12 Angry men - How a movie changed law in The Great Britain

It was February 5th. I was attending  Bangalore International film festival. I was waiting in the line to watch my next film, the person standing behind me in the line happened to be a Film director. We started talking, after a while we talked about the movie "12 angry men". I had watched this movie five times and I was a huge fan of the movie. And then he asked a question about the movie it was " What is the most important element in '12 Angry Men' without which the movie would have failed?". I thought I knew the answer but I didn't. I told one answer after the other, he replied saying "no" over and over again. I gave up. I was frustrated. "What is it?" I asked. He told me; lets keep the suspense this way. I'll reveal the answer in the post below.

This 1957 movie is very popular in my college. Because of the fact that the protagonist is an Architect. Henry Fonda who is playing the juror #8 in this film is an architect. Very less number of movie are out there which uses architects. When a movie comes out which has anything to do with architects or architecture, the people in our college go nuts!

This is not an analysis of the film. This is more a detailed observation on the same. And I'm gonna spoil everything, So watch the film and come back.

Law and Order:

It is believed that the justice system was changed in Britain after the release of "12 Angry Men". The fact that a person can persuade the entire jury room to change their mind from "guilty" to "not guilty" was pretty disturbing. What if the criminal was guilty? What if he had committed the crime and walked out. This is the reason for the abandoning of the Jury trial system in Britain. 

In India a similar case occurred. Commander K. M. Nanavati vs. State of Maharashtra. K. M . Nanavati who had murdered his wife walked out without any punishment as the jury believed the person was not guilty. This incident stopped the Jury trial system in India.

You can watch the recent film "Rustom" to know more in detail.

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The use of Rain:

Many of the film analysis fail to recognize this element. The entire film takes place inside a room. Now, our eyes will get bored if we look at the same thing for a long period of time. And if you are making a 2 hour long film you need to change the location to stop the audience from falling asleep. Director Sidney Lumet came up with a simple, but an effective way to engage us. It was by using the weather condition outside the room. The movie starts with outside temperature of the room being very high. All the characters will be sweating and they will be trying to turn on the fan and opening the windows. 

But, as the movie progresses and the tension builds the room becomes darker and darker, finally it will rain. 

Here, we see how the mood inside the room is same as the climate outside the room. This is really interesting, in 12 Angry Men it is very subtle. But, this technique is used by many film-makers all over the world. 

An Indian film-maker who uses this technique where he uses the climate to symbolically represent the state of mind of the character is Mani Rathnam.

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This is one of the scenes from his movie Geethanjali. If you watch the video we can see how the rain is elevating the scene to its max. Even the though the language is Tamil I'm sure we all understand what is happening in the scene.

The Answer:

In the first paragraph of this post I told you about the person who asked me the question. The answer to that question is the use of BODY LANGUAGE. Humans can subconsciously understand the body language of other human. It is one of the evolutionary traits. Sydney Lumet used this to the max. We know what a person will say before he opens his mouth.

The image above is one of the shots of the movie. Here we can easily say that the person sitting at the right hand side on the edge of the table is not interested in the things told by the person who is standing. If you look at each of the characters faces we can easily make out what they are thinking. This is one of the most important element in "12 Angry Men". In screenwriting terms this effect is called "Subtext". The subtext played an important role in the elevating the story, especially the climax.

David Fincher, the director of awesome movies like Fight-Club and The Zodiac is known for using body language in his works. Every frame of Zodiac is directed with body language in mind which adds more intensity to the scene. But, in Zodiac, Fincher also uses Body language to mis-direct the audience. Especially the scene where Mr.Alan is giving every hint that he is the Zodiac, but at the end of it we realize that he is'nt this scene starts at 1:22 mins of the movie.

Thanks for reading, I would love to discuss more about movies in Steemit. If any of you are cinema enthusiasts do comment me. I'm kinda feeling lonely here. Follow me for more posts and videos. Cheers!