Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is definitely not a film that can be watched passively. As I watched it, my mind was flooded with questions of perception, consciousness, and reality as I tried to understand this complex piece. First and foremost, this film had me questioning reality more than anything else. Many cognitive film theorists stress the importance of the relationship between film and mental perception rather than the relationship between film and reality, and Eternal Sunshine certainly encompasses this ideal.

            Maya Deren wrote about how reality is simply a mental concept; we perceive things as real by relating them to past experiences and learned expectations. I struggled with this theory quite a bit, but I had an epiphany during the film that cleared things up for me. Reality is a something we all deal with and relate to, but who is to say that we all experience the same realities?  At first as I watched the dream sequences, with Clementine and Joel hiding from extraction, existing in an inconceivably realistic world of imagination, I found myself being slightly skeptical of the film. The more I watched though, the more I was struck by the honesty and believability of its premise. The film presented phenomenon that you would not encounter in everyday life, things that could only be present in a dream. However, why should a dream be perceived as any less realistic than real life? My thoughts, my dreams, are real to me inside my head, and they are indeed a part of my every day reality. My reality is unique to me. Reality and identity are simply mental constructs, not physical substances.

Cinema has so much value and potential for expression because, unlike other arts, it retains tangible aspects of reality that we can relate to while appealing to the more intimate aspects of the spectator- emotions, imagination, memories- to create a cinematic world that is unique to each viewer. In Eternal Sunshine, I watched as Joel was asked relive the memories evoked by different objects as Stan watched the MRI and extracted them. Joel is flooded with memories of Clementine as he looks as these seemingly insignificant objects- odd potato figurines and abstract drawings- that, to most people, would mean nothing. But to Joel, these mementos mean everything to him. In that aspect, we, the spectator, are like Joel. We watch a film and each individual spectator is flooded with memories, thoughts, musings, all based on our individual pasts.

This just makes me think about, really and truly, how important the spectator is in cinema. Film is so subjective and the consciousness of the individual spectator shapes how they perceive the film. The active spectator accepts the impression of reality and depth the film presents and derives meaning from it, despite their inherent awareness of the film’s distance from reality. For example, when Joel first sees Clementine in Barnes & Noble and she acts as if she does not know him, it appears as a believable, realistic scene. Then, as Joel walks down the aisles of books, the lights above him start going off one-by-one, and all of a sudden Joel is back in Rob and Carrie’s house.  The viewer is jolted, quickly forced to accept that he or she is not in for a perfectly conventional and linear love story. Once the spectator accepts this, the film’s blending of reality and the supernatural takes on new meaning and the viewer can make his or her own interpretation of the story.

Joel and Clementine themselves demonstrate this phenomenon of how a spectator can adapt and personalize cinema to suit his or her own purposes and experiences. In the dream sequence, at one point, Joel and Clementine find themselves in the memory of a night spent at the drive-in theater. Clem and Joel jokingly dub over the voices of the actors on screen, giving them ridiculous lines and accents. Joel and Clementine, demonstrating Lindsay’s idea that conversation among the audience was beneficial to cinema, use their own methods and imaginations to create a whole new experience and interpretation of the film.

As a spectator, my past experiences and preconceived notions shaped my reception of the film. I kept finding myself thinking about how unconventional Clementine was in her approach to dating; bad romantic comedies and learned social conventions have taught me to react to a woman telling a man “I’m going to marry you” on the first day they met with horror. Similarly, my trite notions of Valentine’s Day had me analyzing the significance of Joel and Clementine’s meeting in Montauk on February 14^th. However, then I realized that my notions were just that: notions, not fact or law.

Once I accepted that, I fully realized how subtly and irrevocably we as humans are influenced by everything we come into contact with. With so many aspects of life that yield to your expectations and stereotypes, it is refreshing to be exposed to things that surprise you. Cinema’s beauty lies in its potential to incorporate aspects of reality with aspects of creativity and imagination. Like Joel’s experience of Déjà vu in Eternal Sunshine, the relationship between reality and creativity is so complexly intertwined that we, the spectator, should experience a feeling of déjà vu when we view a film; it should be an experience so close to our reality, but at the same time, so enigmatic and innovative, that we are awed and inexplicably altered by our contact with it.

Maya Deren stressed cinema’s uniqueness in that it is the only art that cannot be totally controlled; it can be guided by the filmmaker, but will always be affected by the spontaneous and uncontrollable aspects of life. The “controlled accident” transcends into the story of Eternal Sunshine. In the ultimate “controlled accident”, we see Mary fall in love with Howard again after her procedure, and of course, we see Clementine and Joel reunite, despite their troubles. In this way,  fate surpasses all other forces and takes precedence. No matter how much other forces attempt to interfere, nature and its “controlled accident” will always prevail.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Most of the films I’ve been watching this semester have been a bit more recent so I decided to take a crack at an old classic. The Philadelphia Story was such a lovely film and it’s made me want to watch more older films, which I have never really had the desire to do before (I also would kill to have the kickass old Hollywood accent). One thing that really stood out to me in this film is the role spectatorship plays as the story unfolds.

The premise of The Philadelphia Story is rooted in the significance of the spectator. The role of the spectator does not exist solely as the person who is viewing the film; it is represented and embodied by  individual characters within the world of the story itselfl. Dinah Lord is a perfect example of a spectator within the film. Because of her youth, Dinah’s presence is often overlooked by adults and she ends up hearing things by accident that she should not know. Despite her elders’ attempts to keep her in the dark, Dinah always seems to know what is going on. At one point, Tracy questions Dinah about how she knows about their father’s relationship with the dancer and Dinah simply replies “I listen around”.

Mike and Liz also function as spectators within the film. They are both spying on the Lord family. They witness Dinah’s little performance upon their arrival with awe and confusion. Later, Mike observes the argument between Dexter and Tracy. Although he feels like an intruder and tries to leave, he is forced to stay as Dexter and Tracy continue to ignore him. Liz also is forced to be the awkward onlooker as she watches Mike fall for Tracy, even witnessing his proposal to her. Mike and Liz begin the film as passive observers of the Lord family but quickly become integral to the development and outcome of the story. Similarly, as the spectator pieces together the story from the information revealed by the film, he or she becomes an essential part of the story; it is through the spectator’s reconstruction of the story-and not the story itself- that the film conveys its meaning.

