In Milchwald, filmmaker Christoph Hochhäusler presents a modern German version of the Brothers Grimm’s classic “Hansel and Gretel.” Although these two tales are not identical, they share enough similarities to convey the same theme. By comparing and contrasting the plot, setting, and characters in Milchwald and “Hansel and Gretel”, one can see how Hochhäusler cinematically engages with his textual source to convey a theme of uncertainty and ultimately develops a compelling story for contemporary audiences.
This theme of uncertainty is most evident in the plot. Both film and fairy tale are driven by the uncertainty that surrounds the children as they attempt to return home. The Brothers Grimm write how Hansel and Gretel “soon lost their way
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In “Hansel and Gretel,” the children’s abandonment is schemed by their own mother. The Brothers Grimm portray the mother as a highly manipulative person, who refused to “give [the father] any peace until he said yes” (Grimm 44) to her plot to starve the children to save themselves. Hansel and Gretel’s mother executes this maneuver not once but twice, since the children successfully return home the first time. Although the mother is not a focus for the rest of the story, the reason for her behavior is uncertain. She is atypical of most maternal characters because she is willing to sacrifice her children to prevent her own …show more content…
When Sylvia fails to find the children, whom she temporarily abandoned along the side of the road in a burst of frustration, she merely drives back home and hides their backpacks to make it seem like she had not seen them that day. For the rest of the movie, Hochhäusler continually films her passive behavior while the father frantically searches for them. Sylvia idly stands by while the father phones the school, checks all the places his children frequent, and reports the missing children to the police. Her lack of concern sharply contrasts with her husband’s anxiety. Since the audience is left to wonder about Sylvia’s motive for the entirety of the film, her behavior contributes to the uncertainty that pervades the story. By holding the stepmother responsible for the children’s disappearance, Hochhäusler again links his film to the textual
Perhaps one of the most haunting and compelling parts of Sanders-Brahms’ film Germany Pale Mother (1979) is the nearly twenty minute long telling of The Robber Bridegroom. The structual purpose of the sequence is a bridge between the marriage of Lene and Hans, who battles at the war’s front, and the decline of the marriage during the post-war period. Symbolically the fairy tale, called the “mad monstrosity in the middle of the film,” by Sanders Brahms (Kaes, 149), offers a diagetic forum for with which to deal with the crimes of Nazi Germany, as well a internally fictional parallel of Lene’s marriage.
As I watched, I had to wonder at the manner in which action shots, such as actors jumping from moving trains, were completed. Today, with current technology, a predominant amount of the action scenes are created digitally, with green screens. It is with a knowledge of the dependency of actions films on special effects, that I gained a profound respect for this particular film. The action scenes with trains colliding, derailments and military conflicts were capable of eliciting a stark drama in black and white magnificently enabling the sense of true to life action. The Train, is a tale fraught with suspense and espionage, of two opposing forces, a vanquished countryside and the foreign foe. With that said, it is important to note that majority of the characters placed more value on the artwork than human lives. Ironically the main character, Labiche was the only person predominantly concerned with the loss of life and not the art collection. On the other hand Waldheim, the man who held little regard for human life, the enemy’s as well as his own people, treasured that art collection beyond
Comparing Form and Content of Jabberwocky, The Raven, and Lady of Shalott. In many poems, the use of imagery and sound causes the reader to consider them to be "good" or "bad". Repetition, alliteration, the use of metaphors and images together with rhymes and the text itself work together to create that special feeling or message the poet wants to share. The Romantics believed that poetry should express the poet's feelings or state of mind and should not be worked with or thought through too much, since the original feeling thus would be lost, but in order to share your feelings or ideas with the public, I believe it is important to present them in as good a form as possible.
“Nosferatu the Vampire” depicts the tragic interaction between Jonathan and Lucy Harper with the vampire Dracula. In this film, we follow Jonathan Harper to the castle of Dracula, witness the two’s interactions, follow the pair’s return to Wismar, observe Dracula’s havoc rot on the town, and finally, witness Dracula’s eventual fall, death, and rebirth. In this artful reimagining of the classic vampire story, Werner Herzog employs various cinematic techniques to build up to a dramatic shift in the plot and supporting characters. In this paper, I will explain how Herzog employed music, camera motion, and light, to establish character types and build up to this dramatic shift in the supporting characters. I will then perform a mise-en-sence analysis
The stepmother of Hansel and Gretel is the seen as an evil and tempered character who persuades the father to break up the family by forcing the children out of the house when a famine hits the countryside. The role which the stepmother plays, “aligns her with a number of stereotypes which would be active in the minds of a German audience in the run up to WWII, during which Jews were regularly charged with seducing innocent Germans to engage in any number of nefarious plots designed to weaken the homeland” (Scott Harshbarger, Grimm and Grimmer). The story also includes the idea of disobedience being a negative distinguishing tendency a child should behave in by having the children obey the mother and father when they say they are going to into the forest to fetch wood, even after they knew their true fate. The story of Hansel and Gretel was successful in developing obedience as a desired trait people should have by creating a situation where the children where forced into acceptance and submissiveness by fear of what the authority or in this case, the stepmother would do to them. This idea of obedience through fear was an idea that the Nazi’s often used during their time in
In the poem “Beowulf,” Grendel’s mother, a monstrous creature, is one of the three antagonists Beowulf, the main character, fights against. The battle against Grendel’s mother appears to be the strangest of the three battles. The main reason for its strangeness is that Grendel’s mother is the mother of the monster Grendel, who was killed by Beowulf in the first battle. Another reason for its strangeness is that Grendel’s mother is the only female-type creature. An alternative reason for this strangeness in the battle is due to the fact that Grendel’s mother is not a true monster, aside from her physical form. Through the explanation of kinship, the understanding of the missing words from the original text, and the comparison of Grendel’s mother to other mothers in the poem, specifically Welthow and Hildeburh, it can be established that the intentions of Grendel’s mother are not monstrous even though she has the appearance of a monster.
