Niccolò Ammaniti's novel and Gabriele Salvatores' homonymous film "I'm Not Scared" have had their share of popularity in North America if not by gaining a conspicuous readership/spectatorship by travelling into the publicity-wagon of international distributors.1 The formula adopted by both writer and filmmaker appealed to investors as a marketable recipe and yet it failed to magnetize the scattered reader/viewer beyond a short flight-of-entertainment.2
The elements at play in the novel and film are quite remarkable for their traditionally universal appeal.3 The fates of two adolescents, one jailed the other unwilling jailer, intersect and are soon bound together in a struggle for survival at the hands of unsuspecting enemies. The filmmaker's aim was to adopt a child's unadulterated point of view in referential opposition to the surrounding adult world. Given the suspenseful plot and the exploration of the young protagonists' fears at coping with a habitat they must disavow, such an aim and narrative scheme were expected to gather much attention.4 The pre-teens Michele, the novel's principal hero, and Filippo the kidnapped child are ultimately elevated from a pit of dirt and fear, the antechamber of death, chiefly by their own heroic praxis. Yet the problematic lack of any meaningful degree of depth in the novel and film seems to lie precisely with its overly schematic construction, tailored to safely weather the otherwise unpredictable market.
The proscription from any domain of memorable works may be due to a major problem both in the novel and film: the ambiguous point of view adopted. The novel is geared for a transposition to the screen. It is no coincidence that the film was scripted by Niccolò Ammaniti, who adapted ...
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...Little Boy, Don't Look Down".
6 In the novel it is told that the story of Lazarus is learned at school from the schoolteacher, Signorina Destani, p. 83.
7 In fact the entire novel is set in the first person with Michele's voice assuming the narration in the initial race held with his neighboring peers. The incipit reads: "I was just about to overtake Salvatore when I heard my sister scream."
8 207.
9 Compare pages 155-157, 201-203 of the book with the same scenes in the film.
10 The effects of a filmic memory on the written word have been reason for study/confession of contemporary novelists. See Cohen, Keith, ed. Writing in a Film Age: Essays by Contemporary Novelists.
11 See Paul Ginsborg's A History of Contemporary Italy, 383-405.
12 In the film the date 1978 appears superimposed in the opening sequence.
13 Quoted by Frank Bruni.
In this day and age, writing is being portrayed through various mediums, such as film and television. Some of those portrayals depict writing as both good and bad depending on the situation that is present. Authors such as, by E. Shelley Reid, Kevin Roozen, and Anne Lamott all write about important writing concepts that are being depicted in films, like Freedom Writers. The film Freedom Writers shows a positive and accurate portrayal of writing in the sense that the writers should have a connection to what they are writing about, writing is a form of communication, and that writing does not have to be perfect the first time.
As you can all see the movie for once is actually better than the book in showing the
It is my intention to compare the book, Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos, to its modern movie version, Cruel Intentions starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. I intend to examine how the original French text was modified in reference to plot, character, morals/values, and themes. I also plan to discuss how these transformations change the meaning of the story and reflect different cultural/historical contexts. There are some major differences between these two works, if only because of when they were written.
To begin, Romano, Benjamín’s rival symbolizes the corruption present within the Argentinean judicial system. In attempting to quickly close Liliana Coloto’s case, he frames two innocent laborers and orders that they be beaten (Campanella, The Secret in Their Eyes). Romano believes himself above the law and perpetuates a cycle of injustice and violence throughout the film. S...
I have only included what I have to believe are largely important plot gaps and differences in the movie version in comparison to the book one, and so I apologize again if I have missed any other major ones. Forgive me, please.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
The Godfather is the “dark-side of the American dream story” (Turan, pp2). The film follows the practices of a fictional Italian mafia family, the Corleone’s. Though most Americans do not condone the practices of the Italian mafia, they cannot deny that Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is a cinematic masterpiece. This film gave insight to a mysterious way of life that the average person does not have knowledge of. As the audience is educated about the mafia they also are introduced to many stereotypes.
