Oh, that's what film students do with their free time....

Back in LA, a couple of us watched the English Patient without sound to analyze what the cinematographer was trying to convey. It was actually quite a good exerciese. I was the only one who hadn't seen the movie, I think Elaine influenced me when she dogged the English Patient in Seinfeld.

The thing I noticed was that the once the stage was set, ie, Act I finished, we are introduced to the characters, settings, etc, a lot of "artistic" elements are superceded by moving the story along.

At the beginning we had a lot of matching shots between different story plots, a lot of interesting close ups, shots from behind veils or other obstructions, long-lonely women shots, etc.

Either we got tired on analyzing, or the film did less of it, but the interesting later parts of the movie are either plot reveals or a really cool scenes via production design.

But now that I think about it, that seems logical to me. Once you've exposed the audience to the "look" of the film, you don't really need to reintroduce anything new there....the rest does become a revealing of the story.