The visual construction of the movie creates and enhances the surrealistic atmosphere. Jarmusch begins with short shots fading in and out against a dark screen, generating a dreamlike ambiance that evokes an altered state of consciousness. Little by little, the flashes grow longer, the dark screen less frequent. The images begin to blend into a visual thread, as if the traveler was entering a new world that was slowly taking shape around him. Blake is following the same pattern, waking and falling asleep. His environment is becoming different, the characters surrounding him stranger, the end of the line a desolate and foreboding place; accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) journeys West from Cleveland to the mysterious town of Machine. The …show more content…
The two poles of Blake's journey are the villages: the bad, white town of Machine and its amorality, and on the other hand, the Native American village, a place of hope on the brink of the sea, the cleansing spiritual harbor leading to a better world. The film opposes profit and power to spirituality, industrialization to nature. Blake will cross both places in a parallel fashion. The villages are very similar to each other. A long road runs through the middle of each village, and as Blake treads on it, he passes people who stare at him. Both roads are littered with animal skulls and bones, both display people engaged in various activities (women cooking, men skinning furs, etc.) At the very end, closing the street, there is the central totem in the Makah village, contrasted with the Metalworks factory in Machine. But there is a change in Blake: he arrived alone, disoriented but sturdy in Machine, and the camera followed him. In the Native community, he is brought in, still disoriented but unable to walk, by a friend, Nobody, and the camera pulls back in front of him. In the beginning, Blake believes he knows who he is; he is strong and sure of himself. When things deteriorate and events keep taking a turn for the worse, the hero's confidence in what he knows wears away and he becomes weaker. Once he accepts the identity given to him by Nobody, when the Native American paints his face, he regains purpose and strength. But eventually, the painting on his face fades away as he nears the end of his journey and he becomes weak again, as if each passage from one 'level' to the next involved a loss of
Humans are funny creatures. We judge and classify others and ourselves into groups. We tear apart others esteem to feel stronger. And we put limits on ourselves, whether they are thought up by our imagination or other’s. The truth is, we aren’t perfect, but we can become better, that is, if we choose to. Benchwarmers captures that thought perfectly. Though it is a comedy, and a very hilarious one at that, it provides some very true points to consider. Benchwarmers is a great movie to watch because within this side-splittingly funny movie, there are important messages such as: bullying is a double edged sword, stereotypes can be overcome, and that diversity is what makes life exciting.
As the story comes to its conclusion, the hero has endured his hardships; he went from the one that started fights to the one that thought of what could make everything work. An ordinary person in an ordinary world faced his share of trials and tribulations to come out as a new person. Defining the hero myth—he struggled and still was able to triumph to his prize at the end ; individuals relish these type of stories, they can
The story is an eye-opening look into the thoughts and feelings of an unnamed man who saw too much of his society and started asking questions. In the story, his quest begins when he hops on a motorcycle with his young son, Chris, a sharp but slightly confused boy. While Chris thinks that the trip is meant only to be a vacation on the back roads of America, his father knows that he is really taking this trip for himself. It is meant to be a period in which he can think about and piece together the events of his early life, a time in which he started to wonder about the faults of society, eventually driving himself insane. Their journey leads them through highways, roads, one lane country passes, and finally into beautiful pastures and mountains. It was during these extended rides and rest stops in nature that we see what this story is really about.
The black experience is one that always needs to be told. There is always a new story because much of Black history has been omitted from American History. More recently, Singer/Producer John Legend inked a deal with WGN to develop a dramatic series on this very story. Underground, a black slavery experience, became WGN’s highest rated series in the station’s history, outpacing WGN America’s 2015-2016 primetime average by 508 percent in total viewers and 1,005 percent among adults 18-49 in live-plus-seven viewing (DVR). Netflix’s 13TH, a documentary which tackles race and mass incarceration, was the first non-fiction film to open the prestigious NY Film Festival in its 54-year history. There is already talk about it being an Oscar nominee. Currently, the American public is about 40 percent minority and that’s increasing by about half a percent every year. The viewing audience
In the movie, The Human Experience, Abraham Maslow’s and James Fowler’s beliefs play a major role in describing the three experiences that the characters chose to live out. The characters Cliff, Jeff, Michael, and Matthew join each other on three different encounters to experience life in other people’s shoes. The encounters were homelessness, caring for physically and mentally handicapped children, and visited Ghanaians with HIV AIDS and leprosy. Each character learned lessons and were humbled immensely by their experiences.
The story chronicles situations that illustrate the common stereotypes about Natives. Through Jackson’s humble personality, the reader can grasp his true feelings towards White people, which is based off of the oppression of Native Americans. I need to win it back myself” (14). Jackson also mentions to the cop, “I’m on a mission here. I want to be a hero” (24).