His parents, who he looks up to, are crueler than he ever imagined. Michele’s mom said “’When it’s dark the bogeyman comes out and takes the children away and sells them to the gypsies.’” Michele then thought “Papa was the bogeyman.” In this passage, Michele discovers how brutal the adult world can be. The father that he looked up to was not the good guy that he thought; he was the villain who made Michele’s perfect world come crashing down. Michele then thought “Why didn’t they give him back to her? What use is a barmy little boy to them? Filippo’s mother was distressed, you could see that. If she asked on television it meant she cared a lot about her son. And papa wanted to cut off his ears.” This shows the guilt that consumes Michele up because he knows about the boy and he knows that his father is involved; his innocence is lost. This causes Michele to be in a dilemma of whether to abide his father’s actions or take his own stance and do what he thinks is right . Now that he is exposed to the adult world and shed his innocence, he has to make his own decisions even if it means going against his family. Although this passage does not summarize the whole book, it conveys what the author is trying to show. Nicole Ammaniti is trying to explain the loss of innocence in a child through Michele getting thrown into the adult world and
Through Cristina’s immorality and arrogance, Vittorio’s innocence becomes fragile. He begins to grow more maturely through the challenges he faces. A critical review from A Circle of Clarity states, “It is impossible, therefore, to protect Vitto from the encircling consequences
protagonist throughout the book as well. Even earlier in the chapter, a reference to Edgar
Rudolfo Anaya’s, Bless Me, Ultima and Guillermo del Toro’s, Pan’s Labyrinth are two coming-of-age stories. Both the novel and the movie are full of events that contribute to the disillusionment of the main character’s childhood idealism and the realization of the real world they live in. Both protagonists absorb themselves in a mythical world full of fantasy and each receives exposure to religious theology and trauma by the violence of men. Despite the fact that Antonio and Ofelia have different familial role models and travel along different paths, their childlike innocence, disillusionment, and initiation into adulthood comes about through similar themes: myth, religion, and violence.
The plot in the film is very similar to the book but in parts, especially towards the end, the plot is slightly different to the film. The plot is varied in the film to show
Since both the movie and the book focus on that one line, they are both more similar than different.
Adolescence. The instinctive phenomenon that delivers many suspicions and guilty pleasures that haunt the young mind of adolescent until the coming of age. However, the absence of adolescence delivers the vacancy of knowledgeable wings that fly up to moral intelligence. It epitomizes the meager amount of light that provides sight to the step directly in front of one’s self, rather than light radiating upon the rest of the staircase; the unknown world of adulthood. Carlo Collodi, author of The Adventures of Pinocchio, delivers the perfect collaboration of this ethical message on adolescence and an accurate propinquity to the lives of children. Pinocchio, the wooden puppet and nose-growing misfit, becomes easily astray from his morals and encounters many disastrous events. Geppetto, hopeless father of Pinocchio, makes many sacrifices for Pinocchio, but Pinocchio displays the natural attribute of an adolescent which is self-centeredness. This particular behavior of the adolescent Pinocchio, stimulates him into pleasurable temptation and carefree fun. Colloid’s characterization, epic symbolism, metaphysical aspects, and an immense deal of archetypes all introduce the portrayal of proto-adulthood, structured education versus individualism, and humanity growing out of foolishness. Collodi succeeds in pointing out that disobedience and pleasure-seeking behavior lead to evil and unhappiness. Thereon the natural attribute of adolescence, narcissism, must be outgrown to avoid the declivity to corruptive integrity. Overall, Collodi rehashes the emblematic lesson of child obedience by approaching it in a metaphysical manner: children need proper guidance to avoid egocentricity and live in proto- adulthood.
In this section, I explore the inverse side of the novel’s function with an emphasis on the film and the disjunctive effects of reading the novel. This, I argue, constitutes the trajectory of escape in Infinite Jest—the irresolutions, inaccessibilities, and impossibilities form a surplus which leads the reader to both co-produce the text and confront the functionality of thought. With regards to the Entertainment, the reader confronts an impossibility of producing a sufficient image of the film as a whole or even a single adequate image pertaining to its contents (the images fail against the ideal). This process exposes a failure that inverts the thesis in the ‘Image and Desire’ section: first, the image fails to contain the real-mother, unhinging this particular fantasy; second, fixation within the drive fails, revealing that the drive circuit is not