I watched Mississippi Burning. Roger Ebert called it the “best movie of 1989” and given that this was the year that saw Rain Man bag the Oscar, I think Ebert was right in many ways. It's one of the most brilliant movies I've seen – not just of a social issue that was at its momentous peak but of the art of films.
What captured my attention in the way the scenes were etched and captured was something that I remember reading in either Screenplay by Syd Field or Story by Robert McKee.
Every scene is a motif to the entire movie. You can pick a scene from the movie – any scene – and decipher almost all the details about the movie: the racism, the klan, the North-South divide on the issue of segregation, the threat that pierces through the screen and reaches your heart…
Every frame is a chromosome that has the total imprint of the movie. And I think that's one of the most basic needs for a movie to be as great as this.
I haven't gone to the extent of analyzing other great movies (but as I write this, I'm thinking of Schindler's List and the scenes in it) but I feel intuitively that this is the way stories should be. Every scene not only takes you further along the storyline but it is also a mark, an imprint, a DNA of the entire movie.
But does it come consciously? I think not. Not to a large extent. I think it happens organically when one starts to craft the best scenes that depict the story and put them together.
Nevertheless, that seemed like the most natural (and yet profoundly fantastic) revelation. That each scene is a complete representative of the entire movie: both in content and style.