In film, the emotion of empathy has the power to draw the audience further into the plot of the story. Using specific techniques to create empathy, we often notice that the movie will touch more hearts worldwide. The director of the film “Beneath Hill 60” has used film techniques to ensure that the audience becomes attached to each character in a certain way. The way empathy is portrayed in this movie is by flashbacks, love and romance, death situations, and age. Woodward, also known as Woody, is the main character of this film.
Throughout the text, the producers use film techniques to draw empathy from the audience towards the character. The main technique used periodically throughout the film is the flashbacks from Woodward’s past just before he signed up for the war. The producers create flashbacks to show Woodward and Marjorie’s journey of slowly falling in love with one another. Love is what brings the audience wanting Woodward to make it back from war so he can be with his soul mate.
This brings the audience closer towards both, as they would be empathetic towards the situation given as there is no guarantee that Woodward would make it back home from war. Each flashback that the producers and scriptwriters from “‘Beneath Hill 60” show us is the couples love story from the start to the end. We as an audience get to see, and become attached, to how in love the two characters are. In this film text Woodward’s flashbacks show that he asks Marjorie’s father if he has permission to send letters to her.
We see in this movie that he sends a jewellery box to her as a gift, made by his fellow soldier, Tiffin. This jewellery appears another two times in the movie, at the start and at the end. This jewellery box is symbolic of the horrors of war, and Tiffin trying to still find light and further his hobby in carpentry by giving his captain, Woody, a gift for his lady. Woodward was the captain of all the miners who had also enlisted into the war, and he met Tiffin at the very start.
Tiffin was a young 16 year old who was not ready to join the war. As the story of the film progresses the producers use film techniques to make us feel sympathy for Tiffin. One major technique and scene in this text was when Tiffin was left behind towards the end, in a small, dark, cramped tunnel underground. He didn’t have much time, and could’ve been saved. The audience was made to feel attached to him at that specific moment, as the filmmakers showed him sitting there, waiting to be saved.
As they were showing this, they also had Woodward sitting in the trench waiting to pull the trigger to set off the explosion that ended the war at Hill 60, while also being given an ultimatum. He knew Tiffin was down there, and had time to go and save him, but he also could not as he had everyone else’s lives on his hands. Who knew what would’ve happened if he did not pull the trigger as planned? This is the one film technique that made a massive impact on the audience as they are left with the unknown.
At the end of the film there is one other major technique used, and that was when the miners had gotten back from the war and were having their picture taken. Woodward picks up the jewellery box and stares at it in remembrance of Tiffin. The viewers also notice that while the picture is being taken a fellow miner/soldier that has been traumatised from the war break down as he keeps checking for bombs and gunshots. This then makes the audience feel empathetic for him and all the soldiers who had fought in the war, as it is a horrible thing that no person should ever of had to face.
Bibliography:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/beneath_hill_60/
