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Garrett Scharff

Dr. David Resha

Film 270_OX

December 1, 2018

High Contrast Lighting in Mud

The film Mud is a bildungsroman focusing on a young Arkansas boy struggling with

love, family dispute, and understanding right from wrong in a rapidly progressing south. The

most impactful scenes for Ellis’s development out of childhood happen under high contrast

lighting and mark key turning points in Ellis’s growth towards an adult understanding of the

world. The low-key lighting is contrasted in the rest of the movie where relatively high key

lighting is maintained in the majority of the movie. Through the use of low key lighting director

Jeff Nichols shows the coming of age story of Ellis discovering love, familial hardship, and in

turn causes the audience to reflect on their own emotions as a child.

The beginning of Ellis’s growth into an adult begins during the opening scene of the film

at 1:37. Here in the early morning the low-key lighting is prompted by the overhead lamp. The

lamp creates an attached shadow that covers Senior’s face entirely as well as a cast shadow to his

left. The light source over exposes his mother’s face until she turns towards the camera and

attached shadows can be seen on the left side of her face. In the low-key lighting Ellis watches

his mother attempt to speak with his unresponsive father. The conversation, or lack thereof, sets

into motion the side plot of Ellis living in a house slowing becoming more and more divided.

The divorce will play a major part in Ellis growing out of childhood and stepping into a stage of

adulthood. This example does not establish a pattern of familial strife, although it does clue in

the audience as well as Ellis that his home life is changing.

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The pattern of a deteriorating home life paired with low key lighting is continued at 17:54

after Ellis walks into his house while off-screen his parents are having an argument that can be

heard. The low-key lighting is given by the practical lamps in the sparsely lit house. The lamps

from around the room cast a variety of attached shadows across both Ellis and his parents as they

move around the room from location to location and shot to shot. During this altercation between

his mother and father there is a verbal argument, escalating from only Ellis’s mother wanting to

talk in the first example. In addition, Senior leaves the house showing that the relationship

between Ellis’s mother and father has grown more distant as Senior and Ellis’s mother are rarely

shown in the same shot for the remainder of the film.

Continuing Ellis’s struggle with his home life, at 29:03 min. Ellis is told by his father that

his mother wants a divorce and to move into the city. This scene covering divorce is again

accompanied with low-key lighting. The scene begins outside of the boat house with Senior

covered in shadow and Ellis having cast shadows on the left side of his face from the light source

to his right and slightly down. As Ellis moves inside the house the light source changes to one

over Ellis’s mothers head and is a practical lamp. This is the culmination of the first two

examples and is a turning point in Ellis’s life where he will have to mature out of childhood and

live with his mother and the city. After this example is the first deviation from the pairing of

divorce with low-key lighting when Ellis goes to meet Mud at 32:42 min.

During the scene where Ellis talks to Mud, Ellis still brings up his parent’s divorce but

the conversation switches to Ellis childish views of love. The low-key lighting is provided by the

campfire that Mud and Ellis are sitting around. The light source come from the right side of the

screen leaving not many shadows on Mud because he is closer to the fire, Ellis on the other hand,

has attached shadows for most of the left side of his face. There are not any cast shadows
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because the scene is taking place at night and the background, where shadows would be, is dark.

Here the audience is made aware of Ellis opinion that if two people love each other then they

should be married stay together. This opinion of love is childish because as Ellis will discover

love is more complicated as an adult with different responsibilities than for carefree children. For

the next segment of the film low-key lighting will appear with Ellis discovering what love is.

Ellis first experience of love in his own life comes at 1:04:23 min. during the party scene.

In this scene May Pearl kisses him and Ellis believes that he now has a girlfriend who he is in

love with. The low-key lighting in this scene is prompted by the campfire and causes cast

shadows to appear on both Ellis and May Pearl’s face. Ellis’s naivety in love is shown that he

now believes he is in love with May Pearl after just meeting her and thinks that they will be

together forever.

