Rush 6: On the River Kwai

The shot of the four officers on the ferry coincides with a pivotal assertion of western values. Ostentatiously, these values are military order, "proper" hierarchy, and the engineering expertise of a "civilized" culture. However, this attitude hides an authoritarian root. While claiming to reassert Britishness, Nicholson is reasserting is own power, autonomy, and authority as a military officer, due to nothing but hierarchy. The shot serves to emphasize this power dynamic by showing the officers physically lift themselves out of the water, the environment the enlisted men are immersed in. Furthermore, the rails of the ferry boat are like a protective cage. There is a visceral separation created by the composition of the shot. Indeed, it is not only the separation of the officers from their men, it is the separation of Nicholson above all. The depth created by the shot places Nicholson firmly in the foreground, as the other officers occlude each other at various times but Nicholson is totally untouched. He is apart from the three-dimensionality of the scene, he is an abstract ideal of the West presiding over the disorder in the jungle.