The influence of the process of reconstructing the story is further accentuated by its manifestation in individual characters. There are several instances in which a character has to construct their own interpretation of what is going on based on the information given to them by others. When Uncle Willie arrives at the Lord house, Tracy, Dinah, and Mrs. Lord pretend that he is Seth Lord. Mike and Liz, foreign to the background story of the Lord family, accept this as fact. Later in the film, Dinah spies out her window and sees part of the drunken exchange between Tracy and Mike. She misinterprets what she saw and as she mysteriously unveils her “dream”, misleads Tracy to believe that she had an affair with Mike. Here, Tracy and Dinah both are given partial accounts of what actually happened and thus believe a warped version of what has happened based on how little they know.

As with Dinah when she dramatically recounts her “dream” to Tracy, The Philadelphia Story is replete with performances. Nearly every example previously discussed can be perceived as a “show” or performance of some sort, and those are merely a handful of instances. The Lords are putting on a show for Liz and Mike, projecting a false image of their family on them. Tracy puts up a false front to everyone around her, acting the part of a tough, unaffected woman who refuses to accept her feelings. Even as her relationship with George ends, Tracy is putting on a show, reading his note to everyone present like an actor reciting a monologue. No character in the film goes untouched by these little performances; they affect all involved and serve as a tool to disguise the truth and promote a falsehood created by the performer.

In this way, The Philadelphia Story can be seen as self-reflexive. Through its narration, it recognizes its status as a film and subtly acknowledges this awareness. During the discussion between Tracy and Dexter about his boat, The True Love, Tracy is in disbelief that he is “selling true love for money”. As previously displayed by her stark opposition to the idea of Spy Magazine doing a piece on her wedding to George, Tracy resents the idea of exploiting love for money and fame. At face value, this does not appear to be significant coming from the fictional Tracy Lord, but it takes on new meaning coming from the lips of actress Katharine Hepburn, who achieved notoriety and success in an industry that capitalized on the “happily ever after” ending where true love always prevails. This irony can be seen again when Tracy learns that George to see  Mike carry her out of the woods in her robe. Here, Tracy exclaims “Good golly, why didn’t you sell tickets?” It is as if the film is making a joke for the viewer; both are aware that there were indeed people who bought tickets to see this show. Evan at the close of the film, The Philadelphia Story demonstrates once more that it is aware of itself as a film. As Tracy tries to cope with her situation and informs the wedding guests that the wedding has been cancelled, she draws a blank and looks frantically to Dexter to help her with what she should say. Dexter proceeds to tell her what to say, and she repeats verbatim exactly what he said to the crowd. She does not question or change anything; it is blind recitation. It is not a stretch, then, to compare this situation to that of an actor (or actress, in this case) being fed their lines.

Abundant with spectators and performance, both externally and internally, The Philadelphia Story works within the constraints of the system of Hollywood narration to stimulate the mind of the spectator and elicit a more thoughtful interpretation of the film than what can be taken from it at face value. By carefully injecting the film with moments of self-awareness, the film undermining the validity  of potential criticism.

Instead of operating blindly within the system and refusing to acknowledge its drawbacks, The Philadelphia Story astutely hints at these pitfalls and critiques them itself. Through this commentary, the film demonstrates its ingenuity in that it is, at the same time, criticizing how the system restricts itself and adhering to its restrictions to prove its own superiority. Through its clever use of the spectator and its self-conscious performances, The Philadelphia Story proves its own value in a manner that I don’t think is found often in contemporary cinema.

Caché (2005)

I’d heard a lot about Michael Haneke and I went it with high expectations. I was not disappointed.Michael Haneke’s Caché is undoubtedly sophisticated, but in a way that is unfamiliar to the modern American viewer. Haneke uses minimalistic editing techniques and long takes to progress his narrative while still limiting the knowledge given to the viewer;  Haneke’s expects the viewer to pay attention to the implications made throughout the film and take away a larger meaning from the film than what is explicitly depicted.

Haneke is painstakingly careful in restricting the amount of information displayed in any one scene to reflect exactly what he wants the viewer to see- sometimes that is a clearly illustrated action, while other times it is a vague or muddled message. In the scene in which Majid commits suicide in front of Georges, Haneke is explicit with what he wants the viewer to take away from the scene. He capitalizes on shock factor, astonishing his viewers with Majid’s gruesome suicide. It is not necessary to rely on rapid cutting or overwhelming sound effects to shape the scene; the editing in the scene is simple, and the point is made in a mere two shots. The viewer does not have to mull over the point of this scene or delve deep into the narrative to deduce the purpose of this scene. It’s all there for you in the action. This scene is also interesting in that the camera placement in this scene mirrors the camera placement from Georges first adventure to Majid’s apartment. Although ambiguous at first, it becomes clear that the camera placement in both scenes is intended to be understood as a hidden camera, and furthermore, the source of several of the videotapes. The viewer at this point undertakes the role of voyeur, intruding in on the lives of the Laurents just like the stalker does.  The viewer is the spy, soaking up the message of the filmmaker, which is, in this scene, overt and alarming.

Haneke  displays his versatility, however, throughout the film with scenes, such as the final scene, that demand the viewer to carefully scrutinize them to search for their purposes in relation to the narrative.  This scene, in and of itself, is not particularly exciting or complicated. It is a wide angle shot and an incredibly long take of Pierrot’s school. The scene is one single shot with no camera movement whatsoever; the movement in the frame is chaotic and busy, and upon first glance, it is difficult to deduce what Haneke is cueing the viewer to pay attention to. American audiences are spoiled by American directors who dumb down their shots to guarantee that the viewer’s eye is drawn only to the main subject of interest; watching that type of film is a passive experience. Haneke does not give his viewers the luxury of being able to zone out and still soak in the basic message of the film.

With almost painfully long takes and subtle, sometimes even nonexistent, editing, Haneke forces the viewer to be more attentive to the narrative, and the viewer thus becomes an active participant in the interpretation of the film. Consequently, by the time the final scene of the film is introduced, the viewer is so accustomed to the absurdly long takes that he knows to look for the somewhat disguised purpose of the scene. The watcher’s newly-developed viewing style prompts him to scan the distracting and seemingly unimportant background, searching for what Haneke wants him to see. After much searching, the viewer finally focuses in on Pierrot and Majid’s son deep in conversation. With this subtle move, Haneke brings a whole new set of possibilities to the narrative and leaves the viewer guessing. With less intense action, Haneke manages to make almost a stronger impression on the viewer than in dramatic scenes.

Accordingly, the suicide scene and this ending scene share many other differences. Not only are they dissimilar in how they illustrate their overall messages, they are also different in the emotional connotations that these message elicit. Majid’s suicide provokes a horrified emotional response; the macabre method of his unexpected death makes the spectator cringe. The relaxed camera work and slow pace of editing make Majid’s abrupt throat-slashing all the more startling and appalling. On the other hand, the final scene cues not the emotions of terror and disgust, but those of wonder and inquisition. Although the suicide evokes a more animalistic and innate emotional response, the final scene touches the viewer on a deeper level, making him question the meanings and implications of the film. In comparing these two scenes, we get a feel for Haneke’s emotional dexterity and variation.

