Composition: Beasts of No Nation: Supreme Commander scene

Context

The Commandant (Idris Elba) and his battalion of rebels have been summoned to a meeting with the Supreme Commander of the rebellion (Jude Akuwudike) as a result of their recent successes taking over small towns and killing hundreds of people. The Commandant thinks he will be given a promotion for his deeds. When they arrive at the rebel headquarters, they are made to wait all night. While the night's wait has angered the Commandant, the meeting that follows is disastrous. Rather than being promoted, the Commandant is in fact being relieved of his command and replaced by his lieutenant, whom they refer to as 2 I-C (Kurt Egyiawan). The Commandant arrived optimistic and, likely, with great respect for the Supreme Commander; he left hating him and feeling emasculated.

Analysis

As the scene goes on, the Commandant becomes angrier with the Supreme Commander as his own battalion is taken from him.

The scene actually starts a bit earlier, but when the Supreme Commander first enters, it is in this shot:

Supreme Commander (left) and Commandant (right)

 which becomes, via a small pan left, this:

 and a pan back right turns it to this:

The possible foreshadowing here is obvious, with the Commandant briefly being edged out of the frame. The pan away and back also visually indicates the Commandant's feelings toward the Supreme Commander. The Commandant is briefly in the shot with the Supreme Commander, then out, then back in. He's angry with the Supreme Commander for making him and his men wait, but still hoping for a promotion.

At this point the Supreme Commander and the Commandant sit down to their meeting.

The Commandant sends his men away to a room across the hall, but the Supreme Commander directly addresses 2 I-C and tells him to stay. As the meeting begins the film cycles through the shot above and the two below:

Notice that in two of the three shots, the Supreme Commander and the Commandant are not pictured together, and when they are, they are at opposite ends of the screen, with a lot of space as well as a desk and a table between them. Putting two characters in separates frames or shots and/or putting space or objects between them can be an indicator of the relationship between the characters.

At the point that the Supreme Commander reveals that the Commandant is both not getting a promotion and also losing his battalion, the film cuts to this shot:

Filming a conversation by intercutting 1-shots of each character is sometimes done merely for functional or practical reasons. The kind of shot above, however, is an even stronger indicator of a strained relationship, due to rarely being done only out of practical necessity. The Supreme Commander and the Commandant are both on screen at the same time, but they are both in separate frames created by the sliding door.

Notice also that 2 I-C is standing between the Supreme Commander and the Commandant (shown clearer below). As the person taking over the Commandant's battalion, he is a part of the problem coming between the Supreme Commander and the Commandant.

The rest of the meeting is shown as before, with the addition of the shot through the sliding door. The relationship between the Supreme Commander and the Commandant was already strained when the meeting began, but by the end it had become even worse.