The Use Of Canted Angles In Ron Howard's Film, The Missing

Ron Howard’s, The Missing, is a Western about a medicine woman who works with her estranged father to save her daughter, who has been kidnapped by an Apache brujo. This father, Samuel Jones, came back home to make amends with his daughter, Magdalena, but when Lilly, Maggie’s daughter, is kidnapped, they are forced to work together to save her. The three key elements of cinematography that will be analyzed in this paper on The Missing are slow motion, canted angles, and swish pans. Firstly, Ron Howard uses slow motion very effectively in his film. In a scene about half way through this film, the camera focuses on Lilly while her and the other captured girls are being transported on horseback. As the men lead the capture girls across a small river, slow motion ensues. During this scene, slow motion is used to emphasize that she is in a hopeless situation. During a scene near the end of the film, slow motion is used again when Maggie shoots a man that is attempting to kill Honesco, an Indian who is engaged to one of the captured woman. This time, the use of slow motion puts emphasis on how dangerously close one of the people helping Maggie came to dying.

In a later scene, a canted angle occurs as Maggie starts to become very sickly and begins to fall over. The canted angle is used when the camera gives the audience the point of view of Maggie. The canted angle is used to give the audience the perspective of Maggie and to create the sense of uneasiness that she is feeling. The scene shortly following also employs canted angles. This time, the canted angles occur as Samuel and Dot pray over Maggie with smoke and a Bible while she is lying down. The canted angles in this scene are used to signify the moment of imbalance that is occurring because of the sudden sickness that Maggie is