Sustained in a world of wonders waking up every morning trying to analyze what it is about the world that makes life worth living. Could it be love, friends, and the riches of being able to breathe? However in certain cases; could it be that this which you had already acquired in life can be the very reason you cry for justice through your death bed. Akira Kurosawa “Rashomon” and Orson Welles “Citizen Kane” are two separate films with two separate meaning but leads to one conclusion “Maybe one day you will wake up with it all and still have absolutely nothing. For what is love when it cannot look you in the face and whisper in your ear I love you back? What is the meaning of friendship when it brings a mist of joy, yet; betray you at the
The book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and the movie V for Vendetta both take place in a dystopian future. Each one very different, but similar dystopian societies with many similar aspects such as luring citizens into false happiness, censoring citizens from different forms of literature, and characters who can really see behind the government’s façade and tell what is wrong with society. Similarity between the two ranges from meek things such as a similar setting with both societies residing in London, or more intricate things like similarities between the governments. Since the beginning of mankind humans have long since craved for a feeling of belonging and to be a part of something. Over the long history of mankind this same feeling has led to the growth of civilizations and societies. Eventually leading up to modern day societies with governments such as republics, dictatorships, and democracies. Each with its own different ways of
Roberto Benigni, the director of Life is Beautiful (1997), explores the sacrifice of people during war . Through the use of Foreshadowing, Mood, and Characterization, film audiences are challenged to Imagine the struggles of the those in the holocaust.
The pursuit of truth has driven him to explore the best ways and practices that can improve the human life and enhance understanding to identify the underlying cause of world ills. He demonstrates the heart and not the brain may be the man’s primary source of intelligence. He continued to argue that human consciousness and emotions may affect the world of reality. The reaction of his heart to a bowl of yogurt may appear humorous, but has great impression in our lives and that money is not a pathway to happiness but in some culture's gross materialism is a symbol of insanity. The film discovers that human life is better when expression of positive emotions such as love, care, compassion, and gratitude than other negative emotions of stress, anxiety and depression. Furthermore, it proves that consensus decision-making is a norm among all species.
The two films "Let The Right One In" and "Let Me In" are both based on the same novel and made only two years apart. However, the "original" Swedish-based film "Let The Right One In" is in my opinion, and many critics also agree, is better than the "Americanized" remake "Let Me In" for various reasons. Beth Accomando summarizes the views best when she wrote, "anything good in the remake comes directly from the original" and I would add onto that the remake is not only just following the original but loses some qualities as well making it worse off.
Therefore, this is a very essential topic to express with all people. Some people who watch this film might just see themselves like the character of the old man; there are an abundance of people in this world that recognize themselves as an adversary, it is not uncommon for this to happen. The topic that is realized from this film made me look at other people and analyze how they see themselves. As well as looking to other people to see their feelings, I looked at myself to speculate my perception.
In every story, there is a protagonist and an antagonist, good and evil, love and hatred, one the antithesis of the other. To preserve children’s innocence, literature usually emphasizes on the notion that love is insurmountable and that it is the most beautiful and powerful force the world knows of, yet Gen’s and Carmen’s love, ever glorious, never prevails. They each have dreams of a future together, “he takes Carmen’s hand and leads her out the gate at the end of the front walkway… together they… simply walk out into the capital city of the host country. Nobody knows to stop them. They are not famous and nobody cares. They go to an airport and find a flight back to Japan and they live there, together, happily and forever” in which their love is the only matter that holds significance (261). The china
Since the beginning of time, human nature has been directed towards love relationships and friendships. Through these relationships and friendships we act in love towards each other to enlighten one another in truth and in happiness. This is because the absences of truth is misery and the fullness of truth is ecstasy. This is seen in both “The Truman Show” and “Plato’s Republic”.
The absolutely stunning film, Citizen Kane (1941), is one of the world’s most famous and highly renowned films. The film contains many remarkable scenes and cinematic techniques as well as innovations. Within this well-known film, Orson Welles (director) portrays many stylistic features and fundamentals of cinematography. The scene of Charles Foster Kane and his wife, Susan, at Xanadu shows the dominance that Kane bears over people in general as well as Susan specifically. Throughout the film, Orson Welles continues to convey the message of Susan’s inferiority to Mr. Kane. Also, Welles furthers the image of how demanding Kane is of Susan and many others. Mr. Welles conveys the message that Kane has suffered a hard life, and will continue to until death. Welles conveys many stylistic features as well as fundamentals of cinematography through use of light and darkness, staging and proxemics, personal theme development and materialism within the film, Citizen Kane.