Haneke’s editing and long takes give the impression that the viewer is watching the film in real time. In multiple scenes throughout the film, the viewer watches the anyonymous  videotapes from the point of view of the Laurents. These scenes are often mundane and boring. Basically every tape the Laurents receive contains little to no action on it; they are simply every day scenes of the Laurents’ house, with the occasional car passing by.  Although this, at times, can be off-putting and tedious, it does convey the sense of realism that permeates the rest of the film. Yes, there are portions of the film that drag on a bit, but if the story of the film were happening in real life, there would indeed be portions of lag time. Real life is not always interesting, it is not always action packed, and Haneke does an excellent job of translating this into the cinematic world.

This realism goes hand-in-hand with the concept of voyeurism that is at play throughout the film. The videotapes are the most obvious example of this notion. The Laurents’ anonymous stalker is indeed a voyeur, intruding in on their lives and wreaking havoc in their personal relationships. But the concept of voyeurism transcends the diegetic world of the film into the larger message of the film.

Instead of explicity showing the viewer what he wants you to see, Haneke uses subtle editing techniques and long takes to alter how the viewer watches the film. Haneke plays with the audience and limits the amount of knowledge he divulges to the viewer throughout the film, forcing the audience to delve deeper into the story to solve the mystery and assemble the pieces of the narrative together into a concise account. In this way, the viewer is like a voyeur, spying in on the story of the film to try and gain additional knowledge to add to what he already knows. All in all, I’m very impressed with this introduction to Haneke and I look forward to seeing more of his work.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

After seeing Blue Velvet, I wanted to venture deeper into the dark corners of David Lynch’s body of work and so I watched Mulholland Drive. It straight up blew my mind. I just sat there laughing after the film ended because my favorite types of films are ones like Mulholland Drive which hold up a middle finger to convention and do whatever the hell they want. I’m sure Lynch pissed people off by giving people absolutely zero closure or cohesion with this film but I absolutely love films that aren’t afraid to make people mad and play with our expectations.

Hollywood as Factory of Illusion

Mulholland Drive is really interesting to me when examining it as a critique of Hollywood and the filmmaking industry. Mulholland Drive presents Hollywood as a colorful, beautiful place from the outside but this idealized image quickly gives way to a corrupt system which devours the weak and strips those involved in the system of their morality and ethical responsibility. Although the first portion of the film is arguably the construction of Diane’s unconscious, even this idealized depiction of Hollywood is glaringly flawed and corrupt. The politics of the system are apparent as Adam, the director, is stripped of his artistic integrity. He barely has any control over his own film and is subjected to the whims of others in power, like the mysterious film executive Mr. Roque and the peculiar cowboy character. Even in the first half (or ‘dream’ sequence), the films produced in Hollywood are the victims of a flawed system, which is driven more by the shallow desire for money and seemingly arbitrary hierarchies of power than by the desire to create a product that is artistically meaningful.

Through characters like Diane/Betty and even through Camilla, Hollywood demonstrates its ability to perpetuate delusions and suggests the potentially destructive effect that cinema can have on all involved. In the latter portion of the film, the impact of the corrupt system of Hollywood is felt even more forcefully as it destroys nearly all that it touches. Diane is a failure of the system; her attempts at making it big have proved futile and, though she has maintained some of her humanity, she is ultimately destroyed by her encounter with Hollywood.

Camilla, on the other hand, could be deemed as a Hollywood success; she is a young, beautiful, and famous starlet who seemingly has it all. However, she is morally corrupt, emotionally manipulating those around her for her own personal gain, all while having no qualms about who she is hurting. She is a Hollywood success, yes, but she is stripped of her humanity, robbed of her morality and ethical responsibility by a system, which makes her as much of a victim as Diane.

Mulholland Drive: A Freudian Dream

            The depiction of dreams in cinema is something that has always fascinated me. Dreams are something that we all experience on the regular but rendering them on film and preserving that dream-like feeling is difficult to do and I think Mulholland Drive does it. Mulholland Drive gives you that dream-like feeling where absurd, non-sensical things are constantly occurring but for some reason, they feel completely logical.

Freudian and the double: fragmented identities

Mulholland Drive presents itself like a Freudian dream in which symbolic images are pervasive throughout the film but these images don’t mean what they appear to on the surface—and sometimes they don’t mean anything at all. The film does not highlight what elements carry meaning and which do not. The lack of narrative structure makes you think about all the elements and decide which carry meaning; this puts us through a process much like how we interpret our own realities. Our senses are constantly bombarded and we have to decide where to place our attention and what carries meaning and sometime we might miss important things because there is simply just too much to take in.

 Cinema’s Ability to Mimic Our Mental Processes

Mulholland Drive seems to operate on some system of internal logic which is not based on narrative linearity. The narrative approximates how our mind works and how we perceive things. The film jumps between different time periods and spaces for no reason, disregarding linear temporality or cause and effect. As I mentioned earlier, it also bombards us with sensations whose meanings remain hidden or are only revealed to us much later. I believe the film’s presentation, which is so based on our mental processes and how we come to understand things in life, is a large part of why the film is so adept at depicting a dream-like situation that feels so authentically real.

Furthermore, just as is in life, the film does not give us all the answers at the end. It doesn’t even really give us all the questions. It shows us one thing, which we think we understand, and then it shows us something completely different that makes us recontextualize and reinterpret what we watched earlier. The moment we think we understand what something means, Mulholland Drive flips it on its head and completely unhinges what we thought we knew. The film makes us constantly renegotiate our understanding of the film and alter what we think, mimicking our processes of understanding our own realities.

Authentic vs. Constructed

Mulholland Drive excited me for many, many reasons but the point at which I was the most enthralled was during the scene at the nightclub called Silencio. It is a bizarre sequence but the ideas behind the performance at Silencio carry some very intriguing questions.The scene begins with a strange man on stage speaking ominously, telling the audience that “Everything is pre-recorded”. Then we see a trumpet player on-stage playing an intricate piece of music that appears to be a live performance until his fingers stop and the music plays on, revealing that it is merely a pre-recorded song being played.

There is no band. It’s all recorded.

