December 14, 2020

Another perfect pairing of sound & vision - Notting Hill & Bill Withers

Richard Curtis films are usually an anathema to me but this scene below is pretty perfect. Don't shoot me please.

Will (Hugh Grant), a bookshop owner in Notting Hill has had a brief dalliance with a movie star called Anna Scott (Julia Roberts). It's like a dream, it's too good to be true and of course it is when he finds out she already has a boyfriend. So he spends the next 6 months in a slump. 6 months that pass by rather uniquely.

 

In one unbroken shot seasons change, relationships start and die, snow arrives and melts, pregnancies end and new life appears, we get all the weather, the seasonal fruit & veg for sale on the market stalls change, umbrellas appear and vanish, winter clothes are thrown on and discarded, flowers blooming signalling the start of spring and all to the sound of Bill Wither's pining for a lost love. It's a brilliantly economical way to show the passage of time and a perfect pairing of sound & vision in a film most people will just laugh at. 

Previous pairings

Beetlejuice
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