The heart and soul of every story, no matter the subject matter or medium in which it is portrayed, is the characters created by the writer. They become the part of the story that we most identify with, and we spend their entire journey wondering what will happen to these unique individuals. A talented writer or director can make the characters lead off the page or screen, allowing his or her audience to understand the true purpose behind the action within the story. While Abdullah Oguz’s film adaptation of Bliss is an excellent drama with a hint of mystery, O.Z. Livaneli’s psychological analysis within the novel of the same name provides greater insight into the characters, and in turn the culture, that create the story. By comparing the portrayals of the characters Meryem, İrfan, and Cemal in the film to those created within the written story, the lack of depth within the film becomes more apparent.
The novel edition of Bliss begins with Meryem dreaming that she is flying on the back of a phoenix: “Clutching the bird’s neck, Meryem felt full of bliss” (Livanelli 1). She is very happy and carefree in this moment, experiencing freedom from the oppression of her hometown. This suggests that before she was attacked by her uncle, Meryem had great dreams and hopes for happiness. She always longed to travel to Istanbul, “the golden city about whose glories the villagers never tired of telling” (Livanelli 5). Meryem was a dreamer for her entire life, even after her innocence was torn away from her by her uncle.
In contrast to the novel, the film does not give the impression that Meryem is a girl with a dream. The story begins with her laying on the shores of Lake Van, with the camera circling overhead like a buzzard. The mu...
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...er that is their parting emotion in the novel.
The characters created by O.Z. Livanelli in his novel are very deep and complex creatures with very specific feelings and motivations. While Abdullah Oguz’s characters lack some of the depth of Livanelli’s, he still shows the more superficial conflicts within the characters on the screen. It is every director’s right to adapt a story to fit his purpose, and in the process of doing this, Oguz created a film that, while different from the story’s original intention, still caused a great deal of thought and emotion in the audience. While the psychological analysis within the novel was a more intriguing and complex story, Oguz’s film was still a pleasure to watch.
Works Cited
Bliss. Dir. Abdullah Oguz. ANS Production, 2007. Film.
Livanelli, O.Z. Bliss. 1st U.S. ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006. Print.
Relations between sympathy-empathy expressiveness and fiction have become a significant issue in the debate on the emotional responses to the film fiction. Due to their complexity many scholars found it useful to diagram them. With his essay, “Empathy and (Film) Fiction”, Alex Neill tries to develop new theory for analyzing the fiction and, especially, the emotional responses from the audience on it. The project of this essay is represented with an aim to show the audience the significant value of the emotional responses to the film fiction. From my point of view in the thesis of his project he asks a simple question: “Why does the (film) fiction evoke any emotions in the audience?”, further building the project in a very plain and clever way. Tracing the origins of this issue, he distinguishes between two types of emotional responses, sympathy and empathy, as separate concepts in order to understand the influence of both types of emotional responses to fiction. However, relying mostly on this unsupported discrepancy between two concepts and the influence of the “identification” concept, Neill finds himself unable to trace sympathy as a valuable response to fiction. This difficulty makes Neill argue throughout the better part of the text that empathy is the key emotional factor in the reaction to (film) fiction and that it is a more valuable type of emotional response for the audience.
Malouf effectively uses images to reinforce attitudes, feelings and emotions. Though the descriptions are long and detailed, they are worthwhile and evocative. Many of the descriptions are symbolic, such as the descriptions of the garden. Malouf’s use of language is casual, which enhances the story, causing it to come alive. Through Malouf’s descriptions of each house he creates an atmosphere to reflect the characters’ feelings.
This novel and film commentary analysis or interpretation will be first summarised and then critiqued. The summary will be divided into twenty- four episodes. While summarising it is well to remember that the film was made out of the book.
In his novel, Hosseini writes with a deceivingly simple form of prose. Instead of assaulting the audience with his extravagant vocabulary, he entices them with the minds of his characters. Leaving the audience with feelings of empathy and repulsion, the work exhibits Hosseini’s adept abi...
Through these, the portrayal of the complex nature of happiness is shown to contribute to the enduring value of the film through the realistic style of the film and by showing different perspectives on the same person showing the audience that different people view actions in different
Writing a story is pretty difficult. Writing a short story is even harder, there is so much that has to be accomplished; in both commercial and literary fiction! The plot, the structure, whether it has a happy, unhappy, or indeterminate ending. There must be artistic unity, chance, coincidence, rising action, climax, falling action. Most importantly there must be characterization. Characters make the story! “anyone can summarize what a person in a story has done, but a writer needs considerable skill and insight into human beings to describe convincingly who a person is” [page 168]
In The Arabian Nights, the curiosity of the characters, in many instances, changes the direction of their lives and causes them heartache. The actions of the characters in the stories can teach lessons to the readers to apply in their own lives. One can learn that curiosity should not be the driving force of his life. It sends a message to act cautiously when making choices instead of being driven by curiosity. Actions based on satisfying one's curiosity can cause an undesired outcome.