A second performance repeats the trick. A beautiful woman comes on stage and sings a heartbreaking, tear-jerking ballad in Spanish, only to fall down ‘dead’ on the ground while the music continues, revealing that she was lip-synching the entire time. Moments like these elicit a sense of indignation in the spectator, making us constantly question the authenticity of what we are experiencing. It is unsettling to feel like you’ve been tricked and this scene makes you feel as if you’ve been manipulated because you believed something was real and authentic only to realize you’ve naively been led to assert truthfulness to something that is ultimately fake.

It’s funny that this scene elicits such an uncomfortable feeling because what this scene is playing with is essentially the very basis of what we experience when we watch sound films. Most of what we hear in a film is post-synch sound but for some reason, we’re okay with that. It’s easier to pretend that the sound we hear is actually occurring in the moment onscreen, emanating from the actor or actress pictured, than to accept that what we are hearing is a farce, a reconstruction of something that happened in the past.

In Michel Chion’s Audio-Vision, he makes the argument that the prevalence of cinema is so influencing how we experience sound, that it is conditioning us to perceive recorded sound as more realistic that the sounds we hear in our own reality. We perceive the overexaggerated, stereotypical sound of a punch in a movie fight as more realistic than the sound a punch actually makes in real life. Taking into consideration films like Mulholland Drive, which seeks to acknowledge its ability to manipulate the spectator rather than conceal it, it is easy to see how cinematic convention has conditioned us to be easy prey—conditioned us to be duped, unable to identify when we are being lied to and fed something that is inauthentic.

All of this ultimately begs questions that are hard to ask and even harder to answer. If cinema has made us so easy to fool into believing that something inauthentic is truthful, how is it affecting our ability to identify artifice in our own realities? And furthermore, is cinema’s illusion of reality conditioning us to experience cinematic ‘reality’ as more authentic than our own realities? What happens when what we see onscreen feels more real than our own lives? I’m not sure if I want to know the answer to that.

 

Blue Velvet (1986)

I’ve heard people rave about David Lynch’s body of work before and I knew his films were something I needed to experience. Blue Velvet was my first taste of Lynch and I was in no way prepared for the weirdness that was to follow.

The DVD case champions the film as “David Lynch’s Erotic Masterpiece” so I went in expecting something vastly different than what the film actually was. To me, there seemed to be two different worlds occurring in the film, one being the sugar coated glamour of 1950s small town America and the other being a world of darkness, crime, and sexual perversion.

I’ve read around a little bit and Roger Ebert’s opinion of Blue Velvet criticizes the film for not letting the sexual portion of the storyline unfold. Blue Velvet keeps going back to the kitschy, small town America storyline and the dark world of sexual perversion never really develops past the initial fake rape scene in Dorothy’s apartment. It seemed to me that David Lynch was trying to flesh out two vastly different ideas in this film and the result left me a bit uncomfortable.

 

Color

Moving past that though, I would like to bring up one aspect of the film which really stood out to me and that was Lynch’s use of color. The over-saturated picket fences and perfectly manicured lawns that we are introduced to as the film opens has an interesting, Tim Burton-like effect for me. The overly colorful suburbs read as something being just a little off, as if the town is trying so hard to be something that it is not; the result is an eerie quality which the film quickly develops as Jeffrey finds the severed ear and the mystery plot picks up.

Saturated picket fences

I found myself looking out for the color blue from the very start of the film given the name of the film. I found it interesting that the first time the color blue really shows up in the film is when Jeffrey sneaks into Dorothy’s apartment and the walls in the hallway are dark blue, giving the hallway a cold, eerie feeling. Then Jeffrey walks inside her apartment, only to be greeted by warm red tones all over the walls and furniture.

Shade of red

From that point on, I started to notice a juxtaposition of blue and red tones associated with Isabella Rossellini’s character throughout the film. The juxtaposition is seen, quite literally, on her face in most of the film as she sports that horrific blue eye shadow with the vibrant red lipstick.

 

Every good make-up artist knows you either do bold lips or bold eyes, never both…

Sound

David Lynch was recommended to me as someone to look out for in terms of film sound and I was not disappointed. One aspect of the sound design that stood out to me was Lynch’s (and the sound designer, Alan Splet’s) use of horror sound throughout the film. One such moment occurs when the camera cuts to a close up of a street sign (Lincoln Street) and there is a corresponding screeching sound typical of horror movies. Juxtaposed against the sounds of small town suburbia, these horror sounds stand out and provide two vastly different sonic universes, just as there are two different types of stories occurring.

The sound design continues to implement juxtaposition and contradiction through is use of anempathetic music. As some of you might remember from my lecture on film sound, anempathetic music does not participate in the action or emotion onscreen; the music expresses indifference to what is going on and this apathy further accentuates the emotion onscreen. David Lynch takes full advantage of this effect. One example is in the scene where Frank pulls Jeffrey out of the car on the side of the road and beats him senseless while the cheery song “Candy Colored Clown” blares from the car stereo. The absurd collision of the upbeat song with the violent action accentuates the brutality in an almost comical way. There are also homoerotic undertones in Frank’s treatment of Jeffrey here and the anempathetic music serves to highlight those undertones and give the violence a perversely sexual feeling that harkens back to the violent rape scene earlier.

One last point I will make about sound pertains to the party scene at the whorehouse. Music begins as Ben begins to sing Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” into a lightbulb that he uses as a microphone. His voice is beautiful and although you might momentarily question if he’s really singing, you don’t fully realize that he’s lip synching until Frank begins to sing along and breaks the spell of Ben’s performance, exposing the artificiality of it all. By doing this, Lynch is playing with out conception of what is real and what is staged by first fooling us and then revealing the trick. I find this particularly interesting and it is something that I will discuss further in my response to Mulholland Drive where Lynch plays again with ‘authentic’ versus pre-recorded sound.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

I’d heard all the hype about Zero Dark Thirty but I knew virtually nothing about it going into the film save that people had been talking a lot about it. I saw it in theatres, a rare occurrence for me, and I can safely say that I’ve never had a movie-going experience like I did for this one. I have a lot of opinions about the film, which I will share below, and I’m allowing myself to be more biased and subjective than normal because I feel very strongly that the controversy and reception of Zero Dark Thirty says a lot about our country and our society.

