The movie Croupier centers around a young man named Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) who is struggling as a budding writer. With his father’s help, he obtains a job as a croupier at the Golden Lion Casino. He then uses the people and his experiences at the casino as inspiration to write a best seller. The editing style of this movie falls within thematic montage, with many jump cuts between scenes and few establishing shots. This style cultivates a link between scenes with similar themes and gives the movie a circular feel, as familiar scenes reoccur in the second half of the film. These mirroring scenes reveal Jack’s gradual change over the course of the movie, and I used images that show Jack both before and after he becomes Jake.
Marion Nell (Gina McKee), Jack’s girlfriend, is the only character cognizant of Jack’s transformation. She confronts Jack after she reads the first chapters of his book, which she immediately dislikes. She finds Jake, the protagonist, distasteful because of his lack of hope and morals. Marion then worries that Jack is becoming too much like his character because of their identical jobs and similar names. She tells him, “I want to live with a writer, not a croupier.” This points to the corrupting influence the casino has on Jack, as he slowly allows his cool contempt for the gamblers to take over his personality. By this time, he has already cheated on Marion with Bella (Kate Hardie), which brings his relationship with Marion to a temporary end. This marks the beginning of the degradation of Jack’s life as Jake’s life takes over.
However, the full change becomes apparent when Marion visits Jack in the hospital after he helped robbers steal from the casino. This time, she tells him, “I don’t want a criminal for a boyfriend.” At this point, Jack has made a complete transformation into Jake. Marion decides to forgive him if he quits working at the casino, giving him the chance to reclaim his life as Jack. However, Jack has no intention of giving up Jake’s life. This decision is sealed when Marion is killed, and Jack enters fully into Jake’s life once we see him with Bella. The strict focus on two major elements in these scenes, Marion’s statements and Bella, throws Jack’s transformation into sharp relief, allowing the audience to appreciate his change without distractions from additional information that would have been present had a classical editing style been applied.
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ReplyDeleteI find it interesting the Marion is the only person who is able to see his transformation. The woman from Africa, however, I believe also sees him transform. By the end we know that she is the girlfriends of his father, a man who knew him Jack well and would be able to spot the moment when Jack would be ready for the heist. It appeared, that this woman watched Jack, waiting for the right moment. This obviously did not help Jack when he found out that he had been used by his father, and there he fully transformed into Jake, the emotionless protagonist of his story who lacked hope and morals, one who could not be identified with through the audience. The close up shots of Jake and the medium shots of multiple cast members, I think, emphasizes his transformation as well. When the protagonist was Jack, it was all about him, however as the film continued and he becomes Jake, one who judges all and enjoys watching people lose a game he can never lose, the shot becomes more about the people in the shot as opposed to Jake himself.