The use of long and medium shots as well as close-ups allows "The Lovely Bones" to come to life and act as a medium for sharing emotions. In the first half of the film Susie Salmon is overcome with the single emotion every child and adult alike fears, her life is about to be taken by a looming stranger. It is a chilly darkening day after a normal school day, Susie is following the usual route to her cozy home through a corn field when she hears his voice. After dropping a precious love note caught by the wind, Susie runs to catch it but instead runs directly towards Mr. George Harvey. This awkward, threatening and eery moment is depicted on film with long shots of Susie in the cornfield approaching her murderer. The long shot creates a sense of emptiness and isolation where no one is around to hear a scream for help or even see what is about to happen. The audience can understand the nervousness Susie must feel when she looks about and realizes she is alone with this stranger.
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Another shot style of "The Lovely Bones" relaying meaning to the audience is the close-up of Susie's treasured charm bracelet. This bracelet was on her wrist when she was murdered by Mr. Harvey. Her family noted to police she was wearing this particular bracelet when she went missing the day of her death. When police make a surprise visit to Mr. Harvey's home the bracelet is laying in the open as a signal dying to be seen by the police, a chance for justice where Mr. Harvey's possession of the evidence would direct to his crime. The close-up pauses on the bracelet laying on the doll house Mr. Harvey is making, while the police slowly walk around his home searching for suspicious evidence. This possiblity for the police to realize Mr. Harvey is the murderer is prolonged as the close up makes the viewer almost cry out inside for someone to see the truth it reveals. The use of this shot makes the meaning of the film all the more real as the audience understands for a moment what it must feel to have truth so close but yet so far at the same time.
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To provide the full spectrum of both sanity and unstability in life, "The Lovely Bones" features a medium shot on Mr. Harvey's most revealing moment of personal anguish and hunger. As Mr. Harvey sits alone awkwardly in his car one late night, he waits as Susie's sister runs by during an innocent jog. His personality is revealed to be unusual from any normal person observing a person passing one's car, as he gazes with an evil thirst for death as an animal does as its stalks prey. The medium shot perfectly reflects simultaneous outer and inner conflicts. The silent schemes of a killer are depicted beside the naive nature of a child aching for her lost sister. The irony of the scene is visualized by light upon only the watching eyes of Mr. Harvey, surrounded by darkness and a sleeping neighborhood.
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