Wiiiiide Aspect Ratio Blocking: RIDE WITH THE DEVIL

Or, Ang Lee likes a blocky bit!

Much of Ang Lee’s filmography is closer to the 16:9 aspect ratio we associate with TV. The Wedding Banquet and Lust, Caution are 1.85:1, which is slightly wider/shorter than 16:9, but not much.

Life of Pi switches ratios quite a bit from 1.33:1 (aka 4:3 or ‘square’) to one scene in 2.39:1 (wide) — it’s worth keeping in mind the extreme changes are to suit the story, and draw attention to the change, and also for many of the wider scenes, only one person is in the scene at all.

Then there’s Ride with the Devil at a wide 2.35:1 certainly befitting a Western, the genre perhaps most classically associated with wide, wider, widest vistas — the better to show off its open plains, my dear.

In establishing shots, action scenes with dozens of horses, and large setpieces with fire and weaponry, Lee uses this wide aspect ratio in similar style and effect to said classic American Western films.

But when it comes to the one-on-one or small-group conversations which are Lee’s bread-and-butter, he can’t achieve the kind of setup and flow in his earlier work (which we looked at in depth here!).

So, what Lee does is . . .

Establish In Wide

Establishing in a wide, wide shot lets Lee make the most of vistas; even when the scene is an intimate one, he often goes so wide you can’t see characters’ faces at the start.

Move Close for the Two Shot

Lee likes to get close to his characters; he wants to show their micro-expressions, the flashes of love or fear or understanding in their eyes. To enable this in Ride with the Devil’s wider aspect ratio, Lee comes in close.

Real close.

So close he sometimes cuts actors off below the chin

Even then there’s so much more frame to ‘fill out’ with set dressing, landscape, and/or other characters. So when Lee decides to shoot the majority of conversations as closeups, he has a few main options pending how many people are in the scene: singles, doubles, and mixes of singles and doubles.

Singles

Here’s a conversation between three people, with the ‘coverage’ entirely in singles, two clean and one dirty.

Doubles

Here’s a conversation between Jake (Tobey Maguire) and Sue Lee (Jewel), covered almost entirely of variations on this shot-reverse-shot two shot.

Each character fills out the others’ frame, while a chair and crutch in the background of each ‘break up’ the white background.

Mixes of Singles and Doubles

In this scene with three characters are talking, Lee uses one single (dirty) closeup, and two characters together in a slightly wider (still dirty) two-shot.

Takeaways

Because features are shot so out-of-order, it’s impossible (without shooting schedule and/or shotlist) to tell whether this style was always the plan, or whether Lee started leaning into it more and more as the shoot went on. But however and whyever, the majority of small-group conversations play out this way.

The next year Lee shoots epic Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in the similar 2.39.1 — the only other time he goes so wide, and in his film which is (arguably, but I maintain) most about allowing wide flowing action and least about intimate, realistic conversations.

Eight years later he makes his Oscar-winning American Western Brokeback Mountain — again, the genre most likely to utilise the ultra-wide screen — in a much ‘thinner’ 1.85:1, and he’s kept all his subsequent films thinner and taller.

None of this is to say anamorphic or ultra-wide is the wrong choice for any project or genre or director, but when you consider your choice of aspect ratio it’s worth considering just convention, it’s worth considering how those conventions work with what you’re trying to achieve and how you want to display not only your sets and tableaus but how you want to shoot the majority of your conversations and closeups.