Question: The director’s choice of themes is significant in communicating the film’s message and values. How far do you agree? Both ‘City of God’ by Meirelles and ‘La Haine’ by Kassovitz use genre to communicate their messages and values. Both directors appear to present major social ideas and themes to achieve their aim to begin to create the necessary social change that they felt was needed in their respective areas. In ‘City of God’, Meirelles is attempting to highlight the issues surrounding life in the favelas and the impact that poverty and crime is having on individuals, and ultimately the country as a whole, through his use of themes such as poverty. Similarly, Kassovitz is attempting to highlight the social division between authoritarian …show more content…
The roof scene is a primary example of the theme of poverty in La Haine, one of the trio attempts to almost beg for free food, highlighting lack of money and expresses the underlying problem of poverty in La Haine. The use of monochrome both in this scene and indeed throughout the film shows bleakness of life in the banlieue. The young men are restrained to a life of discomfort, degradation and, as a result, boredom. The severe lack of opportunities mean that young French men like Said, Hubert and Vinz were unable to access any jobs and had to resort to illegal activity such as anti=social behaviour out of boredom just as this scene represents. This lack of opportunity is present in City of God, This is similar to City of God, whose idyllic opening is vital to understanding the messages and values of the film in its entirety. The film's opening and closing sequence shows a 360 degree rotation of Rocket in the centre of a stand-off between Lil Ze’s gang and the police, unsure of where to turn. This scene is symbolic of the crisis within Brazila at the time, with youths not knowing where to turn. The narrative is then broken down into a series of acts which tell the story of the favela and the central characters, and which path Rocket decides to take …show more content…
The montage of riot footage grounds the film in reality and creates a clear theme of violence and inherent unrest within French society at the time. This prepares the audience for a more realistic of French working class society. Early on in the film the audience is being manipulated by the director to already view the police as the antagonists and promoters of violence, reinforcing the theme of crime and justice as it is so pivotal to the film. This reinforces the message and the themes of the film which attempt to emphasise the brutal way of life in the banlieues as well as the major division between France’s banlieue society and the police. Hubert narrates over it: ‘Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good... so far so good... so far so good. How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land.’ This is a metaphor for how Hubert’s view of the world and how it is quickly descending into chaos. The shot of the firebomb also reflects Hubert’s anti-establishment worldview. Furthermore, another shot pivotal in the discussion of police brutality is when the scene first cuts to protesters innocently dancing. Quickly the scene changes to police acting violently and instigating an attack against the protestors, Kassovitz did this to ensure that the citizens are being shown as oppressed and heroic, the
The book deals with several sociological issues. It focuses on poverty, as well as s...
Living in poverty brings high tensions and people tend to lose it. The use of alcohol is a contributor of the excess violence in the favelas. Many men and women begin to fight about the littlest thing, but it expands to a large issue as a result of the alcohol. Carolina recounts whenever a fight breaks out, “I was giving lunch when Vera came to tell me there was a fight in the favela” (de Jesus 63). These incredibly common vicious fights are entertainments to people living in the favelas. It is so familiar that whenever a fight breaks out people just enjoy it as if it were a show. As Carolina being the great hero she is, she regularly breaks up the
In the film, symbolism was everywhere. In the beginning of the film, the pictures of the city were in black and white and dull shades, giving the city a gloomy look. The camera angles made the cars in the city appear tiny, and the buildings appear very large to symbolize how small everything was amongst the city. The interiors of the office buildings and the panic symbolized that there was no way out. The soundtrack of the film was symbolic to the tension of the film. The darkness of visual composition of the lighting in the film, symbolized the darkness of the human nature in the story.
In the favela of São Paulo, Brazil, 1958, Carolina Maria de Jesus rewrote the words of a famous poet, “In this era it is necessary to say: ‘Cry, child. Life is bitter,’” (de Jesus 27). Her sentiments reflected the cruel truth of the favelas, the location where the city’s impoverished inhabited small shacks. Because of housing developments, poor families were pushed to the outskirts of the city into shanty towns. Within the favelas, the infant mortality rate was high, there was no indoor plumbing or electricity, drug lords were governing forces, drug addiction was rampant, and people were starving to death. Child of the Dark, a diary written by Carolina Maria de Jesus from 1955 to 1960, provides a unique view from inside Brazil’s favelas, discussing the perceptions of good
Aside from its acting, the other major influence which Mean Streets had upon American film-makers was through it's use of a rock n' roll soundtrack (almost perfectly integrated with the images), and in its depiction of a new kind of screen violence. Unexpected, volatile, explosive and wholly senseless, yet, for all that, undeniably cinematic violence. The way in which Scorsese blends these two - the rock and roll and the violence - shows that he understood instinctively, better than anyone else until then, that cinema (or at least this kind of cinema, the kinetic, visceral kind) and rock n' roll are both expressions of revolutionary instincts, and that they are as inherently destructive as they are creative. This simple device - brutal outbreaks of violence combined with an upbeat soundtrack - has been taken up by both the mainstream cinema at large and by many individual `auteurs', all of whom are in Scorsese's debt - Stone and Tarantino coming at once to mind.
