7 of The Most Atmospheric Films
One of the fundamental ways a film draws you into a story is through its atmosphere. When we think of a film, we often attribute it to some sort of mood, feeling, or tone - which is what we mean when talking about atmosphere in films. Filmmakers achieve this in a variety of ways, such as through setting, visual elements, pacing, and narrative. Even film genres often have specific atmospheric qualities. Like when we think of film noir we think of dark lighting, detectives, jazz music, smoky surroundings, and city crime. Not all films have such a defined atmosphere that you could throw an entire halloween party dedicated to it. Others are more subtle, and can invoke a unique atmosphere in the most subtle of ways - through simple aesthetic choices that gives it its own breath of life. Other films amplify their atmosphere in a way that creates an entire world for the film.
Lost In Translation
The storyline of the film is simple. Bob (played by Bill Murray) and Charlotte (played by Scarlett Johansson) meet each other in Tokyo and establish a connection. However, director Sofia Coppola builds an atmosphere of melancholy, longing, and loneliness that mastefully reflects the feelings of the characters and the tone of the storyline.
Bob and Charlotte’s dissatisfaction is manifested into the melancholic atmosphere through the setting of Tokyo. The shots of the vast, foreign city as the characters commute through it deliver their isolation and inability to connect with others. It’s only when they meet each other that they establish a connection - but even their short-lived relationship feels doomed from the start.
Lost in Translation on Wikipedia
Mad Max: Fury Road
Set in a post-apolyptic wasteland, the latest release of the Mad Max series creates an atmopshere that only furthers the action-packed craziness of the film. Throughout the film, Max (Tom Hardy) and Furiosa (Charlize Theron) attempt to escape from a totalitarian warlord named Immortan Joe and his deranged parade of soldiers in their fleet of junk-yard vehicles. The metallic, shoddilly designed vehicles, armoured with metal skulls and weaponry, rev through the desert with guitarists playing thrash metal on board. The success of the film's atmosphere owes itself mostly to the intricate set design, and how it manages to create a world where people have become mad, war-hungry punks in such an engrossing way. It throws you straight into the constant action of the film, ensuring that you’ll be kept on edge throughout.
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Taxi Driver
In his 1976 film, Martin Scorsese veils a gritty and smoky neo-noir atmosphere over the setting of New York City. We see the film through the perspective of Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro), feeling his disgust for the depravity of the city as he drives through it at night with his cab - which isolates him from the lurking pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers. The heavy shadows, blurred street lights, ominous lighting, and the incessant jazz music playing as he solemnly drives through the slum gives the city a sickly atmosphere of depravity.
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The Grand Budapest Hotel
In typical Wes Anderson fashion, The Grand Budapest Hotel keeps a fairytale, child-like charm throughout. The meticulous attention to the set design, bright colours, and symmetry create a strong sense of artificiality, making the world of the film seem like it’s made from a childs toy set. A miniature version of the hotel was actually built by the crew for some of the shots with its background hand-painted, making it seem more like a dollhouse.
What makes this familiar atmosphere work well here is the way it is contrasted. The bubblegum pink of the hotel and the whimsical concierges in purple suits act as the backdrop for the darker themes of the film, such as murder and war. The film is set in three different time periods in Hungary: during World War II, the communist takeover in the late 70s, and the post-communist 90s. The film mediates between the different time periods, and shows the once lively hotel becoming desolate from war. Just like classical fairytales often do, Wes Anderson uses colourful whimsy as the backdrop for a grim story.
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Blade Runner
Starring Harrison Ford, Blade Runner fuses neo-noir, cyberpunk and dystopian fiction to create a highly palpable and stylized atmosphere. The neon lights hazed from the contant downpour of rain, the night sky illuminated by digital billboards and flying cars, and the cramped industrial areas define the film's lingering sense of a cyber-dystopia. This atmosphere serves as the perfect backdrop to the storyline of the detective hunting down androids lurking among humans in a dystopian cityscape.
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The Shining
Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shinning is often lauded as the greatest horror film of all time, owing to its unsettling atmosphere. The opening of the film already boasts its unsettling and tense atmosphere. With heavy instrumentals, ominous music plays as the film opens in a heavily forested and isolated area of Colorado, where the story sets off with the Torrance family driving to the hotel they bought. The lurking camera glides over the lake and through the trees towards the road, making the land seem alive. Off kilter camera angles are used, showing the disorder of the world the family are entering into. As we watch them drive up the dwindling road from a high angle, a sense of tension is built as we, unlike the family, know that they are in danger.
The intricate attention to detail in the film drags the audience deeper into the unsettling atmosphere. In some of the scenes, furniture is moved around between shots. Between two shots, Jack’s typewriter is replaced with a different one. Although a lot of people won’t notice this on the first watch, the intricacy gives the hotel a sinister breath of life.
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Beetlejuice
Known for his films that exude a gothic atmosphere, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice takes it to another level with its bizareness and eccentricity. The film takes the haunted house archetype and turns it on its head with a very Burtonesque style of humour and quirkiness. The purgatory scene epitomises the atmosphere Burton was going for, with an office space lighted with sickly green and yellow, smartly dressed corpses carrying files and commuting via conveyor belt, and an overworked alien-like receptionist yelling at a line of the newly dead. Rather than flames, demons, and torture, purgatory is portrayed as long waits in busy waiting rooms with stressed out caseworkers trying to juggle their responsibilities.
