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Film Review, March 3, 2026, Takashi Fujimura

"An Cailin Ciuin" (February 11, 2022) – Colm Barredo – On Reverse Causality and Rack focus　2026.3.3

■This film begins with animal sounds and voices calling out, yet no one is on screen. It tells the story of Cott, one of four sisters from a poor farming village, who is cast out of her family—her father (Michael Patrick) who squanders the household finances on gambling and her mother busy with childbirth—and sent to live with relatives on a farm for the summer.

■Cott

Cott is not good at studying, has no friends, and is an outcast among her sisters. She speaks in a faint voice that is barely audible. Despite her circumstances, Cott is enveloped in a supple light captured by female cinematographer Kate McCullá.

■Reverse Causality

When Cott arrives at his relatives' house, steps out of the yellow car, and faces his foster mother, Irene (Carrie Crowley), the frontal shot of the two of them, bathed in the slanted light, reveals even the unspoken aspects of their relationship. The camera is positioned between the two as the shot cuts back from the inside, reinforcing the reverse causality at that point. When filming is intentional, the shot (though heavily influenced by the filming technique) intensifies and exposes the reverse causality. The cut from the inside is one way to strengthen this reverse causality. This film is a series of movements revealed through reverse causality, and everything converges on the goal of capturing Cott as "that person."

■Classical découpage-style cutback from the outside

On the way home from the funeral, after Cott learns the secret of his foster parents from the woman, as Cott sits on a log on the beach at night and his foster father Sean (André Bennett) talks to him, the camera cuts back several times from behind them, from the outside. If this had been filmed from the front, the positioning would have resulted in several cuts from a position that could be considered a classic decoupage-like cut from the outside, but by filming from behind, the "instant" tendency of classic decoupage is not revealed. This scene is a private moment in which Sean, the foster father, talks to Cott, who has learned the secret that the foster parents had lost their son in the past, and Colm Barredo films it from a distance from behind rather than from the front to capture the psychology. Ethics is a stance of breaking away from the chains of narrative, and by adhering to this, the shots strengthen the reverse causal relationship. When Reverse angle shot from  outside shot is performed as a classic découpage-style outside shot, even if lighting adjustments or other modifications have been made, it is basically impossible for "naked event" to be revealed. This style of filming is a narrative shot that simply proves that the two people who are actually there are actually there, and is based on the spirit of "instant" that is incompatible with reverse causality. In this era, when even Clint Eastwood shot 169 classic découpage-style outside shots in "Juror #2" (October 27, 2024), where did the Irish director Colm Barredo come from, who tries to keep shooting without taking a single one of those shots?

■Rack focus
① At the beginning, when Cott leaves the house in the yellow car, the focus is on Cott's lower body standing next to the laundry, while the background is blurred. However, the focus does not shift to the father who comes to the car in the background and puts luggage in the trunk, or to the mother who is loudly calling out to her sisters.
② When Cott is peeling potatoes for the second time in the kitchen, the focus does not shift to Sean standing behind him. Afterwards, Sean places biscuits on Cott's table and leaves.
③ When Cott is told about his mother's childbirth and replies "It's none of my business," the focus does not shift to Sean, even though he is standing in the background and tells him to stop.
④ On the morning they return to her parents' home, after Sean says "It doesn't taste bad" at the dinner table, the camera cuts 180 degrees to a reverse shot, capturing Cott in the foreground and Irene, who turns to look at Sean at the sink in the background, in a vertical composition, but the focus doesn't shift to Irene in the background

These are situations where, in a normal film, especially one approaching 2020, the focus would usually shift, yet the film stubbornly refuses to do so.

★In case①, the people in the background are performing actions (putting luggage in the car, shouting for help).

★In case ③, Sean in the background only says "Stop it" without taking any action.

★In case ④, Irene in the background turns meaningfully and looks at her husband Sean at the table, performing an action.

★In case ②, Sean in the background is simply drinking something from a cup and not taking any action.

All of these vertical compositions are intentionally created, with the focus deliberately placed on the person in the foreground and the person in the background blurred. In such cases, if the people in the background begin a narratively meaningful action, in a typical film, the camera will certainly almost rack focus on them. This is the case with the action of "putting luggage into the car" in ① and the action of "turning around" in ④. Since the focus is shifted during the action, we will define this as "rack focus by action" (re-focusing during the action). This is a method seen not only by Hitchcock and Hawks but also generally, and it is a way to avoid revealing the mechanical method of shifting focus by rack focusing during the action. In ① and ④, although it is possible to shift focus during the action, rack focus is not used here. In contrast, in ②, the action in the background is a meaningless action that deviates from the narrative action of "drinking tea," and furthermore, the action is small and slow, so neither Hitchcock nor Hawks would shift focus in this situation. In ③, the action is not the physical movement of the person in the background, but the word "Stop it." This is defined as "rack focus through dialogue" because the rack focus is achieved through the linguistic activity of conversation. Hitchcock and others do not use this kind of focus shift either. To summarize, many people use the focus shifts in ① and ④, but not in ③ and never in ②. However, currently, a great many directors use focus shifts even when there is nothing there, let alone in ②.

★Godard's "Breathless (A BOUT DE SOUFFLE)" (1959/1960.3.16)

Around the 22-minute mark, a shot of Jean Seberg in the passenger seat of a car is edited using a jump cut that disregards the "continuity" of the shot. Jump cuts, which abruptly cut off continuous time, are violent because they disrupt time. To mitigate this and avoid the feeling of time discontinuity, cutting-in action was devised to overlap and connect scenes. So, since Godard rejected action transitions (cutting-in action) and used jump cuts, one might think that rejecting "rack focus by action" and using "rack focus through dialogue" in his focus shifts would be a Godardian "innovative" method, but that's not the case. While jump cuts leave no trace of the machine in the shot, "rack focus through dialogue," due to the absence of movement, blatantly exposes the machine's influence. It's not a human, but a machine that cuts; that's "rack focus through dialogue." If movies are to be made by AI in the future, then "rack focus through dialogue" might be acceptable. In fact, it might be a suitable method. However, if movies are to be made by humans, then "rack focus through dialogue" should never be used. Colm Barredo intentionally creates many vertical compositions, setting up rack focus situations, but never actually uses rack focus. Using dialogue as the starting point for rack focus means subordinating the shot to the conversation and burying the screen in the causal process of the story. The same applies to shooting with a shaky camera; if you shake the camera, the screen disappears, leaving only the story.

■The Black Postbox

In the middle of the film, when Cott, having been scolded by Sean, runs up the stairs to wash his hands, the light shines only on the steps, and Cott runs up them. The stairs are filmed first, and then Cott runs up them. Later, when he goes shopping in town and parks his car, a car pulls into the parking lot after him. Many films don't film it this way. They film the car arriving and then pulling into the parking lot. The bright red morning sun that briefly hits Cott in the back seat of the car is predetermined by the time and place where it hits, and the car drives and Cott speaks accordingly. When he takes a letter from the mailbox, the camera doesn't move away from the black postbox. In these cases, the location is not prioritized. The ground that Cott touches with her hands and steps on with her feet, what she sees, what she hears, the place, the space, the time are filmed as "naked event." Cott didn't come to that place; the place exists because Cott comes to it. The place doesn't become subservient to the human story, but rather builds relationships with people. By relentlessly reversing cause and effect, Cott emerges as "a naked human being." This film is filled with the joy and wonder of taking a shot.