Empathizing with Joel Barish in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Works Cited Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology, eds. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259.

Mise-en-scéne elements of setting, brilliant cinematography, and profound editing techniques institute the film’s prevailing narrative form and motifs. Many film directors manipulate the concept of fantasy versus reality, but instead of providing a mundane exposition, fantasy becomes the new reality in Inception.

In film studies, auteur theory amounts to a claim that the director of a film, despite the myriad talents that go into creating it, is in some sense the film’s primary author (Leblanc 19). For cinemaphiles devoted to the work of Hitchcock, Kurosawa, or the Cohen brothers, this claim feels both natural and obvious, given what they perceive as the common formalistic, stylistic and thematic elements in the films attributed to any given director. For film theorists, auteur theory similarly provides a convenient conceptual framework with which to parse and analyze these elements between films (as opposed to within the same film). For the average movie-goer the attribution of a film to a director may provide a helpful variable in the complex calculus of what film to spend their next $15 on. Yet to what extent does auteur theory accurately describe either the actual process of filmmaking or the final result?

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. P86: Figure 2.6 Jewel, R. B (2007). The Golden Age of Cinema, Hollywood 1929-1940. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. P77 Jewel, R. B (2007).

Hawke and Branagh both reproduced Hamlet with a setting and mood that were both appealing for an audience. For instance, Hawke created a film much unlike Shakespeare’s play with a modern day setting. At the start of the film, the mood was set using modern visuals and melodies. Then a soliloquy of Hamlet was seen stating his troubling inner emotions. These scenes created a mood of youth and despair which eventually would become very effective in the plot of the film and the development of Hamlet’s character.

Both Rules of the Game and Breathless embody the spirit of their respective movements while exploring realism and redefining the purpose of cinema. However, while Rules of the Game contrasts the formative and realistic traditions through long takes and deep focus, Breathless breaks cinematic conventions through distanciation techniques and disjunctive editing to convey disillusionment and cinematic realism. Though these techniques and definitions of realism are seemingly oppositional, Godard and Renoir both hold to the same cinematic purpose of communicating their feelings of disillusionment towards society with the audience. The Rules of the Game embodies the isolation, disillusionment, bitterness, and nostalgia portrayed during the Poetic Realism or French Impressionist cinematic movement (1934-1940) by contrasting the realistic and formative traditions. The Rules of the Game follows a nar... ... middle of paper ... ...use of documentary style lighting and discontinuous editing that diverges from the Hollywood “invisible” editing.

M. 'Literature vs Literacy: Two futures for adaptation studies.' The Literature/Film reader: Issues of Adaptation. Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press Inc., 2007. Bazin, André. What is cinema?

Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Reichardt, Kelly (Director), Raymond, John and Reichardt, Kelly (Writers), Williams, Michelle and Robinson, John (Performances). 2008.

New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2005. Print. 7. Arlart, Dietrich. Order and Chaos in Colonial Trinidad: V. S. Naipaul’s Novel “A House for Mr. Biswas” (2004).GRIN Verlag, 2007.

The main drive of the story remains in the movie form: Kubrick utilizes the means, such as a musical score and the visual dimension, unique to the dramatic genre to find ways around the loss of Nadsat and first person narration. He also tries to maintain the twisted sense of humor found in the book while working to promote the audience’s understanding of Alex’s universe. Kubrick preserves the unusual opportunity A Clockwork Orange offers the audience—a chance to immerse itself in Alex’s character and actions, and have its "nastier propensities titillated" (Burgess ix)2 by Alex’s "ultra-violence", instead of being frightened away. In the novel, Burgess is able to speak indirectly through Alex’s narration, telling the reader about the novel’s political setting as well as revealing Alex’s (and perha... ... middle of paper ... ... Nadsat, is lost. And with the loss of a large and comprehensive language such as Nadsat, goes part of Burgess’ voice.