I will also be showing how fairytales can sometimes have extended meanings and how they can teach quit a lot. I will have also shown how Fairytales can serve cultural functions to explain a society to itself, revealing its own mechanisms and taboos in highly symbolic language, images.
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is een film geregisseerd en geschreven door Tommy Wirkola in 2013. Het is een film gebaseerd op het sprookje van Hans en Grietje. Deze film begint waar het sprookje ook begint Hans en Grietje worden achter gelaten in het bos en komen zo bij de heks in het snoephuisje terecht. Van het moment dat ze daar weg komen en ontdekt hebben dat ze immuun zijn voor heksen magie (later komen ze er achter dat dit komt door dat hun moeder een goede heks was) besluiten ze om heksen jagers te worden zoals de titel al doet vermoeden.
Setting the tale in Nazi Germany creates an atmosphere of fear and anxiety, and establishes a set of circumstances in which it is possible for people to act in ways that would be unacceptable under other circumstances. The stepmother is a good example of this. She is the force in the family – it is she who decides that everyone in the family will have a better chance of survival, if they split up – the children going off alone together and the parents going in another direction. Unlike the portrayal of the stepmother in the Grimm fairy tale, this stepmother is not wicked. She is strong willed and determined, but not evil, although she is protecting herself and her husband by abandoning the children.
Once upon a time deep in a large forest there lived a woodchopper, his wife, and their two children, Hansel and Gretel. It was a beautiful forest, full of trees, flowers and butterflies and streams. Matter of fact, the family had everything they could ever want except for one little thing.
Fairy tales have been a big part of learning and childhood for many of us. They may seem childish to us, but they are full of life lessons and intelligent turnings. Components of fairy tales may even include violence, but always with the aim to provide a moral to the story. Hansel and Gretel is in itself a very interesting story to analyze. It demonstrates the way that children should not stray too far from their benchmarks and rely on appearances. In 2013, a film adaptation was produced. This film is produced for an older public and has picked up the story to turn it into a more mature and violent version. Hansel and Gretel is a German fairy tale written by the Grimm Brothers which has undergone several changes over the years and across the cultures which it touched, but for the purposes of this essay, I will stick to the original story. In the development of this essay, I will analyze the components of this tale by the Brothers Grimm based on the factors listed in the course syllabus (violence, interpersonal relationships, the function of magic and the ending), and I will then do a summary and comparison between the story and the film which was released in theaters recently.
Although, this willingness is blind to the narrator as she fails to see this. As well as the narrator believes she is not able to be the person her mother wants her to be. It is not until we learn of the narrator's mother's passing that the narrator fully understands why the mother had done the things she did for all those years. This story also emphasizes that mothers are very courageous women who would do anything for their children even if it means moving halfway across the world just to give them the chances they never got to have growing up. However, the overall message to take away from this story is how much of a reflection it is regarding how far a mother's unconditional love for her child can
ground. The king hears of the news and sends the army to stop the giant
In the novel “the adventures of hukle berry finn” by mark twain offers readers a story of adventure, and many things to relate to, by tellthing the story of a boy whose unpreducktable life alouse him to have adventures even thought he has to keep a close eye out as to be good not to enabably be buniched by Douglas witch was never a plesant thing but never the less I fell as thought this mostly uneducated boy by the name of hukle berry finn makes for a book that some people would say is extravigently hard to put down, and say for exanble if the novel had been writed in a more formal way as most of the books of its time it would have been less reaitable to many of the younger readers, and the quotes such as “imma going to lick you” less enjoyable
The Brothers Grimm adaptation of “Hansel and Gretel,” is one of many fairy tales in Grimm’s works and as well as in many others that introduce the story with a weak family. Weak defined as in a family that does not follow the “ideal family structure”(SEC SOURCE), such as having the protagonists family lacking an authoritative father and or caring mother figure. With this as such a common way to introduce a story, in this story in particular, it is utilized and has more of a developmental trajectory for both the protagonist and the reader itself. Grimm exercises a ______ of broken families in means to develop the protagonist and educate the reader. However, one cannot fully understand Grimm’s purpose and safely assume what an “ideal family structure” consists of. In order to do so, historical context and ____ must be analyzed.