Discovering ‘Lost’ suspense
“Lost” is a story about 14 plane crash survivors, including an Iraqi soldier, an American spinal surgeon, a Korean couple, and a 9-year-old boy. Oh, and there’s one more character: the island they’re stranded on.
We don’t know much about the island, except that it seems to kill members of the company it won’t free. It may have a charitable side, but the truth is that we have no idea right now. We have guesses about what’s going on there, based on cryptic numbers and supernatural occurrences, but they’re just guesses. Thanks to the DVD release of season 1, we know that we have five or six seasons to find out what makes the island tick.
As you may know, Season two started last week, and the opening episode was a confident, thrilling kickoff. While you can look at online threads and chat rooms for concrete speculations on why’s and if’s, it’s also worthwhile to notice structural choices made. The “Lost” creators cite Hitchcock and “The Twilight Zone” as major influences, and the proof is in the pudding. Here are some Hitchcock goodies to look for:
Hitchcock (a.k.a. Hitch) films often open with circles and show circles over and over again (see “Vertigo” and “Psycho”). I’ve counted three “Lost” openings that begin with an eye pupil close-up. Something about these rounded objects provides spooky, spiral ambiance. Plus, eye close-ups are just kind of freaky.
Hitchcock also championed unrestricted narration. In an interview with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock explained that in order to build suspense, the audience needs to be more than just surprised – they need to be informed. For every surprise in a Hitchcock film there’s often fifteen minutes of seeing what the bad guy’s doing, or where a bomb is, before the conflict occurs with the protagonist. Because of those fifteen informative minutes, the audience feels suspense that enhances the surprise.
Now consider the “Lost” Season two opener. The first five minutes of information creates terrific suspense that lasts the whole hour. No longer are Jack and Locke staring down an ambiguous hatch that’s more mysterious than scary. Because the audience knows (somewhat) what’s at the other end, the suspense is multi-layered, and exponentially greater.
Chris Blakesly is a film critic for the Utah Statesman. Comments and questions can be sent to him at chrisblakesley@cc.usu.edu.
DVD REVIEW
Lost – The Complete First Season
Aspect Ratio – 1.78:1
Dolby Digital 5.1 (English)
List price: $59.99
Discs 1-6 contain a handful of episodes each, and four of them have audio commentary.
Disc 7 contains all of the “bonus features.” Note that when renting Disc 6, included is Disc 7 – the bonus features DVD.
Highlights:
“The Genesis of Lost” featurette is informative, explaining among other things that “Lost,” was basically conceived in a week.
The Art of Matthew Fox – In the Jeff Bridges tradition, Fox made photography a side project during production. This feature is poignantly inspiring, with nostalgic music and commentary by Fox.
On Set with Jimmy Kimmel – The comic personality hams it up with the cast and crew on set in Hawaii. Very funny.
The Lost Flashbacks – Two flashbacks of Claire and Sayid that we never saw.
13 Deleted Scenes – Though many of these are familiar after watching the featurettes, they are still fun to watch, though not particularly insightful to story mysteries.
Lastly, if you have a DVD-ROM, you can view the pilot episode and read the used screenplay at the same time; very cool feature.