In David Laderman’s Driving Visions (2002), Laderman identifies three essential ingredients to the road movie genre - psychological identity crisis, socio-political critique and the revolutionary spirit of new Hollywood (“Driving Visions”, 27) where socio-political and historical critique plays a crucial role. Badlands (TM, 1973) undoubtedly fulfills these criterion set by Laderman and was particularly important to the genre, as it was part of a “boom of American auteur-driven breakouts that challenged American film making standards”(Runyon), and it left “a crowded legacy of road movies” in its wake (“Driving Visions”, 117). With Bonnie and Clyde (AP, 1967) as its precursor, the two films have many similarities, such as the ‘outlaw couple’. However, Badlands sets itself distinctly apart by changing Bonnie and Clyde’s romance for irony. This film marks a change of course for the road movie genre, and drifts away from the romance and modernism of pre-1970s road movies to irony and post modernism of later road movies (“What a Trip”, 50). Based on the historical events of Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugates’ killing spree, Badlands portrays more than a mere re-account of the storyline. By using the framework of the road movie genre, Badlands is able to form a cultural critique of American society in an era of socio-cultural disruption (Curley) during the 1960s and 1970s. The genre also allows Malick to explore new cinematic styles and filming techniques by keeping a relatively loose narrative. Laderman’s criteria of psychological identity crisis, is clearly portrayed in the two main characters of the film. Kit represents a youth, who lives a boring life, and kicks a can as a form of amusement (Ebert). He has little prospect for b... ... middle of paper ... ...ns in the Road Movie." Http://www.ucd.ie. 28 Mar. 2014. . Danks, Adrian. "Death Comes as an End: Temporality, Domesticity and Photography in Terrence Malick’s Badlands." Senses of Cinema RSS. July 2000. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. . Ebert, Roger. "Badlands." Rogerebert.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. . Laderman, David. Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movies. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Laderman, David. "What a Trip: The Road Film and American Culture." Journal of Film and Video Vol. 48 (n.d.): 41-57. JSTOR. Web. 27 Mar. 2014. Runyon, Christopher. "The Terrence Malick Retrospective: Badlands." Movie Mezzanine. 22 Mar. 2013. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. .
The road movie embodies the human desire for travel and progression. The vehicle of journey is a contemporary metaphor of personal transformation that oftentimes mirrors socio-cultural desires and fears. Thomas Schatz believes that one “cannot consider either the filmmaking process or films themselves in isolation from their economic, technological, and industrial context.” This statement is especially applicable to the independent American films of the late sixties, a time of great political and social debate. Easy Rider (1969) was considered a new voice in film that was pitched against the mainstream. In the 1960s, there was a shift to highlight the outsiders or the anti-heros in film. This counter-cultural radicalism seems to have also influenced the 1991 film, Thelma & Louise. The characters of both films act as figures of anti-heroism by rebelling against the conventional and unintentionally discovering themselves at the same time. Despite their different backgrounds, the protagonists of Eas...
My analysis begins, as it will end, where most cowboy movies begin and end, with the landscape.Western heroes are essentially synedoches for that landscape, and are identifiable by three primary traits: first, they represent one side of an opposition between the supposed purity of the frontier and the degeneracy of the city, and so are separated even alienated from civilization; second, they insist on conducting themselves according to a personal code, to which they stubbornly cling despite all opposition or hardship to themselves or others; and third, they seek to shape their psyches and even their bodies in imitation of the leanness, sparseness, hardness, infinite calm and merciless majesty of the western landscape in which their narratives unfold.All of these three traits are present in the figures of Rob Roy and William Wallace--especially their insistence on conducting themselves according to a purely personal definition of honor--which would seem to suggest that the films built around them and their exploits could be read as transplanted westerns.However, the transplantation is the problem for, while the protagonists of these films want to be figures from a classic western, the landscape with which they are surrounded is so demonstrably not western that it forces their narratives into shapes which in fact resist and finally contradict key heroic tropes of the classic western.
Lewis, J. (2008). American Film: A History. New York, NY. W.W. Norton and Co. Inc. (p. 405,406,502).
Westerns have been around for many years. Some would consider westerns to be American classics because they describe early life in a mostly undiscovered America. In class two western films were watched and discussed. These two westerns were High Noon and Shane. On the surface, these movies are categorized as the same genre and look very similar but after further inspection it can be determined that the movies have a lot of differences. Of course, both movies share the same central theme of law versus social order, but the way each movie portrays this central theme is very different. This universal theme between the two movies can be investigated through, setting, violence, view of family, how women perceive guns/violence, and the choice of
Director Jim Jarmusch’s film Deadman displays many of the accepted conventions for Western genre films, but manipulated in such a way as to create a revisionist, rather than a classical, western. The most obvious example of this manipulation are the characterizations of the hero, William Blake, and his Native American partner, Nobody. Blake is an awkward easterner who travels westward unaware of the different rules governing western life, instead of the rugged, knowledgeable outdoorsman who “does what he has to do” to defend justice and honor. Nobody’s character is unusually independent, educated, and kind towards Blake, instead of the traditional Western genre’s violent, unintelligent Indian.
Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.
