Sequence Analysis: Poison By Todd Haynes

Sequence Analysis – Poison Poison (1991) by Todd Haynes depicts the life of a scientist who accidently drink an elixir he brewed and must face the consequences. Tom the protagonist and his female colleague Nancy, takes a walk to town as a way to overcome Tom’s nervousness over his new appearance. He receives a lot of disgusted stares from onlookers as the sequence progresses and ultimately exposed of the reason of his skin condition. The sequence this essay will analyze portrays the back and forth conversation between Tom and Nancy, mainly about Nancy trying to convince Tom that his skin condition is regular and should not be ashamed of it. Haynes shoots a large portion of this sequence in Nancy’s perspective as she tries to comfort her
lover. The filmmaking encourages the viewers to sympathize Tom as he is publicly discriminated against just by his appearance. Various film techniques were properly utilized to emulate the feelings of Nancy to the viewer. Nancy’s actions and reactions shows how an audience would normally feel towards a loved one who has undergone some kind of accident. The sequence starts off with a brief non-diegetic ominous sound that signals the audience that something wrong or terrible will happen. It fades to the sound of seagulls, honking cars and busyness of the city as the main characters are filmed in a medium shot. The shot sets the stage for this scene to be within a city and to be populated by many people. The sound of high heels clunking against the concrete made by Nancy, emphasize the location of the scene and provides a sense of motion of the characters walking down the street.
Nancy starts off with comforting Tom about his skin condition, but the shot alternated between Tom and Nancy with the onlookers who looked at Tom with disgust. The first onlooker stared in disbelief, shown by her mouth wide open while the others just stared with judgmental look on their faces. Haynes focuses on the main characters with a moving shot and dialogue only from them to bring their importance in the plot. This scene is sensed as episodic as Tom and Nancy stumble upon two girls casually standing in the middle of the way. An over shoulder shot from the girls’ perspective allows the audience to look at Tom’s appearance from a low angle, bringing out the details of his face. A back and forth shot and reverse shots between the two girls and Tom and Nancy allows for a conversational continuity in this shot. The spit from the girl and them running away depicts the disgust for Tom’s appearance as Nancy wasn’t sullied the same way.
The sequence progresses as the main characters are served at a hotdog place, further showing the city ambience.
The medium shot is transitioned into a long shot to depict the distance between the vendors and Tom and Nancy. It brings out the wariness of the vendors towards Tom, by maintaining distance, you maintain safety as believed in society. Haynes further exploits Tom’s condition by making puss and bodily juices come out of his skin while eating his hotdog. This could be referred as a “cinema of attraction” as it uses special effects to worsen his appearance. Even the sound of eating is only focused on Tom, as Nancy’s chewing is silent. The shot alternates between Tom and Nancy in a close up shot to both show off Tom’s appearance and Nancy’s reactions to the flowing puss. Haynes combines both Tom’s frustration and Nancy’s action to comfort him to realize this love relationship between them and showing the audience that appearance does not stop
love.
An interesting use of sound effects is the car braking when Nancy’s singing is interrupted by Tom. It mildly informs the audience that conflict emerges from the couple as one is trying to help but the other is pushing her away. This lover’s quarrel is further displayed as they both look in another direction as they speak. The scene ends with Tom releasing his frustration of his looks towards Nancy and a long shot while Tom goes off screen. An intriguing effect takes place as Haynes starts a “horror” sound track while Tom walks away. Nancy exclaims Tom’s name in between the music pause to pose as a dramatic effect of not wanting to be left alone.
After that, a chase scene is implied as Nancy searches and runs after Tom. The music becomes more intense as Nancy first lost sight of Tom and continues to play throughout the chase. The first shot used is a low angle shot to display her unwariness and uncertainty of direction of where Tom ran. A brief Point of view shot was made, where the camera panned very fast from left to right. The viewer would have felt the distress in Nancy’s character as she tries to rush in everything she does which was to evoke panic as well. Brief pictures of Tom’s back was given to direct Nancy in a certain path and gives the chase effect that was popular in film making. As the chase continues, Nancy is shown in full shots and close ups of her feet as she runs. The effect portrayed here is to effectively change locations with a continuous transition without having to show the viewer the whole chase. The background esthetic also shows the change in atmosphere as it fades to a darker scheme.
