in the car seat isn't connected.

Anything trying to call both Crouch closely together in the back seat share a small laugh.

It's just two human beings talking.

It's not.

There's nothing extreme or way all can understand what happened there, and they're fixing the problem.

But it's going to become something later that the lawyers use and again that they weaponize in.

In this negotiation.

Sitting in the back seat buckle in the car seat is no.

I thought the car rental place.

They can't do it.

Once we discovered that we fixed it.

Counsel, I'm fairly certain you haven't exhausted in good faith the arguments in the case of this child.

In the meantime, we'll keep the status quo.

This remains in L.

A family for the time being, so I'm going to appoint Wei go from the judge to the judge.

It's a strange cut, but I feel like it connects them more than if we did it more elegantly, all about their perspective, you know, And it's in the opening sequence with a mediator as well, played by Robert Smigel for two.

Really?

Were you both?

You're cutting on the same person.

It's a very strange way of cutting.

So we're over Adam shoulder here to the judge, and there was a subplot that the judge had a cold, which I'll just point that out.

Those there's a tissue box and then we go over Nicole shoulder.

In a sense, it's almost looks like a mistake.

Now we're over her shoulder to the judge, so we're going from the judge to the judge, so we're just staying on him.

There's the tissues again.

And there his used tissues again Subplot.

It really aligned them, keeps it always.

It keeps telling that story of Charlie Nicole and keeping it in in their perspective that they're seeing the same thing at the same time.

And so much of the story, both visually in the writing but also very much visually, was designed to always remain in one or both of their perspectives.