The emotions throughout the society are shared with the individuals throughout their confusing times, and by their shared experiences. The times spent together of the characters brought the individuals closer together through the dark negative times, and through the light positive situations of society. The confusing part of peoples lives are brought together and are shown throughout the status of society. The stories of the “Encounter,” “Eveline,” and “The Dead” come together with similar experiences of situations of light and dark. The society bring the individuals closer together by shared times.
The Hero’s Journey is a basic template utilized by writers everywhere. Joseph Campbell, an American scholar, analyzed an abundance of myths and literature and decided that almost all of them followed a template that has around twelve steps. He would call these steps the Hero’s Journey. The steps to the Hero’s Journey are a hero is born into ordinary circumstances, call to adventure/action, refusal of call, a push to go on the journey, aid by mentor, a crossing of the threshold, the hero is tested, defeat of a villain, possible prize, hero goes home. The Hero’s Journey is more or less the same journey every time. It is a circular pattern used in stories or myths.
Run Lola Run, is a German film about a twenty-something woman (Lola) who has 20 minutes to find $100,000 or her love (Manni) will be killed. The search for the money is played through once with a fatal ending and one would think the movie was over but then it is shown again as if it had happened ten seconds later and changed everything. It is then played out one last time. After the first and second sequence, there is a red hued, narrative bridge. There are several purposes of those bridges that affect the movie as a whole. The film Run Lola Run can be analyzed by using the four elements of mise-en scene. Mise-en-scene refers to the aspects of film that overlap with the art of the theater. Mise-en-scene pertains to setting, lighting, costume, and acting style. For the purpose of this paper, I plan on comparing the setting, costume, lighting, and acting style in the first red hued, bridge to that of the robbery scene. Through this analysis, I plan to prove that the purpose of the narrative bridge in the film was not only to provide a segue from the first sequence to the second, but also to show a different side of personality within the main characters.
In the saying of “Character is what you are in the dark” by Dwight Lyman Moody, can meaning many different things. One being, “you are most yourself when no one is watching”, another one also being, “dark and troubled times bring out a person's true nature”, and “your true nature is on the inside”. This quote can or cannot apply to the play of “Romeo and Juliet” by Shakespeare.
The “Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams shows a family facing economic and social hardships due to the father abandoning them. The father’s absence forces the rest of the family to fill roles that they wouldn’t be obliged to face if the father remained. The mother, Amanda, is a strong single mother who pushes her kids to be economically self-sustaining individuals. Amanda tries to impose her desires for her kids in a very direct and controlling manner which causes them to dislike her initiatives. The son, Tom, is the breadwinner for the family, however is dissatisfied with his situation due to his increased responsibilities. The daughter, Laura, is handicapped and dropped out of business school. Each member of the family is limited by their ability to grow out of their negative habits, however, it is likely that these habits or characteristics came from the family situation and the roles that each member was forced to fill.
Life is full of difficulties. People are compelled to face these from time to time. In some cases, an individual is unable to progress in life because of their inability to deal with the reality of their predicaments. However, some of these drastic incidents are necessary for individuals to overcome these difficulties and move on in life. In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, a few of the characters portrayed successfully overcome the hardships while others remain held up in their predicaments and are hence, unable to make any progress in life. In this play, Tom fails to overcome the boredom of living with his family, Laura fails to confront her fears of schooling while Amanda succeeds in accepting that she has raised her children well despite their stubbornness.
For our paper we’ve chosen to analyze the film, The Wild Child. The film helps to serve as a great example for multiple psychological phenomena and concepts pertaining to the material that we have learned throughout the course this quarter. Right from the opening scene of The Wild Child, the viewer is able to make note of the complexity that is the life of the young Victor; otherwise known as the wild child in this film. The viewer is able to view Victor’s lack of social awareness, his inability to cope in a way society deems fit when placed in a stressful situation, quintessentially he lacks the basic skill of language to voice his distressed thoughts. All of this can be analyzed from the opening situation in which he frightens a women picking
“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine, some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything’s okay. I don’t make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything’s not okay.” - David Fincher. David Fincher is the director that I am choosing to homage for a number of reasons. I personally find his movies to be some of the deepest, most well made, and beautiful films in recent memory. However it is Fincher’s take on story telling and filmmaking in general that causes me to admire his films so much. This quote exemplifies that, and is something that I whole-heartedly agree with. I am and have always been extremely opinionated and open about my views on the world and I believe that artists have a responsibility to do what they can with their art to help improve the culture that they are helping to create. In this paper I will try to outline exactly how Fincher creates the masterpieces that he does and what I can take from that and apply to my films.