EYES
RENAISSANCE
Renaissance depicts Paris in 2054, where reality consists of a world where all movement is monitored and recorded and the populace is kept in line and accounted for. The film focuses on the megalithic corporation Avalon and their quest for eternal youth by curing the disease Progeria. This animated film is similar to Equilibrium in the sense that the majority of characters experience no emotion. Hence the director Christian Volckman adopts the same contrasting shots of eyes with no emotion and eyes with emotion to communicate with the audience.
As animation can only portray so much realism, shots of eyes are used to express human emotion through an animated character. To emphasise the key characters in the film Volckman only shows emotion on the eyes of these characters. Hence, Karas, Bislane, Illona are the characters that show emotion with occasional sense of emotion shown through the eyes of Muller, Dr Nakata and Muller’s little brother. This creates a key contrast to enable the audience to understand the film and its key characters. This is most effective as this particular use of eyes in film relates to the overall contrast of black and white animation throughout the entire film.
The use of eyes in Renaissance is particularly effective as this film centres around Progeria, a disease which results in premature aging. A persons age is most evident on the delicate skin around a their eye. Hence, Renaissance utilises detailed close up shots of eyes. These shots are the most detailed in the film and show the contrast between the aged and the youthful. For example a close up shot of the eyes of Ilona is vastly different from a close-up shot of the aged Dr Nakata. With age being a key theme in the film, this particular shot of eyes is most effective for this film.
