(OK so this got long which is why I only wrote about the first 1:30 of the scene. There is a lot happening)
The beginning of the "But I Knew Him" scene from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, opens up with a wide, neutral shot of a bank in the evening. There's non-diagetic music but there's also a chilling humming sound, reminiscent of a welder, from within the scene that's more prominent. The shot cuts to within the bank vault, lights all around but it still deliberately feels dingy and dim because it's a secret facility in which hidden things must be kept hidden. In the background, we see the Asset, The Winter Soldier, sitting as his metal arm is being worked on in a surgical type room with instruments and people in lab coats all around. They are surrounded a few members of the Strike team holding rifles, securing the perimeter. Close up to the repair work being done, a nice juxtaposition of the metal arm against the Soldier's human body, the 'easiness' and 'cleanness' of operating on machinery versus flesh and blood. Another close-up, this time of the Soldier's face, Bucky Barnes' face, kind of deadened, not even paying attention to the people working on his arm or even of the Strike team. The frame also gives us a clear shot of Barnes, showing us how young he is and how similar to Steve, he’s barely aged since CA:TFA. He has this deadened look on his face yet we can clearly see that it’s there for show and his eyes are bright, grasping into memory.
And here come the flashbacks, fuzzy yet clear indicating that they are buried inside Barnes but fragmented and possibly disordered. Zola appears, calling his name and the soldier reacts from the intensity of the memory, turning his face but we don’t get profile just a short sliver of his face because he’s not really Sgt. Barnes anymore. The memory of the train and Steve calling after him are clearer but faster and Zola’s voice comes back as we see, from Bucky’s POV, a Russian soldier dragging him in the snow with half his left arm missing. Flash to a surgery of stumping his arm and back to the present focusing on Barnes’ face, coming out from behind the hair as he starts to recall more of who he is. He pulls back and his face blurs out of focus and into a shot of a bright light, within another surgical room, as he raises his metal arm, testing it and choking one of the doctors. The scene fades into a blurry frame of Zola, proud as he looks at his “creation.” Zola says to “put him on ice” and we see two figures through a rounded window (indicating this is what Bucky’s world has been reduced to) surrounded by bright lights that shut off and the figures are still unclear. Which gives way to the idea that Bucky’s memories are definitely random and this scene may have happened more than once. The lights shut off, the figures are more or less reflections but they aren’t - we see Bucky’s face clearly as the incubator he’s kept in starts to freeze up and we hear it as though we were in there with him. There’s a fear in his eyes but he’s not panicking, in some resigned way he knows that this is the cycle of his life. He reaches up with his metal arm and cut to the Soldier, angry and raising his arm, throwing the lab tech working on his arm across the room. The Strike team focus their weapons on him but the Soldier just sits there, and we know he can kill them all but he just sits there, catching his breath as memories rush through his mind and pays no attention to the team. The camera pans and shakes a bit, showing how inert the Soldier really is. The camera edges barely into the room, giving us pause that the Soldier is a live wire and not to touch him or get too close or else we’ll burn - just like he is from the inside.
The fact that this is all takes place in a vault is so symbolic because what’s in a vault? People’s valuables and secrets. The Winter Soldier is Hydra’s most valuable asset partly because of his identity which must be kept secret, especially from himself.
I could write a thesis on this movie.
