Divergent Analysis

Divergent Opening Scene Analysis

The first scene of Divergent, we are shown a long shot of some kind of wall, the camera then cuts to a close up of the wall and moves up and over it leading to an establishing shot of a city which looks torn apart and isolated. We are then flown through the city with a  bird eye view shot to which we find out what city this is, as at the bottom right area of the shot, there is white text telling the audience the name of the city - this is the city of Chicago in America. As the camera moves throughout the city, we can clearly see some sort of catastrophe has occurred, like a war or some sort of disaster. We are soon drawn to the ground of the city with a medium-long shot of many people walking past, we then however notice that people are wearing certain colours, this will leave the audience questioning why this is the case. Throughout this part of the opening sequence, we hear background music which is calm and slow which may indicate that although this city looks broken, it is still calm and there does not seem to be any problems. It's like a perfect civilization in a broken world.

When the background music fades out, we hear non diegetic sounds of a woman narrating the city, explaining why the people are in the certain colours, telling us that these are factions, who have different duties in the world they live in. We are given a lot of basic information as to why the world is as it is and why there is a giant wall surrounding the city. We are told that everyone knows their place in the city, however soon we are told that she (the narrator) does not know where she fits in society which means that in this 'perfect' world, there is some sort of imperfection which indicates that this small imperfection will cause some sort of outrage in the city which could have serious effects.