John Sayles allows his stories to be deeply rooted in the characters one sees on the screen. He doesn’t use any fancy photography to enhance the experience of his films, instead he is very detailed in his shot selection in order to add meaning to every frame he puts on the screen. Sayles both wrote and directed this picture thus having a great deal of understanding about who these characters were he was able to produce a final story in images that connected the dots.
For example, whenever we see Pilar and Sam we understand that there is something unspoken between the two of them. Sayles shows Pilar talking about love but not revealing anyone specifically to her daughter and Sayles cuts to Sam walking down the street. We also see the pair standing by a river in present time before he uses the shot of the river to transition to the two as teenagers. We understand from his shot selection that what is between them is deep. But until the revelation that they are brother and sister comes out we only believe that these two are in love with each other and have been kept apart. Sayles uses the perspective of race to hide the truth from the audience as we believe that what hasn’t happened between Pilar and Sam is because their parents were racist. The story explodes open at the end and we realize that Sayles has kept quite a bit more under the surface than we expected and has found a way to keep our attention off of it.
Sayles also connects the past to the present in a very particular way that as the story goes along we begin to feel as though the events that occurred years ago are ones that Sam is finally able to get a footing on. We see this in one shot in the film where Sayles pans up from Eladio’s friend--decades earlier hiding from Charlie who’s just Eladio—to Sam in present day. The shot shows that Sam is beginning to get a solid footing on the mysteries that have been floating around for far too long. Sayles also begins to use different shots to show the evolution of the story e.g. Sam and Pilar after making love are covered in darkness and as Sam knocks down Hollis’ door Sayles tilts his camera to show the shift. The fim’s mystery is hidden within the simplicity of Sayles compositions which allow for the story to unfold based on the character’s journey.
