FIG. 1 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 (David Yates, 2011): Voldemort’s disintegration.
underscoring an object’s or an event’s importance. But, in contrast to the more percussive nature of the projectile and its shock effects, floating aspects of mise-en-scène impart an altogether different impact, a kind of lyricism and awe. For instance, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), Lord Voldemort’s demise is temporally extended and visually emphasized by the cascading of his bodily debris into the movie theatre (FIG. 1). Negative parallax delicately enunciates the terms of this utter destruction— an interesting countrapuntal end for a relentlessly terrifying über-villain. With different measures of percussion, awe, and lyricism, films have always found ways to underscore the significant finality of this type of event. In the silent era, a major character’s death might be expressed by acting gestures—the clutching of a heart, an arm raised against a forehead, an agonized expression. In later film history, a hail of bullets and the slow-motion riddling and falling of bodies would suffice to foreground the moment in a complex mixture of forcefulness, wonder, and musicality. Again, because of its out-of-the-screen presence, 3D today musters a particularly arresting expression of mise-en-scène and the climactic action it supports. There is yet a third variation of negative parallax worth mentioning—what we might refer to as covert negative parallax. Hugo provides a model instance of this (FIG. 2). To gain more of a sense of in-screen depth, Scorsese places a character or an aspect of mise-en-scène just in front of the
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