Darren Aronofsky’s 'Limitless' Is Anything but an Ordina

The director does just enough to breathe new life into the NatGeo formula.

Darren Aronofsky, one of the most unconventional administrators of cutting-edge cinema acclaim, has back to National Geographic with a full documentary collection. While Aronofsky formerly took the reins for an episode of One Strange Rock starring Will Smith, his most recent project, Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, proves just how adaptive his auteur sensibilities are when carried out to Nat Geo’s greater rigid obedience to documentary filmmaking.

On paper, the brand new series now streaming on Disney+ sounds like your garden-variety Nat Geo fare. Take a muscled-up actor who performs Marvel’s Avenger and god Thor after which push him to his bodily and intellectual limits. However, with Aronofsky pulling the strings, the quit result is something however normal. Auteur style is often frowned upon within the international of documentaries, as a minimum at the kind of worldwide massive-price range docs that Nat Geo releases. The unstated rule is that the digital camera ought to study instead of participate. However, in Limitless, Aronofsky’s presence as a filmmaker is felt at some point of. Here are the Aronofsky-isms that may be visible in his new collection with National Geographic.

Aronofsky’s Extreme Close-Up Montage

Anyone who has visible Requiem for a Dream will recognize the stylized enhancing sequences that have come to distinguish Aronofsky’s paintings. These montages are a form of hyper-centered storytelling. A individual who leaves home for work should have a digicam observe them to the door, accumulating gadgets and announcing goodbyes. In Aronofsky’s global, this as an alternative could be achieved with severe near-u.S.Of a hand grabbing keys, a hat pulled from a coatrack, and a door slamming, every punctuated with a awesome intensified sound.

Confined to the restraints of documentary filmmaking, Limitless must depend on footage captured of real lifestyles as it unfolds. Even nevertheless, with a chunk of foresight in addition to effort in the enhancing room later, Aronofsky manages to inject a few of those montages into the series. Notably, whilst the device for a selected feat or revel in is brought, in preference to have a talking head take a seat and give an explanation for each piece, Aronofsky absolutely does an excessive near-up montage of them. In the sixth episode, “Acceptance,” as an example, close-u.S.A.Show every detail of the age simulation in shape that Hemsworth will wear earlier than any of it’s far defined.

Limitless Uses Wide-Angle Lenses

Another noteworthy attribute of Aronofsky’s film style that has found its way into Limitless is his use of wide-angle lenses on the faces of his characters. Usually coinciding with a leap in character development or when a character’s connection to reality is most distorted, the wide-angle lens intensifies a shot or scene. The elongated shapes of the face as well as warped backgrounds add to a sense of disassociation. In Limitless, this style element is used subtly in the interviews with talking heads throughout the series. Whenever there is the need to infuse a few talking points from one of the many experts, a shot from one of many interview sessions is used.

However, Aronofsky has done the most to stylize these shots as far removed from the current action. The interviewee is often half lit, with the edges of their face melting away into the background darkness, shot through a wide-angle lens and cropped in close-up so that their entire head doesn’t even fit into frame. The result is a major departure from the standard documentary interview style. Impressively, it doesn’t take away from the point of these shots and perhaps does a significantly better job of explaining that these shots are supplementary and were filmed independently of the main action.

Aronofsky Utilizes God’s Point of View

Throughout his films, Aronofsky has a tendency to reach for exciting angles of characters and scenes that push the envelope and further heighten the artistry of his movies. One precise that receives repeated use is the “God’s point of view” angle. Also called the chook’s eye view, these top shots welcome the viewer to take in an entire scene and possibly even change the perspective of the characters in cognizance. In Black Swan, the very last edit frequently consists of those overhead shots whilst Natalie Portman’s Nina is moving from naive to sharp-witted, innocent to villainous, white swan to black swan. This marker of Aronofsky rightfully fits properly in the documentary world and right here may be seen on every occasion Chris Hemsworth is pushing his limits and symbolically developing or evolving as a person within the technique.