The Bad and The Beautiful (1952) and State and Main (2000) are films within films that unmask Hollywood Cinema as a dream factory and expose the grotesque, veneer hidden by the luxury of stars. The Bad and the Beautiful, directed by Vincent Minnelli, is a black and white film narrated in flashback form. The films theatrical nature requires more close-ups than wide-screen shots to capture the character’s psychological turmoil. For example, Fred and Jonathan’s car ride is captured in a close-up to signify their friendship; however their relationship deteriorates after Jonathan’s deceit. While the camera zooms out, Fred stands alone motionless. Here, Fred is captured from a distance at eye-level and he becomes ostracized by the film industry and
Within the German Democratic Republic, there was a secret police force known as the Stasi, which was responsible for state surveillance, attempting to permeate every facet of life. Agents within and informants tied to the Stasi were both feared and hated, as there was no true semblance of privacy for most citizens. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the movie The Lives of Others follows one particular Stasi agent as he carries out his mission to spy on a well-known writer and his lover. As the film progresses, the audience is able to see the moral transformation of Stasi Captain Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler primarily through the director 's use of the script, colors and lighting, and music.
In the documentary “Fed Up,” sugar is responsible for Americas rising obesity rate, which is happening even with the great stress that is set on exercise and portion control for those who are overweight. Fed Up is a film directed by Stephanie Soechtig, with Executive Producers Katie Couric and Laurie David. The filmmaker’s intent is mainly to inform people of the dangers of too much sugar, but it also talks about the fat’s in our diets and the food corporation shadiness. The filmmaker wants to educate the country on the effects of a poor diet and to open eyes to the obesity catastrophe in the United States. The main debate used is that sugar is the direct matter of obesity. Overall, I don’t believe the filmmaker’s debate was successful.
Gran Torino is an interesting portrayal of communication dilemmas, spread out across several characters and in particular that of main character Walt Kowalski. After the death of his wife, Walt is bombarded with unwanted attention from several angles and attempts to “deal” with the attention to the best of his ability. There are many examples of communication struggles in the film, but they all seem to follow a similar pattern, and that is distance in time and culture. I’d like to focus on some of these communication barriers between his family, neighbors and priest and see how some of these walls got broken down, or could have been removed more easily.
The movie I decided to analyze for this course was American History X (1998), which stars Edward Norton. Though this movie isn’t widely known, it is one of the more interesting movies I have seen. It’s probably one of the best films that depict the Neo Nazi plague on American culture. The film takes place from the mid to late 1990’s during the Internet boom, and touches on subjects from affirmative action to Rodney King. One of the highlights of this movie that really relates to one of the key aspects of this course is the deterrence of capital punishment. Edward Norton’s portrayal as the grief stricken older brother who turns to racist ideologies and violence to cope with his fathers death, completely disregards the consequences of his actions as he brutally murders someone in front of his family for trying to steal his car. The unstable mentality that he developed after his father’s death really goes hand-to-hand specifically with Isaac Ehrlich’s study of capital punishment and deterrence. Although this movie is entirely fictional, a lot of the central themes (racism, crime punishment, gang pervasiveness, and one’s own vulnerability) are accurate representations of the very problems that essentially afflict us as a society.
While fulfilling their journey, a hero must undergo a psychological change that involves experiencing a transformation from immaturity into independence and sophistication. Campbell states that these events are what ultimately guides a hero into completing their journey by, “leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer more mature condition” (Moyers 1). She first enters her journey when she learns about invisible strength from her mother, “I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games”(Tan 89).
The Associate is an entertaining movie that brings forth gender disparities in the workplace. Whoopi Goldberg, Laurel Ayers, portrays a financial analyst who has been stuck in a position that does not give her true credit for all of her hard work and talents. The Associate exemplifies the sexism that is occurring in the workplace through satiric wit and a strong story line.
A League of Their Own (Marshall, 1992) explicitly characterizes an American era when a woman’s place was in the home. Even our modern perspective implicitly follows suit. Although women have gained rights and freedoms since the 1930’s, sexism remains prevalent in America. This film offers an illustration when men went to war and big business men utilized women as temporary replacements in factories, sports, and so on. Here, course concepts, such as gender socialization, gender expressions, role stereotypes, emotion expressions, and language, correspond to the film’s characters and themes.
One of the most popular social networking websites today is none other than Facebook. People use Facebook in order to stay connected with their friends, family and the people around them, to discover what’s going in the world, in addition to share and express what matters to them. The Social Network is a film on how Facebook was created. There was a series of events, character development, relationships and a series of different emotions that are shown throughout the film.