The film I saw was Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. In the movie Martin Sheen plays Captain Benjamin L. Willard, a hired assassin in a secret mission to kill Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Kurtz has gone insane and has started a renegade sect of soldiers in Cambodia. He is not in his right mind and is still commanding troops. A select group of staff asks Sheen to go on a top-secret mission to assassinate Kurtz. This movie came out in 1979 to much success. It was nominated for eight academy awards, winning for best cinematography and sound. Now the paper is to deal with formalistic and realistic elements. Well, this really is more formalistic in every nature. The formal aspects of Apocalypse Now shine through in the camera, audio, and lighting. In these elements he truly has some sort of style or way in which he is making you view this film. You are not really a passive viewer like in an objective documentary. Coppola takes you through the in's and out's so to speak.
             In the beginning of the film we get some very cool shots. Nothing realistic, in any sense though. We get close ups of Martin Sheens face and eyes, overlapped by a burning jungle overlapped by helicopters. The images seem to float in and out of each other, very transparent and smoky. We get a shot looking down into the upside face of Sheen, then a shot looking up at the chopping ceiling fan (mimicking the chopping of the helicopters). This seems to me like montage by attraction. Bazin had said it was when two things are put together to create a certain feeling or mood. Although it's not montage, it's more extreme. Eisenstein came up with it and even he didn't use it that much. Maybe it's has some symbolism relating to the mental condition of this man. Bored out of his mind and waging war he waits relentlessly for an assignment.
             So I have established so far the use of the different shots, including the extreme close ups, is...