Summary: The Bling Ring

The Celebrity Obsession Sofia Coppola’s film, The Bling Ring, follows wealthy, California teenagers as they break into celebrity homes burglarizing millions in merchandise, all based on true events. The film specifically focuses on the lives of Mark, Rebecca, Nicki, and Sam, giving the audience a sense of their luxurious life styles of being handed anything they want. The film shows multiple burglary and party scenes, all with a carefree sense and no worries of repercussion due to their actions. A major scene (41:00-42:44) is where Nicki finds a gun at Megan Fox’s house and proceeds to hand it to a drugged up, Xanax filled Sam. This relaxed state Sam is in has her dancing around with the loaded gun, while pointing it back and forth at Mark

Enhancing this suspense, Coppola uses extreme low light where we can only see Sam and Mark in the room framed by the window filled with the high contrast of flickering lights from the alive city behind them, accompanied with a low, rumbling score playing in the background. Leading up to this scene the camera pans across the room to eventually zoom in on characters Mark and Sam. This zoom focuses the audience in and purposefully never cuts away from the two, in order to continue the suspense. Having Mark in this scene is essential as he is the only one ever feeling nervous doing a robbery, and questioning the teens invincibility. Sam’s dialogue is full of confidence, repeating “your good” and “its good” and mockery of Marks nervousness saying twice, “Does this make you nervous Mark?” These lines alluding to how these characters believe they are in complete control, when it is obvious to the audience that they are far from it. Cutting away from Mark and Sam, Coppola then takes us to Sam sneaking into her boyfriend’s place, where he wrestles her for the gun, ultimately shooting it at the wall. This contrasts this character’s sense of control, yet she does not think twice about it and focuses her attention on her