Nancy finds herself in a back alley, where the setting slowly transition to a less cheerful part of the city.
The discussion between the two women gave a sense of direction for where Tom was, the man creepily greeting Nancy was there to show how she entered a dangerous part of the city and the last man she saw portrayed how she was frightened by his appearance, but not afraid of Tom’s appearance. Haynes portrayed the last man as a synonym to Tom’s face with the Leper condition, and Nancy was scared herself. On the other hand, she is not fazed by Tom’s appearance mainly because of her love for him. After this brief encounter with the strangers, Nancy is shown to be even more panicked as she trips over herself. This scene is familiar as it appears in a large portion of horror movies meant to foreshadow something bad about to happen. Furthermore the following scene turned the whole setting darker to gain a scary feeling of the night. The bar sign lights can be seen clearly to accentuate a time skip to an evening atmosphere where the creeps of the night run
about.
A man approaches Nancy with intent on sexually harassing her by his seducing voice. This scene amplifies the danger of the back street at night, but more importantly plants anticipation of the audience for Tom to heroically save her. Close-up shots are used between Nancy and the harasser to strike a feeling of claustrophobia of Nancy’s situation. In the background of the shot, there is a bar sign that signals a safe haven for Nancy to escape to, which was also off the streets. The plot further developed as Nancy finally find Tom inside the bar. Haynes uses a bar to highlight Tom’s sorrow as it a common place for people to retreat to after being defeated by feelings or by life in general. The low light of the bar reiterates this feature as the setting becomes gloomy. A few shots and reverse shots were made in conscience of the argument between the two main characters.
As Tom tries to run away again, Nancy follows up with a kiss. The intentions of the kiss was to both display the love of Nancy for Tom despite his appearance and the idea of physical and sexual contact would be more passionate and effective at convincing Tom to stay. The low key lighting sets a romantic mood in the air to further enhance the kissing scene. To interrupt the scene, Haynes used the television with a very distinct sound of buzzing that could attract the attention of anyone in the bar, here it captures Nancy’s attention. A background sound of women chatting or gossiping was used to dramatize the news displayed.
As Nancy get closer to the television to hear the news, Tom is seen in the background at a deep focus with an expression of sadness as he knows that his secret is exposed. Nancy’s question further made him in a state of panic as he might lose the love of his life, the one he tried to run away from so he wouldn’t lose her. Before Nancy turns back towards Tom, both expression of the characters are displayed and the plot is complicated to a climax or a rising action. The scenes follows with over the shoulder shots to show the body movements of each character as Nancy gets angry and frustrated. Her body shakes a bit as her realization confuses her mind. The proceeding conversation becomes very personal between only Tom and Nancy as the people around the bar does not react towards them arguing or the revealing of Tom’s crime. Even though Nancy shouts loud and clear, only the viewer and the main character know this.
A harmonious music plays as Tom leans in for a hug, making the audience feel that Nancy would be acceptable of the truth. The feeling was soon abolished as the music distorts into a perilous orchestra and Nancy’s body began to tremble in terror. The camera slowly closes in to each of the characters faces to display their reactions to this new knowledge. With the sound of helplessness from Nancy’s voice, Tom comes into realization that he will lose his beloved companion. The whole atmosphere is set so that the audience will clearly see this dilemma. As Nancy run away frightened, Tom tries to call her back. His raspy and low volume voice indicates that he has accepted that he has lost Nancy.
The final shot was an over the shoulder shot of Nancy fleeing away from Tom. As in a previous scene, she knows that the current outside world is dangerous without a proper companion, but she still escapes Tom who she now finds to be an even scarier sight compared to outside. The shot is reminiscent of a shot one might see in a break up. Ultimately the viewer would sympathize with Tom’s loss and allows us to think deeper about the morality of loving someone. Tom is now synonymized with a monster that not even his loved one could cope with him. Perhaps Haynes is presenting how we should feel about a loved one who has been disfigured from normal so we can judge for ourselves the morality of Nancy’s action and how it adheres to our own relationship with other people.