Reiner takes a very considered, almost choreographed approach, heavily relying on tight close-ups of individual characters during the tensest moments - which works wonders on the scene with the switch-blade and the gun towards the end. One of the major differences, however, lies in the visual approach to the two stories. And there is also a thematic similarity, beyond the obvious point about the loss of innocence both groups of people learn the consequences of violence through a series of events which shape the people they become as adults. There is an obvious similarity in the set-up both stories revolve around a group of children (mainly boys) getting into scrapes in the wilderness, and the main plot point is based around a dead body. Out of all the films previously mentioned, the closest comparison is with Stand By Me, Rob Reiner's much-loved adaptation of Stephen King's novella The Body. Mean Creek joins this illustrious company, managing to embrace all their component parts while still carving out an identity of its own. As well as inspiring a whole litany of westerns, this aspect of America has given rise to films as eclectic as Deliverance, Stand By Me and Fargo, in which people go to pieces in the middle of nowhere. While the major cities of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are often associated with aspiration and hope (albeit ironically in the case of Chinatown and Mulholland Drive), the deserts, mountains and canyons take on this mantle of the cruel, heartless, unforgiving wilderness in which humans struggle to survive. In America, where whole sections of the country are more sparsely populated, different parts of the country take on this characteristic. In a densely populated country like Britain, films as varied as Heartless, Tyrannosaur and The Selfish Giant all take the built-up, urban environment of major cities and make them the embodiment of all that is chaotic, faceless, unpredictable, violent and, in the case of Philip Ridley's film, evil. An interesting by-product of this is that films of these sub-genres reflect the environment of the country in which they are set, and the means by which that environment is personified. Coming-of-age films and films about the loss of childhood innocence have often used the natural environment as a means to contrast the naivety of their protagonists with the harsh realities that they come to understand.
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