JAWS - Isolation Work

JAWS (1975) is a movie directed by Steven Spielberg which primarily uses isolation on characters and events. Spielberg uses long, wide camera angles of an open and alone ocean to add visual isolation to the characters. In the film, the main “enemy” is an enormous Great White Shark. Throughout the film the shark is seen very little and only close to the end -- or is represented by a pulsing, frightening score by John Williams. Creating an element of the unknown, Spielberg terrifies audiences with the might and ferocity of an invisible predator.

The first person to be eaten by the shark is a young woman on a midnight swim. She is cast mostly in silouette, as her character is not as important as what happens to her. She is quickly scooped up by the predator, tossed around like a ragdoll and disappears. Spielberg immediately creates a sense that death by shark is violent and immediate.

Early in the movie you learn Chief Brody is from New York City, not Amity, the village that the movie is based. He is instantly seen as an outsider, with little respect even in the position of Chief of Police. He also has a phobia of the water due to earlier events in his life. He does not fit in well on the beach-oriented island on which he resides. He is therefore isolated as a character.

Once the Shark becomes a problem for the town, Chief Brody has no respect or authority to help the situation as best he possibly can, since Amity requires tourists as much as the shark does. He only gains the courage to stand up to his isolation when he is confronted by the mother of a child devoured by the shark. He once again feels isolated by his lack of knowledge about sharks once oceanographer Matt Hooper arrives. Hooper also carries his own sense of isolation:  while he represents an institute, he is there by himself.  Brody and Hooper will be joined by Quint, a loner fisherman. For much of the movie, the animosity between these characters further drive the sense of individual isolation, even as they face an almost unseen, uncaring predator.

On Quint’s boat. Chief Brody -- representing the movie viewer -- is isolated with two more capable characters, literally from the rest of the world by his biggest fear, and with an otherworldly predator that lives in his biggest fear. Spielberg uses tight camera angles within the boat to give us a sense of claustrophobia, which emphasizes the claustrophobic isolation of man (men) against shark.  The shark seems to eat two of the characters -- although Hooper is merely hiding -- leaving Brody alone at the top of a mast on a sinking boat with a feeble rifle.  (Still, it’s a Spielberg movie:  Hooper and Brody both live!)

Even if someone doesn’t have a fear of water like Brody, Spielberg uses sound, camera angles, character isolation -- and three terrific actors -- to create a movie where the movie-goer feels a sense of aloneness and dread that follows many outside of the theatre and away from the ocean.

Other than the two other characters, I don’t know how much more isolated a character can get.