Green Street

The second film I have watched is Green Street, which is a crime drama.

Firstly the narrative structure demonstrates the three equilibriums. The equilibrium shows the introduction of the West Ham United firm and tells us what they are all about. The link between the equilibrium and disequilibrium is when the 'yank' goes to the football with his brother. The disequilibrium is made up by showing how the yank slowly fits into the West Ham firm and him learning about how they work. The rest of the firm are against americans, but his brother, the firm leader tells them he is a good one. One member of the firm see him at The Times and suspects him of being an undercover journalist as they know he studied journalism at Harvard University. Turn out he is just visiting his dad. This is the turning point in the film. The link between the disequilibrium and the new equilibrium is when the woman turns up during the stand off between the West Ham and Millwall firms. 

There are two main scenes which show great production techniques. Firstly, there is a fight scene when the West Ham firm arrive in Manchester.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/a_fE_bh160Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 1:30-2:27

The use of different camera shots is very effective in this scene, starting with the overhead view of everyone involved, to the close ups of the main characters switching to the view of the CCTV cameras showing the audience that the fight is a crime. This fast editing pace between the variety of shots adds great excitement and helps the audience to feel the adrenaline that is pumping through the people fighting. As well as this, the rock music being played over emphasises the aggression of the characters. The close up shots in the fight scene make the audience feel as if they are at the location and are right in thick of all the action which makes it more entertaining for the audience to watch. The mid and long shots in this scene show the audience exactly what is happening to each character involved in the fight and what is going on around the area of location where the fight is taking place. Allowing the audience to see what is going on are the fight location makes it easier for them to imagine they are at the location and makes them feel more involved. 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/laFaG3zzQTM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 4:18-9:30

This scene also demonstrates a large variety of shots similar to the fight scene in manchester which has the same effect on the audience, however there is a very calm score being played over the top giving the audience a sense of a number of different emotions.


This film demonstrates Claude Levi-strauss' theory of binary opposites quite well, as do many films. This theory explains who two people with opposite personalities work against eachother to move the story onwards. For example in Harry Potter, Harry Potter and Voldemort are a perfect example of good vs evil. Similarly, most films have a distributor and a protect and a hero and a villan likewise. In this film, the good vs evil appears in two ways, in which the 'yank' links them both together. The first way this theory is portrayed is between the West Ham fans vs the other teams hooligans. From the West Ham fans' point of view, they are the good people and the hooligans of the other teams are 'evil'. The 'yank' is a small part of the West Ham fans hooligan group. However, the 'yank' is see as the evil by the West Ham fans firstly for just being american and secondly because he is a journalist who is seen at The Times and is suspected of getting the West Ham hooligans in to trouble.