1 INTRODUCTION
The Triplets of Belleville (French: Les Triplettes de Belleville) is a 2003 animated comedy film written and directed by Sylvain Chomet. There is little dialogue, the majority of the film story being told through song and pantomime. It tells the story of Madame Souza, an elderly woman who goes on a quest to rescue her grandson Champion, a Tour de France cyclist, who has been kidnapped by the French mafia for gambling purposes and taken to the city of Belleville. She is joined by the Triplets of Belleville, music hall singers from the 1930s, whom she meets in the city, and her obese hound, Bruno.
The film was highly praised by audiences and critics for its unique style of animation. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards — Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for "Belleville Rendex-vous". It was also screened out of competition (hors concours) at the 2003 Cannes Festival.
2 THEMES
From the extensive Movie Theme Index List found at textweek.com, the following themes were distinctly identified in the film:
(in alphabetical order)
• Acceptance
• Alienation
• Compassion
• Crime
• Dreams
• Journey
• Determination
• Servanthood (servants of the Mafia)
• Sisterhood
• Strength
3 REVIEW
I feel like admitting this, the starting scenes in the film confused me. I had to double-check the release date of the film! The starting credits appear in 1930s animation with 1930’s jazz background score, something like the way Popeye began! The starting performance by the Belleville Sisters and the bizarre theatrics that follow pretty much set the tone for the rest of the film. This film is more of detail and quirks than a complex storyline. In fact, to sum it all up, it is just a really determined grandmother’s quest to r...
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...acquired all the techniques contributed by the Anglo-Saxons. It is like that in Eastern Europe, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Italy.”
On being asked about the reason for no dialogue in the film, he replied,
“I’m very involved with the whole line test thing. For me, when you’ve worked all day on an animation and that moment when you see the drawings move, that’s a really magic moment, and there is no sound to it. I also think that an animation without the constraints of spoken words is stronger. If you have to fit everything to the words, all the gestural movement revolves around the mouth. Without it, you are much freer to create true animation, to talk through animation itself. Animation modeled around the dialogue is like something, which has already been set in stone, there’s less scope for interpretation. I have always wanted the animators to bring something to it.”
One example of the theme occurs when the author first introduces the story. “But the summer I was 9 years old, the town I had always loved morphed into a beautifully heartbreaking and complicated place.” (pg. 1). The author is saying that the year she turned nine, she found out something about her town that broke her heart and changed the way she saw it. This quote is important because it supports the theme. It shows that now she is older she has learned something about her town that made her wiser than when she was younger. She is now more informed because the new information changed her and caused her to begin to mature.
In “The Great Taos Bank Robbery” The Theme is Comedy. If you read this to a child he would laugh out loud around 5 times. Many of the parts in “The Great Taos Bank Robbery” are so stupid that it is funny, like waiting in line for the bank trying to rob it during rush hour or a man dressed up as a woman. In “Full Circle” the theme would be revenge. Not the revenge that one man does to another but one does to himself. Killing a girl is very bad. So when you read that part at the end that he crashes into the crane that is fixing the sign the girl broke when he shot her, you can only think, Karma. In “The Wasps Nest” the theme is probably about how just because you are dying doesn't mean you should take someone else with you. Making Claude buy cyanide so Harrison can kill himself and that will make Claude hang himself is pretty
Belle Graycloud is a feisty, strong-willed Indian woman. She is well respected and is the commanding grandmother of her household. Her family is very close to the Blankets, who are distant cousins. Belle’s daughter, Lettie, is a close friend of Grace. Lettie’s lover, Benoit, is an Osage man that is married to Grace’s crippled sister, Sara Blanket; but he is more like a brother and caretaker to her than he is a husband.
In the film the music is very important. At the beginning it is set at
The universal themes that are used in the story are racism and better the young.”And mothers and fathers, if it is too late for you, think of your children. Make it safe so they don't have to run away, for I want for you and your children what I had.”( Baker, 83) These themes are universal because both talk about things that has happened multiple times. Like better the young. We want the young to be the greatest generation and not make the mistakes we had made. The children of each generation need to be better than the last generations. The other theme racism. Racism was back then and it is now. The theme talks about the racism in the past and in the present and in the future. Racism will be the theme for lots of things in the present but also
So basically the movie still had the Pinks ladies and the T-birds but all the characters were switched around. The main Pink lady was over being a Pink Lady and was over being with the main T-Bird. So the whole movie she’s looking for what she calls a “Cool Rider”. Then ends up discovering it was the nerd guys she’s been rejecting all year, which also happens to be Sandys cousin from Grease one. Wasn’t really much to the movie other than corny romance movie.
The first theme, racism in which the narrator is trying to find out who he is. As the narrator who plays the role of “The Invisible Man” has issues of finding his own identity, he struggles with the fact that he is an African American man living in an extremely racist white society. From the beginning to
themes. One that stuck out to me is Fitzgerald expressing how the idea of true love is just a
In the Western sensibility, the march of progress is normally deemed positive and inevitable. In recent Western history, from the Middle Ages forward, successive improvements in the spread of knowledge, dissemination of culture, and the av...
When speaking of themes, Polanski’s main theme in the movie is human isolation, and most of his movies are quite sad and about lonely people. Almodovar’s themes are more about human chemistry, relationships between different people and families. Sexuality and desire is important for Almodovar’s movies.
Musically, Humoresque is a masterpiece. There is so much art to be found in putting individual pieces together to create a new, bigger piece of art. In this film, the scorer picks meaningful music that will certainly resonate for the viewers in order to not only provide music for the film, but also to convey the story in spite of the dialogue. I think the music is so strongly tied to the storyline that it could potentially stand on its own and still tell as compelling of a story as with the dialogue. Foray’s music penetrates the minds of the characters, and the viewer gets to see it all weave together through beautiful transitions and beautiful music. This film is as interesting musically as it is in its story, and that shows a true mastery of film scoring and how music induces emotion.
There are many themes that occur and can be interpreted differently throughout the novel. The three main themes that stand out most are healing, communication, and relationships.
The first theme uncovered in the movie is isolation, this theme is present throughout the entire movie. The viewer is introduced to the main character and narrator of the movie, whose name we are never told. By not providing his name this gives us the idea that he represents the average working class male. He never speaks of any family members,
The first concept important to me that I learned after watching the film is the main theme for the film. I believe the main theme of the film