I think Zero Dark Thirty is very interesting to look at as a pseudo-historical document. I know it’s a fiction film, but it’s based off of elements of the truth. So much of the general public’s conception and education of history is based off of mass media. The prevalence of films, television, and other types of media is transforming how and what we learn about ourselves and the world. In a situation like this, where so much of the details surrounding Bin Laden’s capture were shrouded in secrecy, much of the public’s perception and understanding of the event is bound to be based off of rumor, speculation, and hearsay. Zero Dark Thirty, as of now, seems to be the closest most Americans have come to knowing the truth about what actually happened. It’s interesting to think about how Zero Dark Thirty will function in the future; I can’t help but wonder if, in a couple decades, this film is what kids will be shown in school to learn about what happened after September 11^th as we hunted down Bin Laden

Sound

I knew that Zero Dark Thirty had won the Oscar for Sound Editing and that, together with my own interests in sound, made me really pay attention to the sound design of this film. Given the subject matter and the high-tension action sequences, I was expecting to be bombarded with an overzealous soundtrack that overwhelmed your senses and overtly manipulated your emotions. I was pleasantly surprised at the relatively minimal sound design; I think Zero Dark Thirty was very smart in its approach to sound.

Opening Sequence

First and foremost, the film opens up to a black screen. No titles, no visual at all, just the sound of 911 calls, which we quickly gather are recordings from 9/11. At first, the people in my theatre were stirring and chattering, not realizing that the film had officially begun (because why would a film ever begin with just sound and nothing onscreen, right?). After about a minute, the audience quieted down and people started to pay attention. Another minute in and you could’ve heard a pin drop. Everyone sat rapt, listening to the 911 calls in the darkness.

As someone who is intensely interested in film sound, this was a phenomenally extraordinary moment for me. How many movies can you think of where the visual is completely absent for a significant amount of time, only using sound to capture your attention? It very very rarely, if ever, happens. But for Zero Dark Thirty, it happened and, at least for me, the impact was profound. 9/11 is so fresh in our memories; the wounds have just barely begun to heal. I believe that sound is the most powerful tool cinema has in conveying emotion, and in this case, sound was the best way to touch people. Trauma, especially collective trauma, is such a subjective experience. I’d be willing to guarantee that every American remembers vividly where they were and what they were doing on September 11^th, 2001 when they first heard the news. It’s a collective experience, yes, but each person, each American, experienced September 11^th in their own individual way. It is a collective experience but not a collective memory; everyone has their own distinct memories of the tragedy.

So how do you portray the event visually? We’ve all seen the footage of the planes hitting the towers hundreds, if not thousands, of times. To show that footage would be to just replay what we’ve all seen; conversely, to show us a fictionalized account of someone’s experience of the event would be trite and undoubtedly fall flat. What Kathryn Bigelow did, by opening the film as she did, was remind us of the grief, the panic, the unmitigated terror that we all felt on that day. The sound of the 911 calls stirred up these emotions inside of us and then, with the blank screen, we were allowed to reflect on our own individual memories and project them onto the blank screen. The audio is the common ground linking together everyone’s individual experience. For me at least, the opening had a much larger emotional impact on me than any visual would have been able to produce. I think that this was a distinct moment where the full potential of sound was actualized in a mainstream film, something that I don’t think happens often.

Minimal Background Music

Starting off with that opening, I went into the film with high hopes for the sound and I actually was pleased. The sound design seemed minimal and provided only the necessary dialogue and sounds. The background music was minimal and tasteful. There were a few cases, like in the shots on the bus in London before the bomb exploded, where the music cued me as to what was going on and what to expect. In most cases, though, the music was minimally invasive and did not give away what was about to happen or manipulate me emotionally to expect a certain outcome. One moment that I distinctly noticed this was when the supposed “mole” was driving up to the base and the CIA agents were waiting to find out if he was legitimate or not. The car slowly approaches and there is no music to cue us as to what’s going to happen (although a black cat runs across in front of the car at one point, a subtle clue if you’re paying attention). While you could speculate what was going to happen, we were just as clueless as the CIA agents until the moment when he steps out of the car and the bomb goes off and we realize he was working for the enemy the entire time.

Sound to Amplify Tension

There were other distinct moments in the film in which sound and silence were used to amplify tension and suspense. One such moment takes place when the CIA agents are driving in circles trying to trace Abu Ahmed’s cell phone so they can locate him and figure out what he looks like. The machine they are using to trace his phone emits a beeping sound, which grows louder and more frequent as his cell signal grows stronger the closer he gets. The agents in the car converse some at first, but as they grow closer to locating Abu Ahmed, there is silence in the car. Only the beeping noise of the cell phone tracker is heard. Static silence fills the car (and the theatre) as the beeping increases in frequency and in volume (and amplifies the tension) until the breaking point in which they spot Abu Ahmed in his white SUV and the tension is released.

Sound and Silence

The use of silence and minimal sound was similarly effective in the sequence when the Navy SEAL team raids the compound. There is no dramatic music at all, only the sounds of the SEAL team is they make their way into the compound. Their experience is our experience; the scene unfolds mainly in silence, broken only by the occasional sounds of gun shots or small explosions as a lock is blown off a door. Though the men speak to each other occasionally, it is infrequently and we are forced to live out the experience mostly in tense silence as they creep farther into the compound until the moment when they shoot Bin Laden, upon which the men speak freely and we are released from the tension created by the silence.

External Controversy: Depctions of Torture

Zero Dark Thirty is fascinating to me in and of itself, but the external controversy surrounding the film further amplified my interest in the film. After leaving the theatre, I read articles online for upwards of three hours about the controversy surrounding the film’s depiction of torture. I think that the people who are all up-in-arms and outraged by the torture scenes, claiming that the film glorifies torture, are obtuse and misguided. The film does show brutal torture scenes, yes, but glorify it? I don’t think it does. First, the film shows moments in which torture is both successful and unsuccessful; the London terrorist attack occurs because the torture used on Ammar fails to produce the information needed to prevent it. If the film only showed successful moments of torture, I think you could argue more easily that it condones it.

Secondly, we can’t deny that torture  (or “enhanced interrogation techniques”) is a part of our history. The Abu Ghraib pictures are a testament to that. The story of the film exists in a period of change in which the use of torture was changing as well. Waterboarding really did happen during Bush’s time as President but eventually measures were taken against waterboarding. Obama went further and spoke out against using these controversial “interrogation methods” on prisoners. This all really happened, and the film reflects this changing landscape. The footage of Obama speaking out against torture is featured in the film, as well as moments where the characters discuss how their current techniques are no longer acceptable, as when Dan acknowledges, “You don’t want to be the last one caught with a dog collar in your hand”. The film reflects a period of change in the U.S. and to leave out the torture completely would be both dishonest and cowardly.

Thirdly, the ending of the film is left ambiguous; it is not a happy ending. I think if Bigelow had ended by showing the celebration that took place after news of Bin Laden’s death got out, the film would have made a stronger statement about the efficacy of torture; a “happy ending” would have made it seem more like the ends justifies the means. However, in the ending, the film seems to acknowledge the emotional complexity surrounding the series of events. Maya’s behavior on the plane home suggests this; the very thing that she had been striving to accomplish for 12 years was finally completed, but it was not a happy moment. I think the film does a good job of conveying that, even though the mission to kill Bin Laden was ultimately successful, this whole period of time for America was a dark time and something that weighs heavy on everyone’s hearts. Horrible things had to happen along the way and they all got us to where we are today, but that doesn’t mean that what we did was necessarily right or ethical or that the film is in any way celebrating those horrible things.

