Black Hawk Down: Top-notch American war film directed by an Englishman

Being one of the most influential film directors in Hollywood, Ridley Scott is a veteran filmmaker who has proven himself as an exceptional commercial storyteller. Black Hawk Down, directed by Ridley Scott and released in 2001, just three months after 9/11, was a critical success not only by its gritty portrayal of the brutal war scene but also the masterful editing, which enhanced the realism experience. This top-notch American war film, which acclaimed by many as one of the best war films ever made, eventually received Academic Award for Best Film Editing and Best Sound Mixing at the 74th Academy Award in 2002. Aside from its political motivations, we will scrutinize this film from an aesthetic perspective and find out the effectiveness of the editing behind this visual masterpiece.

Black Hawk Down is an action war film based on actual events as well as the book by Mark Bowden: Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, where a group of American soldiers was put into a vastly disadvantage combat situation in a war-zone section of Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. Africa in the early 1990s was an unstable place full of famine, strikes, and war. After many years of warfare, Somalia was facing "famine on a biblical scale," in which "300,000 civilians die of starvation." In 1992, General Mohamed Farrah Aidid was the most dominant warlord and ruled the capital, Mogadishu. Aidid seizes international food shipments and uses hunger as a weapon. Consequently, 20,000 U.S. Marines, including US Army Rangers, Delta Force, and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), were sent by the order from President Bill Clinton to Somalia to ensure the delivery of food and to capture the culprit, Mohammed Farrah Aidid.

However, due to the misleading information from the commanding officers, the entire special force were over-optimistic towards the operation. The story revolves around dozens of soldiers' experiences; some were idealistic who want to help; some were seeking violence to end their dullness. The operation went horribly wrong with two black hawk helicopters were shot down, and massive angry militias surrounded the rangers and delta forces. The situation went further deteriorated due to a shortage of supplies, and mission changed from a raid to a rescue operation as "No Man Left Behind." It has become the longest continuous firefight for American forces since Vietnam. (Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modem War by Mark Bowden (1999). After a horrifying night of bullets and blood, the tragic battle ended with 19 American soldiers lost their lives, and more than 1000 Somalis died.

Black Hawk Down is a dramatized documentary, it has such a timeless quality of the story, and the film does not try to point fingers, or even turn American soldiers into heroes. Unlike most action war films, this film portraited the war in a very realistic way and showed the horrors of war on a personal level, the fear, the isolation, the desperation which were created by war, which left the soldiers to have only one hope for survival.

Ridley Scott is a cinematic virtuoso with a tremendous visual gift. One of the key signatures in all Ridley Scott's films is the powerful visual, as Leonard Maltin wrote that Scott's "artistic signature is an elaborate visual style, developed through years of experience as set designer and director of TV commercials. Scott studied art and film at the Royal College of Art in London before landing work as a set designer for the BBC."

Ridley Scott remains a highly influential, visionary director and is known for his groundbreaking achievements in visual effects, action sequences, and extreme attention to detail. His masterpieces, including Alien (1979), Thelma and Louise (1991), Blade Runner (1982), Gladiator (2000), Prometheus (2012), The Martian (2015), and Alien: Covenant (2016) with varying levels of success. He also directed many TV commercials, including the famous "1984" commercial, which introduced the Apple Macintosh during the 1984 Super Bowl. He is indeed, a true living legend.

From early on in his career, Scott developed an aesthetic of filthiness, sweatiness, and dirtiness. Alien (1979) depicts a working environment on a futuristic spaceship which could be dirty and sweaty, and similarly, Blade Runner (1982) depicts a futuristic Los Angeles as a chaotic collection of advertising, traffic, rain, and darkness.

Scott is also known for portraying strong female characters in his films. For example, Alien (1979) featured the strong, independent, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in a life or death battle with a lethal alien; Thelma and Louise (1991) depicts two women (Gena Davis and Susan Sarandon), who are abused and misunderstood by men and then fight back and become outlaws fleeing the police.

However, in Black Hawk Down, Ridley Scott is in a slightly different territory in which he usually stands. Unlike most of his other films, Black Hawk Down not only has no strong female character, but it has no female characters. Whereas, interestingly, the closing credit sequence reveals that Scott dedicated the picture to his mother, who had passed away in 2001.

In Black Hawk Down, the film's aesthetics, in general, tend to lean towards a gritty and realistic representation of violence. The realist aesthetic of the film reflects its solid position concerning the experiences of the soldiers on the front line. The assumption is that to the men in the field, in the heat of combat and full exercise of courage, politics becomes irrelevant, and this film is to portray these men and their experiences. In Scott's commentary, he described the film as 'Anti-War but pro-military.'

Black Hawk Down is considered by many as one of the best-edited films of all-time, the editing was done by Pietro Scalia, a highly regarded editor who has won two Academy Awards including Black Hawk Down and JFK. Scalia started his career as an Assistant Editor and moved on to become an Associate Editor. For over twenty-five years of his career, Scalia has been an integral collaborator on films from many famous directors such as Ridley Scott, Oliver Stone, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gus Van Sant, Rob Marshall, and Sam Raimi. His films include Good Will Hunting, Memoirs of a Geisha, Kick-Ass, The Amazing Spiderman, and The Martian. He has been a frequent collaborator with Ridley Scott, and their latest collaboration was Alien: Covenant. Their working relationship is very enduring; they have completed nine films together in 16 years. Pietro Scalia also worked with music composer Hans Zimmer on three of Scott's films.

