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

that is adjusted to make the person seem closer or further away. During the first entrance of Ms Trunchbull, the director uses the technique of zoom to focus on Ms Trunchbull’s hands and feet. Zoom in this scene created suspense and suspicion on the characters appearance but also frightened, threatened and scared the audience on the way they slowly revealed and zoomed up Ms Trunchbull. The next main scene is in the assembly when she forces Bruce to eat a whole cake, within this scene the camera is taken at a low angle when pointed at Ms Trunchbull but taken at high angle when Ms Trunchbull Is looking down on the children. This shows that the director wanted us to see Ms Trunchbull as the powerful, strong, hideous and threatening character and make her look larger than normal. The high angles are used when filming the children from Mr Trunchbull view to depict the children as weak, innocent and powerless character that are being looked down on by Ms Trunchbull. During the scene in which Miss Honey and Matilda break into Ms Trunchbull’s house, the zoom technique and extreme close-up is used frequently on her hands and feet as she jumps and swings large hammers, balls etc. the director used this technique to threatened and scare the audience as well as create a suspenseful mood and make the scene nerve racking. The director also used editing techniques such as flashbacks to show Ms Trunchbull always being malicious and evil and to create depth on the storyline. Although the camera angles definitely depict Ms Trunchbull as a powerful and threatening lady, eye-line match is used continuously when Ms Trunchbull is frightened of an object or animal. This technique makes the threatening Ms Trunchbull seem vulnerable and weak. Throughout the movie the camera angles and techniques change, they also begin showing medium close-ups to show her emotions and she loses her power over the children and Miss Honey. This type of change in the movie proves that the camera angles and the distances in the shots at the start of the film were aimed to show how malicious, powerful and evil she was and how weak she had become by the end. Overall, the camera angles depicted how the director wanted Agatha to be seen as the powerful character at the beginning compared to the innocent and weak Miss Honey.

Lastly, the lighting in Ms Trunchbull’s scenes were used to depict how the director wanted the audience to see her throughout a tremendous amount of the movie.

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

scaring the audience and becomes over powered. Thus, the director successfully used lighting at different angles and brightness’ to show Ms Trunchbull as the threatening and evil character.

In conclusion, the film ‘Matilda’ depicts Ms Trunchbull as a demanding cruel, malicious, powerful and evil character compared to Miss Honey who is innocent, powerless and kind throughout the film. The director used different techniques such as camera angles, shots, movements, lighting and her visual appearances to depict her has the harsh character and show her in a negative perspective. Ms Trunchbull appearance was threatening and unflattering and her personality/language was aggressive and vicious to the audience. The lighting and camera angles showed how the director wanted the audience to see her by making the character seem close up, bigger, stronger and larger than the children. These features were all used by the director to illustrate that the character, Agatha Trunchbull, is the malicious and evil character.