Be warned that this post contains mild spoilers for the film Buried, even though I don’t believe it would ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the film it still would be considered spoilers by the most sensitive of the film loving world. So consider yourself warned.

I’ve named Buried to be one my TOP TEN FILMS OF 2010. I’ve heard sounds of agreement and disagreement from a lot of friends and fellow bloggers. The film was billed as a work of cinema that Alfred Hitchcock would be proud of. Even though I admit to having seen some of Hitchcock‘s filmography I know that I haven’t seen enough to claim to be an expert on his style so I’m here to ask you all if the movie’s billing is unwarranted.

The best thing a movie can do is keep you intrigued. The easiest way for that to happen is for there to be tension. Buried is one of the best works of tension filmmaking in a long time.

Alfred Hitchcock (the famed filmmaker) when asked about adding emotional tension to a scene he said:

People are sitting around a table talking about baseball; whatever you like. Five minutes after, very dull, suddenly a bomb goes off blows the people to smitherines. What’ll the audience have? Ten seconds of shock.

Now take the same scene and tell the audience that there’s a bomb under that table and will go off in five minutes. The whole emotional viewing is totally different because you’ve given them that information. That in five minutes time that bomb will go off. Now the conversation about baseball becomes very vital. Because they’re saying to you “stop being ridiculous stop talking about baseball there’s a bomb.” You’ve got the audience working.

Now the only difference is … the bomb must never go off. Cause if you do, you work that audience into a state and they’ll get angry because you haven’t provided them with any relief. And that’s almost a must.

And that is what Buried did. It took something that could’ve been very dull – a man in a box – and made it very vital. The movie opens with Ryan Reynolds in the coffin and shortly after he receives a phone call telling him – and the audience – exactly what’s going on. He’s told that if he doesn’t get a ransom of five million dollars paid to the kidnapper in a few hours he’ll be left to die in the box.

So we’ve been given a goal and a reason why we have to be there with our protagonist who’s been given a reason to work so hard. It’s even given us a reason to sit there and cheer him on as we think he gets closer to his own relief or find out exactly who it is that’s done this to him.

However, even though Buried starts with being the most by the book Hitchcock movie it deflects from his final condition of the rule and refuses to give the audience any relief. At the end of the film when we see that we don’t get any closer to capturing the kidnapper or freeing Paul from the coffin the audience is left angry and unsure how to respond to the film.

So the question that’s left to ask is if Hitchcock is right or is Rodrigo Cortés with his film Buried in how to deal with emotional tension in a scene?