Rushmore Deconstruction

Rushmore (1998) Deconstruction

Facts

Rushmore (1998) IMDb Rating 7.7 Metascore 86/100 Genre Comedy, Drama

PlotRushmore is about a boy called Max who is attending at Rushmore Private School and failing horribly because he is creating and attending too many outrageous extra-curricular activities and is put on probation.

Opening CreditsHere we have the two companies who produced this film, This is a first in every single film, the producers and other companies are acknowledged before the film even starts

Title RevealAfter the Offices Clips it turns to a blue curtain which pulls open revealing the name of this establishment as Rushmore which turns out to not only be the name of this place but the whole film, most likely where it is all set.

The camera pans right and into a classroom where the next screenshot is

The lighting is made to look like it is straight from the sun, but as this is England that is an unlikely shot to pull off with the clear blue skies

Setting The SceneSo to begin, It is obvious that we are in a school, in a maths lesson. We can tell by the fact it is a teacher, teaching maths on a blackboard.

The lighting is very diffused meaning it is a well lit room, obviously a classroom.

A student mentions the Extra credit on a board on the left where the camera acts as his head and turns with the student as the teacher talks to him, After giving some interesting news the camera pans over the class showing all the rows of people chatting about the new point and it finally lands on Max.

Doesnt need to listenFrom this we can already tell a lot about Max, He is very intelligent and cocky about it, he finds himself able to read a newspaper in this class as he must already know it all. He doesnt need to listen so why should he, after being asked to solve the Extra Credit Equation he places his newspaper on a pile of others, insinuating that he has already read those ones as he is a very quick reader (hinting at his academic success)

The camera shows him higher than the others, to show his intellect is above the rest of his classmates, He then leaves his desk and proceeds to complete the equation

The Perfect StudentOnce he is done, the camera zooms out and we see Max in a very smug face, staring at the teacher, behind him we see a board full of equation working, perfectly written, almost impossible by the normal person. This could be to make it seem unreal, or perhaps it actually is unreal. After being told he is correct the rest of the class begin to applaud and cheer him.

This is when Max wakes up in church to an applause for the previous speaker

Turns out it was a Dream SequenceThe speaker here is the highest person in the shot, not only because he is standing on a pedestal to talk but because the way he projects and gets his point across is very passionate and at the same time aggressive, as you can see in the back, he is standing higher than Jesus in the stained glass window.

We can easily see this is a church because everyone is formally dressed, there is a priest and Jesus on the window in the back. The lighting is very dim, and only from the candles and windows meaning it must be a nice day, as seen in the dream sequence

Suck-upHere we can see that Max is infact, not a dominant character afterall. He stands much lower than the Speaker and the other man who is the Headteacher of the Prep-school. He is a very short character overall really. He is also portrayed in this shot as young and insignificant: 1: He is shorter, 2: he is in a school uniform and 3: H is not smoking like the other two are. This could relate to him being naive or unaware of what he has to come.

Comedia Fact RevealHere we have a slight build up and a comedic reveal here the music in the background drps as he says that Max is actually the worst student theyve ever had.

This, in my opinion was not a very large reveal because the way he acts seems like he doesnt really know what he is doing in real life, for example, He fell asleep in church and had a dream sequence where he is by far the smartest person in school.

Montage StartsIt begins by opening Maxs book and begins to scroll through the large list of extra activities that he is involved with, perhaps this is why he is not doing well academically, instead of studying he is taking part in activities such as French Club and the representative of Russia at the Model EU Club

He may not be academic, but by his list of Skills, Max is proving to be a very skilled student, just not at the actual school part.

this is another hint at the style of comedy we can expect from this film, What prep-school in their right mind would allow a Beekeeping Club!

This is not the comedic club he is in, The kid formed his own theater acting group and named it after himself. We can see already that Max is a very pretentious boy.

Montage/ Credits EndsThis is where the credits and the montage end, in a red curtain, much like the one at the very start, and it is categorised with the wrd September, this most likely means that we will see Max throughout an entire school year starting with the first day.

ConclusionIn conclusion this film seems to be situation comedy, or Sit-com meaning the entire story is based on what is happening at the time, and in this case, Max is failing school and needs to buck up before its too late.

It looks like a good film and I look forward to watching the rest and adapting its ideas as my own so that I can use them in my own filming later on.