Matilda Film Analysis

The film ‘Matilda’ was directed by Danny DeVito and was released on August 2nd, 1996. Ms Trunchbull is the main antagonist is the film ‘Matilda’ and is the psychopathic Principal of Crunchem Hall Elementary School. The director uses the techniques of camera angles, shots, movement, lighting and music to help show that Ms Trunchbull is a malicious and evil character.

Secondly, the director uses a variety of cameras angles, shots and movements to help create an unpleasant, aggressive and scary profile for Ms Trunchbull. Danny DeVito used low camera angles frequently to depict Ms Trunchbull’s character as a powerful and threatening principal. In majority of Agatha Trunchbull’s scenes they use extreme and medium close ups as well as zoom movement

Our first sighting of Agatha Trunchbull was her buying a car from Matilda’s father (croaky car dealer), although this scene was not clear on her appearance, it used low key lighting from behind to create a shadow which showed her large body figure and created suspicion for the audience on her appearance. It also made the audience feel threatened, curious and scared because of her body size and height compared to Matilda’s father. Ms Trunchbull first big entrance of her character was used to show the audience that she was the malicious and evil character of the movie compared to way they introduced Miss Honey who was acting kind and sweet with front and high key lighting. They depicted her character as the evil personality and appearance by using side lighting to make her look unflattering and scary, this lighting made the audience feel threatened and it created a concerned tone for the children around Ms Trunchbull. The next main scene of Ms Trunchbull was in the assembly, this was when Ms Trunchbull forced Bruce to eat a massive cake. The lighting used in this scene summarised Ms Trunchbull as a bitter character as it used low key lighting coming from the side angle (side-lighting) which was shining through the blinds making a line effect on her face. This created a daunting and nerve-racking scene for the innocent character Bruce, making the scene suspenseful and created an extremely violent look on Ms Trunchbull face. During the movie the lighting changes as Ms Trunchbull becomes less powerful and malicious and more vulnerable. In the scene where the children over power Mr Trunchbull the director uses high key lighting to open the scene and make Agatha’s face clear but still unflattering. The lighting in the film changes throughout the movie because Ms Trunchbull loses her strength of threatening and