The aforementioned scenario is a scene from the movie The Battle of Algiers directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. The Battle of Algiers is a film that depicts the violence of colonialism and decolonization in French Algeria. The Wretched of the Earth is a book written by Frantz Fanon that depicts the same violence. In both sources, both Pontecorvo and Fanon discuss the necessity of violence in decolonization. Although the film and text discusses violence in colonization and decolonization on a different scale and depth.
Despite numerous criticisms about how the play was violence was “gratuitous”, McDonagh says, “The violence has a purpose . . . otherwise there’s nothing particularly interesting about shooting people on stage.”
When speaking of themes, Polanski’s main theme in the movie is human isolation, and most of his movies are quite sad and about lonely people. Almodovar’s themes are more about human chemistry, relationships between different people and families. Sexuality and desire is important for Almodovar’s movies.
The film stays in line with classic noir in many ways. The usage of dark sets and high contrast lighting, which creates heavy shadows on the actors faces, makes the movie feel like it all happens at night and in dark alley ways. The story focuses on the inhumane parts of human nature. Each of the main characters experiences some kind of tragedy. For Vargas his tragedy was in dealing with Quinlin who has set out to frame him and his wife. For Quinlin his entire life represented a man consumed with darkness who lives his life with a “Touch of Evil.” Menzies was a hopeful man who looked up to Quinlin but was let down. For the viewer, film noir represents truth, even if it is not a truth that all people would like to hear.
In my essay I will discuss the differences between national cinema and Hollywood cinema by using Rio de Janeiro¡¯s famous film City of God. There will be three parts in my following main body, the first part is a simple review of the film City of God, I will try to use the review to show the film structure and some different new points from this, show the how did the ¡®Shocking, frightening, thrilling and funny¡¯ (Nev Pierce) work in the film. The second part is my discussion parts; I will refer some typical Hollywood big name films such as Gangs in New York, Shawshank¡¯s Redemption, and Good Fellas to discuss the main differences between City of God and other national films. The third part is my summary, I will use my knowledge to analyse why there have big different between both kind of films and their advantages.
Just how it shows when the power falls into the hands of the group, the terror arise and the violence as well. When they are looking for the stranger it show how the family has no power of the situation and the individuals take control of the situation by showing the family they aren’t playing any games. They show them knifes and the chainsaws through the camera, and they give them a time period. The demand that is exposed in this part shows how the issue is no joke and they are not playing games. When the family runs out of time it gives them the under hand and the power stays with the group of people.
To watch City of God is to be forced to enter, from a safe distance, the ruthless and merciless hoods of Rio de Janeiro. The captivating and poignant film guides viewers through the realistic aspects of slum life experienced by young, underprivileged youth in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, some aspects that not even most middle class Brazilians get to see. In a city where police are fraudulent, opportunities are scarce and crime is widespread, many youths believe there is no alternative to gang activity. In City of God, director Fernando Meirelles puts to the forefront of Brazilian cinema the real issues that favelas in Brazil face like poverty, extreme violence and stereotypical gender roles in a male dominated society. City of God encapsulates the hope of Rio’s impoverished blacks for social and economic ascension.
The distinct generations of hoodlums, from the sixties and eighties respectively, are thus referenced, by Rocket, the narrator, as a means of divulging new information and providing context to the escalating conflict. These referenced hoodlums, highlighted and often revisited via internal flashbacks, seemingly reflect the never-ending presence of gang-related warfare within the disparaged favela. Rocket intentionally compresses or eliminates certain fabula events in order to propel the narrative forward. Character positions or set pieces, for instance, are regularly utilized to bridge transitions between different time periods, eliminating the necessity for dedicated sequences in between.
The director Antoine Fuqua vision for this film was to bring that intense love-hate relationship onto the big screen and showcase it for the world to see. To ensure a convincing film setting, Fuqua shot on location in some of the most hardcore neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Fuqua also wanted to show the daily struggles of officers tasked to work in the rougher neighborhoods of cities and how easy it can be to get caught up in a street life filled with killers and drug dealers. Overall the film displayed the city of Los Angeles in a different perspective. One which m...
In the opening scenes of the trailer, already the audience is exposed to the dystopian atmosphere of chaos, social anarchy and oppression. This is promoted by short fast paced montages and high angle shots of the swarmed streets, close angle shots of people in terror and military forces. This also conveys the magnitude of chaos this “dilemma” has caused. A short scene of the main protagonist Robert struggling through the crowd has also been visually constructed to enforce to the audience that he is the main character of this movie. The visual construction of this scene is utilised by a close up slow motion focused shot on Will Smith with the background blurred to completely draw the audience onto him. What is more unique is that this combination of effects acts as an inference that Will Smith is the solution or only hope in settling this anarchy as he swiftly makes his way through the congested street. The explosion of the bridge also informs the audience the narrative is set in New York implied by being a landmark of the city. Already in the exposition, the visual conventions have provided an engaging and well informed construction of dystopian qualities and information about the plot itself.