What's In An Aspect Ratio?

 

I recently saw the film, Mommy by French-Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan, who used various aspect ratios as subtle visual/narrative device. Most of the film is shot in a 1:1 square aspect ratio, apparently as a metaphor for the narrowed horizons of their lives. In other more jubilant moments it switches to widescreen, and adjusts accordingly to the shifting tensions. The film is terrible otherwise (including its title), but worth seeing for the clever use of aspect ratio. I’m not sure this has been done before. Apparently, there is a matte used, or perhaps it was shot with a smartphone.

8/16/2016

[8/16/2024: In terms of photo and video aspect ratios, we’re now favoring the portrait aspect ratio for Shorts, but we have yet to see it in feature films unless it catches on culturally and filmmakers start using it. That film used the 1:1 aspect ratio as a metaphor and narrative device to portray the characters’ lives as being “trapped” or “compressed”. It’s an interesting device, similar to audio editing devices to add diegetic information, such as using EQs to give the viewer a sense of being in the world of the film for the emotional valences. The film Zone Of Interest also uses such audio editing devices throughout the film for this effect. The use of short/portrait mode may have an unwitting effect below the surface–another example of the slippage between reel/screen life and real life, regardless of whether it’s used in films. The portrait orientation may be working as it does in the Mommy film and life is imitating art: It’s shortening and cropping our peripheral vision.]