1. The Creek (1:40)
It is following day after the family had heard the sound of battle in the distance. Benjamin Martin has told his children to stay close to the house.
Nathan and Samuel are playing and run into the barn.
Benjamin is manning the plow in one of the nearby fields.
Nathan (off-screen):
"Samuel, Stop."
A horse gallops out of the barn and Nathan and Samuel chase after it, laughing (Editor's Note: This shot was included during the opening credits).
One of the workers smiles at the boys' play.
Abigale, looking worried, speaks urgently to Margaret.
Abigale:
"Margaret, you go get your brothers back up here right now."
Margaret gets up from the steps of the house where she was sitting with her sister, Susan, and runs after the boys, passing William where he sits on the ground, playing.
We switch to another perspective that shows Margaret running down the path away from the house after the boys.
Closeup of Benjamin standing up from the plow and watching the children.
Margaret is seen running across a field from Benjamin's perspective.
The horse is seen reaching the edge of the nearby woods from the same perspective.
Benjamin looks on for a moment, then leads down and grabs his pistol out of a bag hanging on the plow, cocked the pistol and slowly starts after the children.
Thomas stands up from his work and looks after his father with a look that shows he wants to follow his father.
The camera angle switches to looking out from just inside the edge of the woods. The horse runs up and past and then neighs off-screen. The boys come up behind and slow to a walk as they enter the edge of the woods.
We now look at the boys from behind who come to a stop at the edge of a rise or bank and look down into the hollow.
Margaret (off-screen):
"Nathan. Sammy."
The camera is in front of the boys, who we can now see are alarmed at and transfixed on whatever it is that they are looking down on. Margaret comes running up, but gets quiet and slows to a walk as she nears them and sees their expressions. She looks down with concern.
The camera angle cuts to behind the children as Margaret slowly moves up to beside the boys and we pan up so we can look over the childrens' shoulders down into the creek that comes into view. There are bodies floating in the river as we continue to move forward until the children nearly disappear off the bottom of the screen.
Closeup of the boys looking down at the bodies in concern, as though they are trying, but not yet able to fully grasp the sight before them.
Closeup of the back of a head floating in the creek and then pan up to a second body floating, as patches of dark red tint the creek.
Closeup of a third body, this one with a lifeless face looking toward us.
Closeup of Margaret, who can't tear her eyes away from the river.
The camera angle now is shifts to the right of Margaret and faces parallel to the creeke, so we look past the children to where Benjamin comes running up from the childrens' left. He looks at them, follows their eyes down to the scene in the creek, glances around the trees, as if looking for signs of intruders and then speaks to the children as he steps into their view of the creek and herds them back toward the house.
Benjamin:
"Back to the house. Come on. Back to the house now. Come with me. Margaret, go now. Come on."
After Margaret finally turns away, Benjamin takes one last look around the woods and then turns to follow them.
The horse is shown running into the woods from behind.
Comments About 'The Creek' Scene:
Of the six scenes that are included on the DVD, this is one of only two that I really think would have added to the movie. The scene clocks in at around a minute and forty-five seconds. It does slow the building action down as Director Roland Emmerich himself commented, by adding a day in between the sounds of the nearby artillery and the skirmishing that spills out into the farm. In spite of this, I think it's an important scene, because it's the first time that the children see the effects of the war up close.
We don't really see the children react later on after the skirmishing is over and all the wounded are around, so this scene isn't redundant in that way. They later react to Thomas' death, but not before then and I think that this scene would have helped build toward that. It seems to have been cut only because it doesn't get the action going, but rather continues the slow building of tension.
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