Zero Dark Thirty and America

I think the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty is very indicative of many of the things that are wrong with America. We love to be patriotic and celebrate the heroes, the victories, the successes, the things that make America look great. But we, as a country, don’t like to look at the ugly. We can’t confront the things that we did that make us look bad. We like to ignore the mistakes we made and sugar coat the nasty things we had to do on our way to achieving victory. This is why the history textbooks skip over the bad stuff; that’s why we learn in school that Christopher Columbus was a hero who founded our country rather than the fact that he brutally murdered Native Americans and gave everyone syphilis. I get that sometimes it’s hard to deal with the truth, but sometimes it seems as if we don’t even want to know the truth.

America is disillusioned, preferring to live in a state of denial rather than face the ugly truth. Maybe that’s what has to happen to not grow weary and hopeless in a world where so much of what goes on is horrific and ugly. Maybe we have to lie to ourselves so we don’t lose faith in our country, in humanity, in ourselves. I don’t know what the answer is, but I do believe that we have to get better at facing the bad in our history in order to make the future better. To live in denial is to limit how much we learn from our mistakes. Not to mention how stupid we look to everyone else in the world when we commit all these atrocities and then refuse to acknowledge them as a country, instead pretending that all is beautiful and happy when it is not and teaching our kids that America can do no wrong when we so obviously can, and frequently do, do wrong.

All I’m saying is we need to get better at being critical of ourselves. Perhaps that will come in time. Zero Dark Thirty, in both content and the circumstances surrounding its production and reception, reminds me a lot of The Battle of Algiers. Both films are brutally frank in their depictions of the (arguably necessary) horrors and atrocities of war. Both films were controversial in their time. I know The Battle of Algiers was completely banned in France for something like seven years after the film was released internationally. France needed time before they could confront what happened in Algiers. Eventually they were able to accept what they did in Algiers, but it took time. I know I’m generalizing a lot, but you get the gist. Zero Dark Thirty  focuses on events that are so supremely fresh in our minds and memories; to some extent, it’s understandable that we can’t fully deal with it yet. Perhaps in a decade, Americans will be able to look at this film objectively and accept that we as a country did terrible things along the way but that it’s all a part of our history and  we need to look towards the future and not dwell on the past.

 

PS- Here’s an interesting article that talks about Battle of Algiers and Zero Dark Thirty, if anyone is interested

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-hoffman/zero-dark-thirty-terrorism_b_2421874.html

Brick (2005)

Shadows in the Basement 

Rian Johnson’s Brick is a neo-noir if I’ve ever seen one. It puts on interesting spin on the neo-noir by setting it in a suburban California high school. The noir characteristics of Brick are manifested in the story of the film more than in the style. Though there are some stylistic nods to noir, such as the dark, shadowy basement filled with shadows that Tugg and Brendan find themselves in part way through the film. The scene at Laura’s party in her room with Brendan featured the dark/light juxtaposition common in noir films through its use of candles. The film also demonstrates a non-linear storyline, which helps amplify suspense and “shows by not showing”. This works well with the quick editing and rapid-fire dialogue (which I will discuss further in a moment).

Femme fatale, high school edition

More noticeably, the plot and story of Brick adhere to many noir characteristics. Perhaps the most prominent is the flawless femme fatal, Laura. She smokes cigarettes (cigarettes which actually lead to Brendan figuring out her role in the scheme) and is often featured in red as she seduces and manipulates the men (and women) around her to work to her advantage. She is cold and calculated but comes across as gentle and feminine. I particularly appreciated how, at the very end of the film, just when you think she’s played all her cards as Brendan accuses her and a tear rolls down her face, she drops the bomb that the baby might have been Brendan’s and walks away with the last victory.

Joseph Gordon Levitt fulfilled the role of lonely anti-hero very well. Although we root for him the entire film, his character is not necessarily likeable and his morality is generally ambiguous; it is hard to tell why he does what he does throughout the film. His character was accented well by Tugg, the “good” bad guy, who slaughters several people in the film but yet somehow garners a bit of our sympathy when we learn of his love for Emily and how Laura used it to play him like a pawn in a game of chess.

I thought the choice to set Brick in a high school worked marvelously well. At first, the gritty, old school crime dialogue which the characters, particularly Brendan, fire off with rapidity seemed awkward and out of place for their age. The more I thought about it though, the more I think it is a genius move playing on the idea of teenagers getting in over their heads and dabbling into things which they are too young to be able to handle. This also had the effect of making them seem like they were “too cool for school”, so to speak, and made me feel how a grandmother might feel listening to her grandkids using current slang terms and having no idea what they’re talking about. The high school setting also contributed moments of absurd humor, like in the scene where Pin’s mom sweetly pours Brendan orange juice and kisses Pin on the head on the way out, totally undermining his constructed identity as a ruthless, fearsome drug lord. The characters seem to hard-boiled and tough but in actuality, they’re just awkward, hormone ridden teenagers who bit off more than they can chew and to situate them in a noir translated particularly well.

            One last thing that I was fond of in this film was the bird motif that was prevalent throughout the film. There’s the ridiculous bird on the mailbox of Pin’s house, another large bird statue in his basement, and the chickens on all of Pin’s mother’s dishware; not to mention the flock of birds that take flight off the football field as Brendan confronts Laura for the last time (who is wearing a bird feather on a headband in her hair). I read these birds, particularly the bird on Pin’s mailbox, as a nod to The Maltese Falcon and another element of noir that was subtle yet powerful.

Belle de Jour (1967)

*I wrote this paper for another film class on the French film Belle de Jour, hence the more formal writing style.

Belle de Jour (1967), wrought with issues of sexual perversion, unconscious desire, memory and subjectivity, can be read almost as a sexual bildungsroman for the leading lady Severine Serizy. Severine’s sexual coming of age serves as a way of mediating her unconscious desires, manifested in her explicitly perverse sexual dreams and fantasies, with her conscious desires and the reality of her married life. Though the film’s treatment of Severine’s sexuality would seem to promote a progressive approach towards feminine sexuality that encourages women to embrace their need for pleasure, the last few minutes of the film appear to negate this progressive take on feminine sexuality through the moral and ethical punishment Severine undergoes at the close of the film.

