The Essentials: 5 Amazing Joe Wright Scenes You Need To Know

Pride & Prejudice – The Dance
Although technically not one shot (when all is said and done, there are three separate cuts), the shots themselves are quite long and the scene, as a whole, might be the most Wright-ian (new term!) moment of the bunch. In the unforgettable dance from “Pride & Prejudice,” based on Jane Austen‘s beloved 1813 novel, Keira Knightley plays Elizabeth Bennet, who is in the process of being wooed (and indeed wooing) the stately and grouchy Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) during a highly choreographed ballroom dance. (The two stars appear in “Anna Karenina” in a very different relationship – they play siblings.)

The sequence, under the supervision of cinematographer Roman Osin, follows them delicately as they perform the smaller portions of the much larger dance. It just stays with them. It’s mesmerizing, but less for the technical virtuosity and more because we’re able to get in between them with their verbal sparring. It just goes on and on, and then, it breaks, and when it breaks, and this is one of the more genius visual flourishes in Wright’s oeuvre, the rest of the dancers in the ballroom melt away and it’s just Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth. It’s the perfect visual manifestation of their closeness and connection, simple and brilliant, and when the sequence snaps back to include the other dancers, it’s a painful, heartbreaking reminder of all of the outside noise that infected courtship back then.

The sequence is striking, even if it is Wright in his visual infancy, and the highlight of a highly enjoyable period romp. Without experimenting with sequences like this, we would never have the glory and opulence of “Anna Karenina.” Thank you, “Pride & Prejudice.”

Atonement – The Dunkirk Evacuation   
If there’s a single shot Joe Wright is known for, it’s a four-minute tracking shot in the middle of his adaptation of Ian McEwan‘s literary juggernaut “Atonement” that takes place during World War II’s evacuation of Dunkirk. It follows lovelorn soldier James McAvoy as he walks along the war-ravaged beach, cranes up to see a cluster of soldiers singing a patriotic hymn, and surveys the damage, before reconnecting with McAvoy. It’s one of those shots that you can’t help but be dazzled by (even people unaware of filmmaking technicality were blown away by it), a truly indelible moment in a movie filled with them.

All of this makes it such a surprise to know that it wasn’t originally supposed to be a single shot. According to McGarvey: “Initially, it wasn’t one shot. On the page, it was read as a number of scenes that occurred. We were going to shoot it as such.” It was, like “Anna Karenina,” a matter of both practicality and artistry that necessitated the single shot. “But then we looked at the location and firstly, we were on a beach. And a beach is only traversable for three hours on the day. So it meant that it was the only day we could shoot, three hours. And once we scouted the location we realized that the afternoon was the best for light because otherwise it was very flat-lit and horrible-looking. So once we established time for the shoot and optimized the time of day when the tide was out, we realized it had to be one shot.”

What’s also surprising to hear is that McGarvey didn’t really want to do it as one continuous shot. “I was wary of it. I really didn’t want to do it in one shot. At that point in the film I thought that it would be too totemic, it would overwhelm the subtleties of the rest of the film,” McGarvey said. Once again, though, he was swayed by Wright’s unrelenting vision for the sequence. “Joe, very wisely, argued, that the swirling nature of the camera would be the perfect expression of Robbie’s hallucinatory state.” There was other reasoning, too. “He also had this notion that the camera would shift between an objective and subjective point of view, so you could toy with those two modes in the one shot. And we realized that it would be a challenge but the right way to tell that part of the story.”

The actual nuts-and-bolts of shooting it, McGarvey admitted, was “terrifying.” And even though they made “a scale model of the beach and worked out the trajectory,” with Joe Wright individually addressing the thousand extras (most of them from the town where they were shooting), it wasn’t smooth sailing. (McGarvey is quick to point out the enormous contribution of Steadicam operator Peter Robertson, who also did the aforementioned overture sequence in “Anna Karenina,” “who jumped on and off of milk carts, he was on a rickshaw, he was climbing up stuff.”) After a lousy first take, and an okay second take, they finally hit their sweet spot with the third take.

“The light was extraordinary with this amazing cloud that was blocking the sun and there was just an emotion there,” McGarvey said. Although there was a fairly sizable stumbling block. “In the middle of the take the microwave link back to the video village gave up so Joe had no idea if he got the shot or not. I knew. But Joe had no way of seeing it. And Joe said to do one more take,” McGarvey explained. Then he added: “Talk about a sphincter-tightening moment.” Wright made him do another take for safety, although that fourth take was more or less a disaster, underlit and plagued by technical errors. “It was terrifying to wait until the next day until we had the shot. I remember watching it and thinking, ‘My that’s something.’ “

“Anna Karenina” opens in theaters tomorrow. “The Soloist,” “Pride & Prejudice,” “Atonement,” and “Hanna” are all available on home video.