Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Natural Born Killers
1994 · Oliver Stone · Natural Born Killers on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice the film's look change from shot to shot. (light)
Richardson shoots on 35mm, 16mm, Super 8, video, and black-and-white within the same scene, so the texture itself keeps shifting under you.
Payoff: Each format change is telling you whose eye or camera you're supposedly watching through.
Watch how fast the images cut against each other. (cutting)
Corwin and Berdan built the film from thousands of cuts, colliding a predator, fire, or religious icon against the action rather than explaining it.
Payoff: Each collision produces a third idea neither image alone was carrying. In the reading: montage-organic/pathetic (the shock-collision). The reading calls this the pathetic cut: a collision of images that forces a new meaning to leap out.
Watch a background change behind a character mid-scene. (staging)
Rear projection puts a demon on a wall or turns a sky apocalyptic behind a window, so the setting shifts like a thought rather than a place.
Payoff: The environment behaves like something being projected, not somewhere anyone actually stands.
Listen for pop songs and dialogue samples layered together. (sound)
Reznor builds the soundtrack as its own collage, sampling and layering music, effect, and speech rather than composing one continuous score.
Payoff: The soundtrack argues the same point as the picture: everything here is footage, remixed.
Compare Harrelson and Lewis's scenes to Downey's tabloid host. (performance)
Mickey and Mallory play close to naturalistic in their trauma scenes, while Downey Jr.'s Wayne Gale performs as broad tabloid caricature in the same film.
Payoff: The uneven acting styles tell you which parts of the world are real and which are broadcast.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the seams between formats, not just the killers. The film already knows you're watching.