Masochistic fantasy at the film’s opening

Belle de Jour points to Freudian theories of sexuality in its approach to Severine’s ‘aberrant’ sexual desires. Severine, from the very first scene, demonstrates her repressed masochistic desires through her fantasy in which she is beaten and degraded by several men, including her husband; they whip her as they scream, “Tramp” and “Slut” at her. This fantasy version of Severine is immediately juxtaposed with the actual Severine, who is demure and innocent and turns down her husband’s sexual advances despite his obvious love and respect for her.

Two worlds..

Two men.

Severine longs to be used as a passive sexual object, but she does not want to be disrespected as a person, just in the bedroom. This is evidenced by her reaction to Husson; her secret desire to be degraded, used, and humiliated would seem to welcome behavior like that of Henri Husson, who is a blatant misogynist and does not attempt to hide his objectification of the women around him. Severine wants to be degraded, but in a very specific way, and on her own terms. Indeed, the two main men of the film serve to elucidate the different aspects of what Severine both desires and needs. Pierre is the vision of comfort, respect, and stability that Severine consciously desires, but he carries over his loving, respectful attitude into the sexual aspects of their marriage, which leaves Severine with zero sexual desire for him. She wants to be hurt in the bedroom, both physically and emotionally, and her relationship with Marcel blossoms because he can fulfill this need. However, Marcel does not fit into her world. He is morally corrupt criminal who is too possessive and controlling; he does not respect the boundaries she sets forth for their relationship.

Severine begins working at the brothel because her repressed, unconscious desires—stemming from an incident of sexual abuse as a child, which we see in a flashback—have become so pronounced that they demand attention in her conscious reality. She takes charge of her sexuality and actively seeks the fulfillment of her own pleasure. Unlike the other women, she chooses to be a prostitute not out of fiscal necessity but out of desire for sexual exploration. Though she is hesitant at first, she quickly takes a liking to her job as a prostitute; she even seems to derive much pleasure from it, particularly from the clients with extremely pronounced sexual fetishes and perversions. In these clients, we see more echoes of Freudian sexual theory.

Severine participating in voyeurism

As Severine looks voyeuristically through the peephole as Charlotte role plays as “The Duchess” and steps on the Professor’s face, she is appalled as to how any man could stoop so low as to ask to be humiliated like that. Ironically, the Professor’s fantasy seems to be the flip side of Severine’s fetish in which she is the masochist and the man is the aggressive sadist.

Although she does not take well to the Professor (perhaps because their tastes have a little too much in common), she is more than welcoming of the other clients with specific sexual desires, like the Japanese client with the buzzing box. In her fantasies as well, she encourages these sexual perversions; for example, in her fantasy of “The Duke” who brings her to his house and forces her to role-play as a corpse in a coffin.

Sexual abnormality is also hinted at in the relationship between Madame Anais and Severine, which features distinct homoerotic undertones (and indeed, overtones). Madame Anais is a masculine figure, with her manly haircut and role of power in running the brothel. She learns the Severine likes to be ruled with a firm hand, and as the film progresses, the sexual undercurrent between them mounts, culminating in Severine kissing Madam Anais. This could be an episode of Freduian “contingent inversion”, in which the inaccessibility of a normal sexual object requires the individual to turn to someone within their own sex (Gay 241).

Stylistically, the film even seems to suggest moments of sexual perversion by fetishizing the feet in several scenes; one such scene occurs when Severine first arrives at the brothel and the camera focuses on her hesitant feet as she ascends the stairs. Another moment occurs when Marcel and Severine are in bed together and the camera pans down to focus on their shoe-clad feet, as Marcel slowly slips one of his boots off.

The more Severine welcomes the sexual perversions and fetishes of others, the more she is able to come to terms with her own. She has almost mediated her own masochistic tendencies with her reality. Towards the end of the film, it seems as if her relationship with Pierre is improving, and after quitting her job at the whorehouse, it seems as if she might be able to channel her sexual abnormalities into a more healthy sexual relationship with her husband.

With Marcel’s attack on Pierre, however, all hopes of this are shattered, as is the film’s representation of progressive female sexuality. The dynamic of their marriage shifts as Pierre becomes dependent on Severine, a power shift that conflicts with Severine’s sexual needs in which she is the submissive dependent and the man in the powerful aggressor. Moreover, Pierre’s newfound status as an invalid could be read as moral and ethical punishment for Severine’s actions; her dishonesty and infidelity ultimately led to the death of her lover and the crippling of her husband. Rather than continue the strain of female empowerment embodied by Severine in her active search for her own sexual pleasure, the close of the film represents a return to male-dominated anxiety of female sexuality in which the female in search of her own sexual fulfillment is threatening, manipulative, and dangerous to all the men that surround her.

The Machinist (2004)

My motivation to watch The Machinist, if I’m being honest, is not because I’d heard it was a great film; in fact, it had nothing to do with the film at all. My boyfriend and I went through a kick where we were obsessed with actors and actresses who lost or gained large amounts of weight in a short amount of time. Obviously, Christina Bale’s ghastly 60-pound weight loss for this film and subsequent gain of 100 pounds for Batman Begins in just five (!!) months intrigued us.

Yo-yo dieting to the max

Here’s an article of anyone’s interested: http://www.businessinsider.com/extreme-weight-loss-and-gain-for-movie-roles-2012-7?op=1

The film is definitely a mindfuck, and right up my alley. I love films that play with psychology, subjectivity, and memory; even more that, I love twists and The Machinist did not let me down. The temporal structure of the film is complex and reminds me a bit of Memento. It begins at the end, with Trevor Reznik (Christina Bale) trying to dispose of a body in the ocean. As he tries to roll the body into the sea, the old rug he has the corpse wrapped in unravels to reveal that there is nothing inside. From there, confusions abounds and builds to the close of the film, when the extent of Trevor’ mental repression and depravity is fully understood.

#manorexia

The film’s editing is rapidly paced, giving an added air of suspense to the already dark plot and desaturated world that Trevor is trapped in. The film is also edited in such a way that temporality is ambiguous; as the movie progresses, it is difficult to tell how much story time has passed since the start of the film. This ambiguity is further emphasized by the use of clocks in the film, for example, the broken clock in the airport that constantly flashes 1:30. (IMDB Trivia fun fact: the clocks are stuck at 1:30 because the plot twist occurs 1 hour and 30 minutes into the film).

Mirror, mirror, on the wall. I’m the guiltiest one of all.