Stand By Me, Rob Reiner’s 1986 film, captures the beauty and fragility of human life and friendship through experiences with death. The film operates on two different levels; it serves as a coming of age story of Gordie Lachance, Vern Tessio, Teddy Duchamp, and Chris Chambers, but also as a reflection of the meanings of life and death by the Writer. The Writer serves as the narrator, looking back on the events leading up to his first encounter with a dead body. The film makes wonderful use of the five formal axes of film design to convey its powerful message: life is best enjoyed with a friend, because death is all around.
Love is defined in many different ways; often times it depends on the person you ask. Sometimes it can be mistaken for lust or hate, and some people don’t even believe love exists. Although each individual carries their own opinion and perspective, it is safe to say that the portrayal of love in literature and film can appear much more magical and grand than it is in reality. Love can be an extremely controversial topic, but for the duration of this paper I ask the reader to hypothesize with me and explore the point of view from the literature and film aspect. I will be comparing the theme of love in the film Twilight and the story The Mysterious Stranger. Specifically, I will be comparing the theme of love in contradiction with “love” that
We are all about the world. More often than not, we rarely take time to see the beauty of this creative tension emerging from differences and oppositions. Perhaps if we do, we will consciously work towards the full.
Many acclaimed auteurs have attempted to show the universality of darkness, from Robert Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Modern films, from Se7en to American Psycho to No Country for Old Men contain the same cynical message, displaying the prevalence of such gloomy perspective. Artists are continually fascinated with exploring the topic because it grounds a larger human worldview, founded on skepticism and uncertainty. It questions people’s inherent morality, struggling with the fundamental belief in innate societal morality and implicating an underlying depravity. If such a misanthropic view proves to be correct, then the world is indeed a twisted
The films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa have had wide ranging influence over contemporary films, with his ronin films Seven Samurai and Yojimbo influencing countless westerns and mob movies. Arguably, however, Rashomon has been the most instrumental of all Kurosawa’s films because it asks a question that lies near the heart of all cinema: what is reality? Today, any consumer of television or cinema has seen various permutations of the plot of Rashomon numerous times, probably without realizing. In the film, a rape and consequent murder are told five different times, by a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) who seems to have witnessed the event, a bandit (Toshiro Mifune) who committed the rape, the wife of a samurai (Machiko Kyo) who was raped, and the ghost of the samurai (Masayuki Mori), who is channeled by a medium after his murder. In each telling, the viewer is presented with five realities that, through the use of various frame stories, are totally incompatible with one another. Throughout, Rashomon is a study in simplicity. The beautiful yet frugal cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa and the minimalist plot, skillfully directed by Kurosawa, force the viewer to contend with two dissonant notions: that everything they have seen is real, but that none of it can be true.
In Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together and In The Mood For Love, people remain obsessively undecided. In Chungking Express, cop no.223 vows to fall in love with the first woman he walks into. In a way he is going through reality the way adolescents go through computer games, detached, full of illusions, and unprepared to have real feelings. Wong shows this dynamic even in the love relationship between two men in his film Happy Together. The characters’ perpetually recurring suggestion to start their relationship from scratch is naïve abstract and innocent. Happy Together is a provocative film on many levels and perhaps can only be made by a fiercely independent director such as Wong Kar-Wai. Strangely self-contained, almost virtual and dystopian, life exists as a dreamlike experience. Perhaps all this modern confusion is why Wong looks to the past. A simpler time where identity was more of a tangible concept than it is now. His films drenched in nostalgia are perhaps his internal attempts to come to terms with modernity and ground us in the context of history and
In “Yellow Star” by Jennifer Roy and the film “Life is Beautiful” by Roberto Benigni; the creators beautifully illustrate this installment of fantasy and how the characters cope with their situations as a result of it. Hence, even the toughest situations are more pleasant and bearable when seen through the filter of fantasy.