CONTEXTUAL STUDIES: National Treasure

As we did not have a third contextual studies lesson this week, Louis recommended a few television programmes to watch which we can talk about in the next session. One he recommended was National Treasure on Channel 4. This is about a beloved TV personality who has been accused of rape from years ago and his journey through the accusation, including how it affects his family as well as his reputation. After watching the first episode I can safely say I am hooked, it was really good and I just wanted to watch the next one.

I really liked it because it is in 'our' time, as in it talks about Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris and has Alan Carr at the beginning. Plus as it is about an important topic which has recently hit the news a lot in the past few years. Louis asked for us to interpret the visual aesthetics in the first and second episodes. I really liked the visuals in both episodes, virtually

Screenshot from 4OD's National Treasure

every scene is shot in low-light which gives the atmosphere an eery feeling and for me, made me want to keep watching thinking something big was going to happen. Even objects that were meant to be white/bright, such as looking out the window during the day, had a warm look to them, keeping to the low-light theme. It's set in autumn as there

Screenshot from 4OD's National Treasure

Screenshot from 4OD's National Treasure

are leaves falling off trees and the sun isn't bright and beaming all day, which then makes me think maybe they've kept with the low-light to emphasise the season and weather outside. Some of the walls in the Finchley household were black or painted a dark colour and the only light was from through the drapes at the window or from a warm-lighted lamp. The only scene so far which has had any sort of bright colour was when Paul's daughter, Dee, went to confront her former babysitter, Christina, about the accusation she made about her father. Her house is painted a bright red in places. However, the characters had shadows on their face and they were quite dark in general so they still managed to show the low-light.


After receiving feedback from Louis, I researched expressionism to see if it applied to National Treasure. Expressionism is a style of film drama where the writer shows the inner world of emotion rather than external reality. This can relate to National Treasure because the writer manages to bring out the emotion in Coltrane's character by the atmosphere around him, even though he puts on a brave face to everyone else.

References:
https://www.google.co.uk/?client=safari&channel=mac_bm&gws_rd=cr&ei=wiH-V-bZF-GH6ASxg5bwDg#channel=mac_bm&q=expressionism