“Million Dollar Baby” directed by Clint Eastwood, is a film that shows the life of female boxer by the name of Maggie Fitzgerald. Maggie is an aspiring boxer, and she is gambling whatever she has left in her passion. Clint Eastwood is shows the hard work Maggie and that her success can be implicated in life in a good or bad way. Eastwood emphasises these moments Maggie partakes through cinematography techniques such as camera angles, characterisation and the uses of light. These techniques are used to portray Eastwood’s message through Maggie’s character. Maggie is an aspiring female boxer, but she cannot fight professionally without a trainer. Maggie seeks the help of an old timer named Frankie Dunn. Frankie is first unwilling to train her, …show more content…
Maggie wanted to show that all her hard graft has given her a new life, but her mother had a different perspective. She has no appreciation of Maggie’s purchase, and she acted like she couldn’t care less. A wide angle shot captures Maggie’s side profile and everyone else in the room. That specific angle shows the seriousness of her mother’s and Mardell’s faces, indicating that Maggie is vulnerable towards them, and to what they are saying. Straight after the camera angle changes, and this time it shows a close up of Maggies face. Depressed and shocked emotions were evident, because her own family did not acknowledge her toil on becoming what she is today. Eastwood uses these direct camera angles to really emphasize on these emphatic emotions and less on the details around them. When Maggie is fighting, her emotions are very different to what is depicted in this scene. Eastwood shows that no matter how hard we try to become successful in a beloved passion, that same success cannot be implicated in the real world. Sometimes we need to admit defeat and just move on with life, without
2. Frankie's mother has a baby, Margaret. Because of the lack of money the family can't
...have been handed down from generation to generation, and that in itself is admirable. But since the narrator wants more for the quilts, I agree with her decision. I am sure the quilts would look nice hung on a wall, but I think that they would be enjoyed more on a bed or couch, as Maggie would use them. It is also what her grandma and other older generations would have wanted. These quilts were made to be used. And as they become tattered, she can repair them and even add to them. I think Maggie would get the most enjoyment of them.
...sents some discrepancies in how people value their family history. To some, family does not mean much at all but others are very much aware of their ancestors and the traits that they share in common. Some people use this self-awareness to better themselves while others find ways of exploiting it to satisfy their superficial needs. Dee is the type of individual that misuses her heritage. She is using it to fit in and attract the new religious group with which she has begun to associate. Maggie just seems oblivious, although the story does not allow the reader to know what she is thinking. The truth is that Maggie and her mother are living their heritage. This is the lesson that Dee's mother is trying to teach her; to accept and embrace who she is rather than continuously search for something she is not. She could search for her entire life and never be fulfilled.
When we meet our narrator, the mother of Maggie and Dee, she is waiting in the yard with Maggie for Dee to visit. The mother takes simple pleasure in such a pleasant place where, "anyone can come back and look up at the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house." (Walker 383) This is her basic attitude, the simple everyday pleasures that have nothing to do with great ideas, cultural heritage or family or racial histories. She later reveals to us that she is even more the rough rural woman since she, "can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man." (Walker 383) Hardly a woman one would expect to have much patience with hanging historical quilts on a wall. Daughter Maggie is very much the opposite of her older sister, Dee. Maggie is portrayed as knowing "she is not bright." (Walker 384)
In this story, Maggie is a lot like her mother. They both are uneducated, loving, caring, and allow Dee to run over them. Maggie has been through more things than her mother has though, because of the incident that happened. Maggie has scars like Emily, except Maggie’s scars are from a house fire (319). The house fire has impacted Maggie’s life tremendously, since she is very self-conscious and shy. Walker stated that Maggie is “ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs (318). The mother is protective of Maggie and will be there for her whenever she needs her too. Even though her mother knows all her struggles, she still supports her and pushes her to be better. I think that is one reason she pushes her to marry John Thomas, because she wants her to become her own person and to be strong (319). The mother of “Everyday Use” is opposite from the mother in “I Stand Here Ironing”, because she is there for her children no matter what their financial status
...s a tough-as-nails role model as a mother, could easily stand up for herself against a sassy girl like Dee if confronted. Walker has cast Maggie to remain a doormat to Dee’s antics which raises the questions whether or not she believes that African-Americans in today’s society should remain subservient to a more traditional African heritage or rely on the heritage that they and their forefathers have created for themselves in this country. I believe that Walker message is that a person’s heritage comes more from the connections that bind the generations together than a certain area, culture or country.
Stephen Crane accentuates the importance of self-reliance through Maggie’s incapability to support her. Maggie is born into a family with social and economic constraints. She is brought up in a low-l...
