Peter Wollen first and most famously applied the study of semiotics and linguistic meanings to film in the late ’60s (and not coincidentally would go on to co-write Antonioni’s “The Passenger,” his late and great mystery about identity). He posits that all images in films have meaning, intended or not, and how they represent narrative events is at least as important as what they represent.
How images are composed, move, cut together, and even what is left out (intentionally or not) also have meaning for an audience watching. Film is “read” — cognated intuitively - in real time, in the unalterable forward movement of the projected film. Each frame is a manufactured (determined and captured) image representing ideas intentionally and inadvertently. Image after image, word after word, composed space after composed space, meaning is created, and each idea builds on the last to create a rich tapestry of behavior, events, and a world view. Not only is the text of the narrative created, but also an underlying subtext as well; a foreground and a background; what’s said and what's implied; a text and a texture in which it resides.
Usher presents itself as a “hit man” film, a presumed genre in which the lead character kills for a living. Yet I’ve placed him in a quite determined situation — a movie theatre — which serves both as an environment that contrasts his previous experience and may confound his (as well as our) expectations of what he does, and how well he does it; and as a self-referential (as well as reverent!) artspace, an opportunity to depict, and reflect upon, an environment committed to film.