Ellis’s journey with love comes to a head at 1:28-32:32 when he sees Juniper at a bar

with another man and has to tell Mud she will not come with him. In the bar scene the low-key

lighting is provided by the dimly light inside of the bar and transitions to the scene with Mud,

where the light is coming from the fire that Mud has lit and the shadows from the lack of

sunlight. During this sequence Ellis comes to face that his expectations and visions for love do

not always work out, as he has also seen from his parents getting a divorce. Here, Ellis has to

abandon his childish views and act as an adult in order to tell Mud that his love does not want to

be with him.

The high contrast lighting is also connected to Ellis discerning right from wrong. At

1:33:34 Senior finds out that Ellis and Neckbone have stolen a boat motor the lighting, while it is

daytime which is the first time a low-key lighting scene has been shot in the daytime, there are

still high contrast attached shadows on Senior, Ellis, and Ellis’s mother. The high-contrast
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lighting is set up from the sun streaming in from the left side of Ellis and the right side of Ellis’s

parents when the shot reverses, with less harsh light coming in from the opposite sides of their

faces. During this scene Ellis is confronted and has to develop his personal moral compass and

choose between his new-found friend Mud and his family. In addition, at the end of the scene

Senior insults his wife for raising a thief re-introducing the divorce connection to low-key

lighting.

Throughout the film there are other examples of low-key lighting, including scenes that

do not have Ellis in them. However, these examples help to provide the adventure of being a

child as well as showing Ellis the harsher sides of being an adult. The first of these examples

comes at 54:27 where Ellis throws Carver off of Juniper in the hotel room. The low-key lighting

comes diegetically through the practical lamps placed in the dimly lit motel room. This scene

adds to the adventure and risk of helping Mud which appeals to Ellis’s childish want to

experience a risky experience. This also exposes Ellis to reality of bad people in the world who

are not bound by the law.

The second counterexample occurs when King and his men are praying for killing Mud at

1:17:07. This example of low-key lighting is quite brief and is interrupted by the overexposed

light coming through the doorway. After this the light source is the sun coming from the left side

of the screen causing attached shadows on the characters faces. While this scene does not

directly involve Ellis, it adds to the adventure and danger of the journey that Ellis is on with Mud

and eventually leads to the climax of the film which does involve Ellis as well as low-key

lighting.

The climax, occurring at 1:56:32, brings a resolution to the adventure that Ellis has been

on with Mud and Neckbone. The scene uses low-key lighting due to the practical outdoor lamps
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around the house. This scene uses a variety of lighting sources including inside practical lamps

and outside lights to light the barge. This scene also fits into the action of the adventure of

helping a fugitive and provides an end to Ellis’s time with Mud. After his time with Mud Ellis

will have to step into his new role as the “man of the house” and live with his mother in the city.

Together all of these examples of low-key lighting provide an expressive function. The

growing out of childhood and the emotions experienced by Ellis causes the audience to look into

their own childhood and remember the same emotions. Jeff Nichols intelligently uses universal

emotions for Ellis to experience such as love, heartbreak, and adventure. As a child these are

powerful emotions and slowly diminish as children become adults. The strength of childish

emotions can be observed in Ellis through his handling of love with May Pearl or his belief that

people married should always love each other. Watching Ellis go through these emotions causes

the audience to nostalgically look into their own past to connect with Ellis and remember a time

when they felt the same way as him.

Mud provides a lens for audience members to look through and feel like a kid again. Ellis

is a carefree boy who is trying to find his place in the world and is keen for an adventure. These

are qualities that are relatively universal for childhood in the United States and Jeff Nichols is

able to successfully pair Ellis’s journey out of childhood with scenes that contain low-key

lighting. The scenes with low-key lighting contain the major turning points in Ellis’s that cause

him to realize that there are aspects of life he does not understand and that the way he views the

world is not always correct.