10 10.20.
Above and opening page: Screen grabs from TwitterScreenland
Photo illustration by Adam Ferrissa news event. But it has the elegance and
integrity and uncanny formal symmetry
of something scripted.
One remarkable example is a recent
video of the teenage climate activist Greta
Thunberg, shot at the United Nations in
New York on the morning of Sept. 23. The
clip begins with Thunberg standing at the
edge of a lobby crowded with onlook-
ers and reporters. The camera is tightly
focused on her face, and we watch that
face transform. Thunberg’s eyes narrow
and harden; her mouth twists into a skep-
tical scowl. Suddenly, the camera whizzes
back to reveal the object of her glare.
President Trump has entered the
room. He is flanked by aides and
dignitaries, and his mouth is moving rap-
idly, as it often does. But what seizes our
attention is Trump’s imposing physical
presence in the foreground of the shot.
We watch him move, with an imperious
rhinocerine trudge, into the center of
the frame, until he obscures our view of
Thunberg almost altogether.
This sequence lasts only a few sec-
onds, but it is a complete narrative, a
story told so deftly — with such faith-
fulness to Aristotelian dramatic prin-
ciples and so sure a command of cine-
matic clichés — that it’s hard to believe
that it wasn’t cooked up in Hollywood.
The blocking, the beats, the zipping
camera movement and, especially, theexaggerated actions and reactions of
the protagonists — all seem designed to
heighten the drama and to underscore,
for anyone who may have missed the
point, that we are witnessing a stark
morality play. The episode even had a
foreshadowing prologue. That morning,
in a speech to the world leaders gathered
at the United Nations Climate Action
Summit, Thunberg delivered a warning.
‘‘My message is that we’ll be watching
you,’’ she said. ‘‘The eyes of all future
generations are upon you.’’ And there
she was, not long afterward, fi xing the
planet’s most notorious climate- change
denier with what the internet quickly
deemed a ‘‘death stare.’’‘I think a lot of
us can relate.’