Black Hawk Down was shot documentary-style with multiple cameras. In one of Pietro Scalia's interviews, he talked about the editing process of Black Hawk Down, "The action took the place of dialogue. It's not a given what is shot one, two, or three. The explosions were actually happening, and the actors react to that––the sound, the weight on their back as they're running, the guns, the helicopters above, the dust blowing up. It feels real because it was. Ridley is a master of that, creating the backdrop and capturing the reality. My task is to make sense of it all––not only for the characters, the movement and the action, but also geographically; the viewer should be inside the battle, immersed in it."

From an editing perspective, Black Hawk Down's editing style is the classical cutting style, which cut to action and for dramatic intensity and emotional emphasis. I was most impressed by the action sequences edited by Pietro Scalia, it was the ending of the battle scene in the next morning, when the rangers and delta forces were running desperately towards the stadium like marathon runners, this action sequence became the most memorable moment for me in this film.

Pietro Scalia used a combination of techniques, for example, the use of the short length of shots plus slow-motion shots, which create the relentless momentum of the action sequences, contributes a kinetic visual speed, and with the help of the sound design, the viewers entered the soldiers' internal emotional state after the long fight. This is the moment when cutting on momentum, with a relentless pace that never coherence for the audience. Just like filmmaking legend Walter Murch once said: "My job as an editor is to gently prod the attention of the audience to look at various parts of the frame. I do that by manipulating how and where I cut and what succession of images I work with."

One of the key scenes in Black Hawk Down is the conversation between US General Garrison and Somalian arm dealer Atto after US forces captured Atto. It happened in the interrogation room in the US army camp, during the conversation, Garrison wanted to know where was General Aidid, who was their top priority target. The arms dealer Atto who pledged his loyalty to General Aidid and told Garrison the war was irrelevant to Americans, those words immediately pissed off Garrison but still treating the prisoner with dignity. This scene is captivating to watch not only for its stunning visuals, but also, it shows a clear dominant-submissive pattern in a clashing situation, and in this case, both characters are fighting for the dominant power in the conversation.

Narrative Beats in this scene:

1. Atto is sitting at the table with a dusty yellow streaks cast from the window
2. General Garrison enters the room, wearing sunglasses, looks laconic, and offer Atto a cup of tea.
3. Atto greats General Garrison and offers Garrison a cigar.
4. General Garrison refuses the good offer, and takes out his cigar on his hand; he stands beside the window. 
5. Atto laughs, and points out Garrison's cigar is not as good as the real Cuban cigar. 
6. Garrison simply stares out the window. 
7. Atto lights his own cigar and contemplates for a moment. 
8. Atto tries to start a conversation in a humors way. 
9. General Garrison is not easily impressed, but he finally takes a seat opposite Atto, and become more serious. 
10. Atto becomes more serious in tone as well, he starts to question the ability of General Garrison
11. Garrison laughs.
12. Atto keeps questioning the intention of his capture. 
13. Garrison becomes impatient and shows his bottom line that the US military will not leave Somalia until he find Aidid.
14. Atto is provoked and tells Garrison it is their war, not American's business. 
15. Garrison is also provoked; he finally rips off his sunglasses, looks at Atto eye to eye and tell him American will stop the genocide. 

The juxtaposition of the environmental wide shots and the emotional close-up shots built up the momentum at the beginning of the whole story, it left with an emotional impression that both sides were not willing to compromise on the deal, which left a massive foreshadowing for the disastrous battle between the two sides which was going to happen soon.

-THE END-

References:

1. Film Craft: Editing https://www.google.com/books/edition/FilmCraft_Editing/SyCkCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=ridley%20scott
2. Black Hawk Down and the silence of Ridley Scott’s realism: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1272&context=jstae
3. Leadership Styles in Hollywood-Based War Movies: An Analysis for Motivating Young Leaders in Military Service: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/88828/Leadership%20Styles%20in%20Hollywood-Based%20War%20Movies_%20An%20Analysis%20for.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
4. Pietro Scalia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Scalia
5. Pietro Scalia Maestro of Movie Editing Meets the Merrie Men of Sherwood Forest: https://cinemontage.org/pietro-scalia/
6. History and Film: https://www.google.com/books/edition/History_and_Film/9FMPDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=editing+analysis+Pietro+Scalia&pg=PT69&printsec=frontcover
7. Ridley Scott interview on "Black Hawk Down" (2002): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4EDa2quS4M
8. Biography of Ridley Scott: https://www.gradesaver.com/author/ridley-scott
9. Black Hawk Down (film): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_Down_(film)
10. Ridley Scott Interviews: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ridley_Scott/JwDeB37eyI0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=black+hawk+down&printsec=frontcover