The Pledge, directed by Sean Penn, focuses on Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) who is a detective in Nevada about to retire. While at a retirement party set up for him, and hours away from officially being retired, Jerry decides to take on one last case, with the promise of finding the killer of a little girl. Taking a look back at my previous blogs on The Searchers and Hardcore, The Pledge also shares similarities between the two films. All three of these films revolve around a main male character who chases something or someone with true intentions hidden within, a characteristic best known as being an anti-hero When it came to addressing how The Searchers alone shared similarities with this film, ponder or take a look at how both start and end. In The Searchers, the beginning and ending is essentially the same, with the setting being a house, using frame-within-frame camera shot, and having Ethan and his relatives in it. When it comes to this movie, and in this case, the beginning and ending is exactly the same with Jerry drunkenly staggering lost in thought with the looks of pain, anguish, and crazed. Another similarity is that both of these films also use the same song in the beginning and at the end of the film as well. (For reference here are some shots and video clips!) Aside from the similar plot in search of something, I was able to catch another small, but cool similarity between Hardcore and The Pledge. Both directors used an intentional mirror camera shot. It is used in Hardcore when Jake is in the hotel room with Niki and when Wesley leaves Jake, once discovering where he's been and what his plans are, and as for this film, it (side mirror of a car) is used for a scene transition a steak house where Jerry's surprise retirement party is at. As Martin Montgomery puts it, a dialogue scene consists of "mid-shots, medium close-ups and close-ups." He goes on to explain that a mid-shot is needed for both character to figure to create a line of action, progressive focusing on the individuals speaking for close-up's, and at the end conclude with a mid-shot or two-shot to help close a scene off. This similar description of what a dialogue scene potentially is scene throughout the whole film, but one scene that sticks out to me is Lori (Robin Wright) confronting Jerry (starts at 1:55:22) once discovering his plan to use Chrissy (Pauline Roberts) as bait to catch the killer. Not only are those shots incorporated, but so were counter-shot's ('reaction shots') when showing Jerry's demeanor and facial expressions when Lori exclaiming thing like "You fucking bastard Jerry", "She's eight years old Jerry, she's only eight years old!" and "You're fucking crazy." From this scene and dialogue alone, viewers see a despondent, lost crazed look on Jerry's face who doesn't answer to any of what Lori is telling him. This scene clearly depicts Roger Elbert's description of "a man determined to prove something, at whatever cost. He is not proving it to others. He is proving it to himself." His need or obsession to prove that he is still a great detective, this validation of being a man and having an identity at all, costs him to hurt Lori, lose his high reputation with his past co-workers, and look like a fool. A lonely one. I'm a sucker for thriller films such as this one, but boy does the ending leave me with quite a few questions, alongside John Fraim, that other films within this genre would mostly answer. Like, will Jerry mend the relationship with Lori and Chrissy? Did he even love Lori to begin with? Will Jerry investigate the collision and make the connection that the killer planning to meet Chrissy is dead? Does Jerry prove that he was right all along? While I wish those questions could have been answered with a few more minutes of film, I have no doubt the ending was anything but intentional, and overall, it was executed well. So, if you like thrillers, such as myself, a fan of Jack Nicholson-or Sean Penn, or enjoy films that leave your imagination to fill in cliffhangers, The Pledge is definitely a film to watch.
Take a look at where I gathered some information to create this blog!
Roger Elbert's Review of The Pledge The Pledge: To A Murdered Girl's Mother? Or To A Little Girl? Film and Prose Fiction - Martin Montgomery found within Adaptations Now: The Past, The Present, and Future of Film and Literature **revision made due to accidental repeated image
9 Comments
Jake Ranieri
3/1/2019 08:16:45 pm
I enjoyed your write up of the film, and I too really enjoyed the suspense of the film. I believe that the end of the film was set a little into the future from the climax of the film, and that in that time Jerry has become a drunk, muttering fool. If you remember the actual pledge he makes to the mother in the beginning, he says that he will risk his "souls eternal salvation" and I believe that the end of the movie showed him losing his souls salvation.
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Adrian Fulgencio
3/2/2019 09:51:59 am
Now that you mention it, the three films do have a similar plot line. I wish I would have noticed it earlier so I could have incorporated that into my blog but great catch.
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Chris Toth
3/2/2019 08:54:54 pm
First off, I love how you put your blogs together and the way you put screenshots of scenes from the movies in the blog. It makes people and myself who have seen the movie, remember exactly what scene you are talking about. It puts a better mental image in your head understanding what you were getting across in your blog. Also, catching that the Searchers and The Pledge both have the same intro songs in the beginning of each movie was an amazing catch that I had no idea and did not think about or remember. You must really remember small details in movies a lot of people don't! I thought your catches were great and your blog was very detailed and put a lot of time and effort into it.
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Miranda Miscinski
3/3/2019 09:44:31 am
I really enjoyed reading your comparisons between the three films that we have watched so far, I think that this was a really interesting way for you to analyze The Pledge! There were many similarities between Ethan Edwards, Jake VanDorn, and Jerry Black, and I believe that this acknowledgement only helps to further my own understanding of Jerry as a character and his internal motives to catch the Wizard. Additionally, I think that you caught--and pointed out in this post--a lot of very interesting similarities between the cinematic form of the movies, I did not notice these things on my own but found this to be quite interesting!
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Delaney Keating
3/3/2019 06:56:32 pm
Your analysis of this film was excellent! I also loved your usage of visuals, you had an abundance of them, making this blog easy to follow and fun. I really appreciated your visual comparison to this movie and Hardcore. Great job!
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3/3/2019 07:19:05 pm
Hi Victoria i really enjoyed your blog post! I really liked how you related all 3 movies we’ve watched so far. I agree with what you said about Jerry willing to risk it all to prove himself!
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Jordan Diedrick
3/3/2019 08:23:13 pm
Hi Victoria! I really enjoyed reading your analysis! In particular, I had missed that use of the mirror shot in all three movies. For The Pledge, I was more focused on how Jerry saw Stan use his authority as a member of the police department to trick the pedestrian into letting him take their parking spot. I felt this was the first instance of showing Jerry's flaws, another of which was when he said nothing when Stan was drawing such a racist depiction of Toby as well as standing by while Stan practically coerced a confession out of Toby. This scene also used some of those same mid-shots as the camera switched between Stan interrogating Toby and Jerry watching it live, his growing skepticism evident with each cut.
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Jack Carey
3/3/2019 08:44:57 pm
Hey Victoria, this is a great post. You put your blogs together in a great way by helping the reader see the visualizations you are referring to in your post. I agree with you that Jerry's obsession with finding the killer cost him is reputation completely. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your posts. Keep up the good work.
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Brian
3/4/2019 09:15:34 am
Lots of strong ideas here, Victoria. I thought your point about the circularity of the film's narrative is crucial, and something we've seen in each of the three films we've studied thus far. That ought to suggest something about narratives built around the idea of the search, for instance. Many stories are about going looking for something and eventually coming back to the beginning, and these particular films emphasize that idea quite heavily. You did a nice job of articulating that circular structure through images selected from the film. You might have gone a bit deeper into exploring why the film would choose that structure, but overall, strong work throughout.
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