[1] The silent film, With Daniel Boone Thru the Wilderness, was produced in 1926: a time of prosperity, an era without the skepticism of the modern American mind. People were not yet questioning the stories and histories they had been taught as children. The entertaining story told in this Robert North Bradbury film is loosely based on the life of an American hero. However, the presence of several insidiously inaccurate historical representations demonstrates how an entertaining film might not be as innocent as it initially seems. This film fails to question certain key issues concerning the Daniel Boone legend. In fact, it does quite the opposite. The creators of this film wholeheartedly bought into the many warped myths and distorted “facts” surrounding the story of Daniel Boone. Amazingly, the ethnocentric (read racist and colonial) ideals found in 19th century whites apparently still existed in 1926, and, to a certain extent, still do today. This essay will explore the factors that contributed to the twisted representations found in With Daniel Boone Thru the Wilderness. Hopefully, the work of this essay and many others like it will help the next generation of Americans (and filmmakers) to avoid the same injustices and societal pitfalls that have plagued mankind for ages.
Lethal Weapon 4 is one of the many Lethal Weapon series that amalgamates action, drama, comedy and heart warming stories into a well-packaged film. Part of the success of the film lies within the resplendent chemistry between the two partners Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh. The profound relationship between the two characters is built on differences of age, class and race. Through fighting crime and contending demons Riggs and Murtaugh come to find common ground for bonding despite their disparities. Whilst comedy and action play an imperative part in attracting audiences, viewers participate in the evolving lives of the two partners. In the context to the black-white inter-racial relation, the co-operative partnership demonstrates...
A new edition to the course lineup, this week's film classic, Sunset Boulevard. This film will focus on the culture and environment of the Hollywood studio system that produces the kind of motion pictures that the whole world recognizes as "Hollywood movies." There have been many movies from the silent era to the present that either glamorize or vilify the culture of Hollywood, typically focusing on the celebrities (both in front of and behind the camera) who populate the "dream factories" of Hollywood. But we cannot completely understand the culture of Hollywood unless we recognize that motion pictures are big business as well as entertainment, and that Hollywood necessarily includes both creative and commercial
Malick is also the director of movies such as, “Bad Lands”, “Thin Red Line”, “The New World”, and “To the Wonder.” Each movie features existential questions; relating to the purpose of life and the existence of god for “The Tree of Life,” Nature Versus Civilization for “The New World,” Love and the existence of god again for “To The Wonder,” and violence as a violation of man and as a violation of nature in “Thin Red Line.” Terrence Malick movies are beautifully filmed, especially “The Tree of Life,” The use of mise-en-scene in place of dialogue is shown heavily in this movie and also appears in several of his other movies including “Days of Heaven” (source here wordpress.) We also see a tendency to make the main characters partial “anti-heros.” Like the morally conflicted main character of “The Tree of Life” who breaks into people’s home, throws rocks at windows, hates his father, and questions his religion. Another movie that features this anti-hero persona, though based off of a previously explored topic, “The New World’s” main character is faced with conflicting morals about whether to pursue his the love of his life stay and help lead his own people who brought him to the new world in chains and attempted to hang him. John
In “The Thematic Paradigm,” Robert Ray explains how there are two vastly different heroes: the outlaw hero and the official hero. The official hero has common values and traditional beliefs. The outlaw hero has a clear view of right and wrong but unlike the official hero, works above the law. Ray explains how the role of an outlaw hero has many traits. The morals of these heroes can be compared clearly. Films that contain official heroes and outlaw heroes are effective because they promise viewer’s strength, power, intelligence, and authority whether you are above the law or below it.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
In this paper I will offer a structural analysis of the films of Simpson and Bruckheimer. In addition to their spectacle and typically well-crafted action sequences, Simpson/Bruckheimer pictures seem to possess an unconscious understanding of the zeitgeist and other cultural trends. It is this almost innate ability to select scripts that tap into some traditional American values (patriotism, individualism, and the obsession with the “new”) that helps to make their movies blockbusters.
The reclusive film director Terrence Malick has to date, only directed a small number of films. His twenty year hiatus between directing Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), may provide the explanation for such a sparse back catalogue. Malick’s refusal to talk with the media, has led to hearsay, as to how he occupied his time during the hiatus. Malick’s directing debut Badlands (1973) is a collection of concepts, all carefully moulded together to create one iconic piece of film. This process draws in and also alienates the audience. Malick’s style is positively noted by critics to be influenced by European philosophy. This is clearly due to Malick’s study of philosophy at Harvard and Magdalen College Oxford. There is no given explanation to the mindless violence featured within the film, mainly due to the films resistance to the straight forward approach. The familiar and the unknown are carefully merged together. The only way of gaining an understanding into the hidden meanings within Badlands is by breaking down the film, by looking at the characters, the use of sound, the visual setting and the films genre. The illusionary effect of Malick’s style means that all is not as it seems.
Fast and Furious 7, a multilayered, mass mayhem, is an action packed and triumphant film directed by James Wan, written by Chris Morgan and starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson and several other actors. Throughout the past fifteen years of a devoted series, it has advanced from a basic low-budget movie about a couple of young adult street racers into an intercontinental law-breaking epic covering multiple continents and more than a dozen characters to partake. The scenes are increasingly substantial and preposterous, and it is tough to envision any other movie exceeding them. Before the traditional and multiple vehicle chases instigate, the immediate overall atmosphere is mostly mournful. The leading cast discourse ominously about