The continued use of mirrors and reflective surface played nicely into the identity crisis that Trevor undergoes throughout the film. The opening shot looks in on Trevor through the window; the reflection of the city lights is crystal clear while Trevor is out of focus as we struggle to make out what he is doing (rolling up the body in the carpet). As the film progresses, there is an abundance of shots of Trevor looking at his gaunt reflection in the mirror. The revelation that Ivan does not exist and is in fact a figment of his hallucination that he has created to project his own guilt onto gives added depth to these reflective (and indeed, reflexive) shots. The ghost haunting Trevor is himself, his own guilty conscience.

Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!

Another manifestation of Trevor’s that I found intriguing was his compulsion to scrub his hands with bleach. I read this as a Shakespearean allusion to Lady Macbeth’s hysterical washing of the blood from her hands (a literary allusion that pairs nicely with the Dostoyevsky references in the film)

Maria and Son

Mama Reznik and Trevor

            An interesting aspect of the film to me was Trevor’s projection of “Maria”, the mother of the boy Trevor hit with his car, onto the coffee waitress. I interpreted this imagined relationship with Maria as Trevor’s way of trying to reconcile the loss he caused her by giving himself to her to be loved; he is the replacement for the son she lost because of him. This is further underscored by the parallel drawn between Maria and her son at the carnival and the picture of Trevor with his mother that he finds in an old photo album. Trevor and his mother stand in the exact same place as Maria and her son; this gives the imagined relationship with Maria a hint of an oedipal complex. Trevor is the replacement for the son Maria lost and Maria is fulfilling the motherly role and providing Trevor with the unconditional love he lost with the death of his mother (granted Maria is all a part of Trevor’s hallucination, obviously, but you get my drift).

All in all, I found this movie to be a fascinating exploration of repression and the pain we can cause ourselves in failing to deal with our own guilt. Despite the confusing structure of the film and twist at the end, the film wraps itself up nicely into a nice, cohesive package that answers all your questions but leaves the spectator reeling at the end. I also love that the film was too dark to be picked up by an American studio and thus was produced by a Spanish production company. Sometimes you have to get away from Hollywood to push the boundaries.

The Shawshank Redemption

I spent a lot of time brainstorming about what the first film I watched for this project should be. I felt like it needed to be something epic, something monumental. I perused Top 50, 100, 500, etc. lists of movies to try to pick a really great one. One film that seemed to continuously come up on top was The Shawshank Redemption.

I started watching this at midnight; I was only intending to watch an hour of it and pick up the rest in the morning. Understandably, I was completely enthralled by the movie and ended up watching it straight through (which is unusual for me, as I usually lose focus/interest in a movie about halfway through). I found this to be a very compelling story and one that I’ve been mulling over since I finished the film.

Structure

One facet of the film that really stood out to me was its structure. I am generally strongly opposed to voiceover narration (although Morgan Freeman could narrate grass growing and I’d still find it interesting), but I am slightly more sympathetic to Shawshank’s use of voiceover after reading that Darabont was making homage to Goodfellas (which I haven’t seen yet… perhaps my next film?) with its VO narration.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what using Red as a narrator as opposed to Andy lends to the film. Obviously, it makes more sense to give Andy’s story through the lens of Red in order to keep us in the dark about Andy’s intentions so the moment of his escape carries more weight and surprise. More than that, I believe that we have to get Andy’s experience tempered through Red’s perspective because Red is so entrapped by the routinized, cyclical environment of the prison. By presenting Andy’s story through Red’s eyes, Andy’s break from traditional behavior and prison routine is all the more striking and it; it is ultimately instrumental in jarring Red out of his rut and forcing him to reassess his life and realize that hope is not always a bad thing. Andy’s story presented first person would not be able to capture the irregularity of his story and would undermine the incredible break of the cycle that his escape and freedom represents.

Red’s role as the narrator carries even more weight when you look at the physical structure of the film. Red’s parole meetings are shown three times; each meeting coincides with a new “act” in the film, so to speak. There is the opening sequence in the courtroom and then the first parole meeting is shown. Act I begins after that, as we see Andy’s early days in Shawshank and his process of acculturation to prison life. Then we see another parole meeting (and another rejection), followed by Act II. Act II shows the development of the Shawshank library, Tommy’s arrival and murder, Andy’s serious talk with Red about his future plans, and Andy’s escape. The warden then kills himself and the film cuts immediately to the third parole meeting. The third parole meeting is different; a change is noticeable in Red as he drops his usual prerehearsed speech. He tells the parole board scathingly:

“Rehabilitated? It’s just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit”.

Andy’s actions in Act II have broken the cycle and instituted an ideological shift within Shawshank; his escape signifies that hope is not just a fool’s haven and that freedom is possible, as evidenced by Red’s subsequent release. The last portion of the film is about freedom and learning how to cope with the fear of being free.

Repetition and Parallelism

            – The film features much repetition, as with Red’s parole meetings and other instances of situational dialogue, for example, when Andy tells Tommy upon his arrival:

“I got fucked by my lawyer. Don’t you know everyone here is innocent?”

Here Andy is simply repeating what he was told on his first day. There is also a good bit of parallelism, like in the scenes with Brooks and Red in the same room of the halfway house. These both contribute to an almost cyclical feel to the film which could be read as a critique of the justice system which routinizes you so completely that you can’t exist in the outside world, encouraging you to commit more crime so you can go back to prison where you feel safe. Andy is able to break the cycle and not get sucked back into the ‘Shawshank or die’ mindset exhibited by Brooks. However, this does not excuse the obvious shortcomings of a justice system that conditions you to be unfit for the real world, further accentuated by the corruption within the prison administration as seen in the Warden and other prison officials.

Other Comments

Laaaaaaaaaaame. (I ironically found this image from a blog post entitled “My Favorite MOVIE ENDINGS”)

–       I absolutely hated the ending. It was just too perfect, a storybook ending. All the loose ends were tied up, and it just didn’t fit with the rest of the film. I was somewhat validated to read that Darabont had strongly opposed the reunion of Red and Andy and wanted to end the film ambiguously, leaving us unsure as if Red ever finds Andy. Castle Rock, typically, forced the cheesy ending to please audiences with a sappy reunion.

–       I appreciate the Count of Monte Cristo bit of foreshadowing, I didn’t even realize it except in retrospect and felt a bit obtuse.

–       I found it interesting that basically the only time we saw women in the film was in the screened movie of Rita Hayworth and in the posters on Andy’s cell wall. The use of Raquel Welch’s poster to cover his escape hole probably could be read in a feminist critique with women functioning simply as objects and as a recipient of the male gaze. But I won’t get into that.

–       Lastly, I enjoyed the gradual moral shift of the film in which we slowly began to identify with the prisoners and their morality became elevated as the corruption within the prison administration become more blatantly obvious.