When Maggie finally smiles ‘a real smile’ at the end of the story as she and her mother watch Dee’s car disappear in a cloud of dust, it is because she knows her ‘mother holy recognition of the scarred daughter’s sacred status as quilter is the best gift if a hard-pressed womankind to the fragmented goddess of the present.’ (Piedmont-Marton)
In the story “Everyday Use” Walker weaves us into the lives of Momma, Dee, and Maggie, an underprivileged family in rural Georgia. Momma is described as a loving, hard working woman who cares more about her family’s welfare than her appearance. The conflict comes along with Momma’s two daughters Dee and Maggie whose personalities are as different as night and day. Dee, the younger, is an attractive, full figured, light skinned young lady with ample creativity when it comes to getting what she wants and feels she needs. Maggie on the other hand, is darker skinned, homely and scarred from the fire that destroyed the family’s first house. Throughout the story we are told about Maggie’s timid and withdrawn behavior. Her own mother described her as “. . . a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car . . . That is the way my Maggie walks . . . chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire.” (Handout, Walker) She is constantly overpowered by her dominant sister who “held life in the palm of one hand, that “no” is a word the world never learned to say to her” (Handout, Walker). It seems as if Walker herself find Maggie inferior, seeing as how she is a minor character in the story. Things begin to turn around for Maggie towards the end when she receives the family’s...
The film Wendy and Lucy, directed by Kelly Reichardt, presents a sparse narrative. The film has been criticised for its lack of background story, and as a short film, much of the story is left to the viewer to infer from what is presented in the plot. However, Wendy and Lucy is able to depict the intimate relationship between Wendy and her dog as well as reflecting more broadly on the everyday, and commenting on the current economic state of the film’s setting in America. This essay will examine how film form contributes to the viewer’s awareness of the story in Wendy and Lucy and allows a deeper understanding of the themes presented. The aspects of mise-en-scene, shot and editing and sound in the film will be explored.
Author Truman Capote grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana and spent much time in Los Angeles, California where he passed away. He had a troubled childhood with parents who were divorced and a mother who was absent. In 1959, Capote came across a small newspaper section about a mysterious murder of a four-person family in rural town Holcomb, Kansas. Capote wanted to write a non-fiction novel that would contain more intricate detail than any newspaper article would ever have. So after intrigued by the story, he started his 5 years of research. During this time Capote became very familiar with the two killers Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who were executed in 1965 a year before the book was published. Famous friend Harper Lee accompanied Capote as they interviewed local residents and dug deep into the minds of the psychotic duo as they planned to kill the innocent Clutter family, who were active members of the Methodist church and owned an 18-acre farm. The two murderers were compulsive robbers and wanted to leave no sign when venturing into the Clutter home for the safe full of Herb Clutter’s well-earned money. They were going to escape to a new life in Mexico, where no one would know who they were or what they have done.
The Classical Hollywood style, according to David Bordwell remains “bound by rules that set stringent limits on individual innovation; that telling a story is the basic formal concern.” Every element of the film works in the service of the narrative, which should be ideally comprehensible and unambiguous to the audience. The typical Hollywood film revolves around a protagonist, whose struggle to achieve a specific goal or resolve a conflict becomes the foundation for the story. André Bazin, in his “On the politique des auteurs,” argues that this particular system of filmmaking, despite all its limitations and constrictions, represented a productive force creating commercial art. From the Hollywood film derived transnational and transcultural works of art that evoked spectatorial identification with its characters and emotional investment into its narrative. The Philadelphia Story, directed by George Cukor in 1940, is one of the many works of mass-produced art evolving out of the studio system. The film revolves around Tracy Lord who, on the eve of her second wedding, must confront the return of her ex-husband, two newspaper reporters entering into her home, and her own hubris. The opening sequence of The Philadelphia Story represents a microcosm of the dynamic between the two protagonists Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven, played by Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Through the use of costume and music, the opening sequence operates as a means to aesthetically reveal narrative themes and character traits, while simultaneously setting up the disturbance that must be resolved.
Alongside the classic Coen cinematography, like darker color palettes and a skillful use of shadows, Barton Fink (1991) has strong elements of desire for money and success. The titular character Barton is a highly successful playwright living in 1941 New York City. Even though he is loved by his audiences, he feels as though he is lacking something. As fate intervenes, Barton receives an offer to write for “the pictures” in Los Angeles. The job offered to him is to write a boxing picture, a subject Barton knows nothing about. Barton’s only wish is to write for the common man, but his subconscious goal is to gain success. This goal of success is similar to that of the screwball male. Barton wishes to be the savior of the common man, while the
Maggie lives with a poor and dysfunctional family and a hopeless future with only the small possibility of change. The environment and setting she grows up in do not support anything more than a dull, dreary and pathetic future for her. An old woman asks Maggie's brother Jimmy: "Eh, Gawd, child, what is it this time? Is yer fader beatin yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin yer fader? (Maggie, 10)" while he runs to Maggie's apartment one night. The lack of love and support of her family hinders Maggie's ability to live a happy and fulfilling life. Without knowing that someone loves her no matter what she does or how she acts Maggie may feel desperate enough to change her situation by any means she can, and without any useful guidance. Even without any positive influences Maggie grows up different from the low-life's living with and around her. Crane explains Maggie's uniqueness in the passage "None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over it" (Maggie 16). Maggie's uniqueness gives her the chance to improve her life, but only a slim chance. Even though Maggie differs from the people around her they remain sleazy, making it harder for her to change her life because she must go outside of her community for help.
They may argue Maggie could of escape from the slum life and she didn’t have to let it take a hold of her. They may also say that Maggie was her own downfall and demise by letting a boy drag her down to the mud and damage her good name. However, because of her upbringing, it was hard for her not to be affected by her environment and social factors.