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. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

This gave the film suspense which was much needed for the story. Clearly, both directors used the setting and the mood to play with particular emotions of the audience. However, Hawke was more creative in his methods and he created a non-traditional setting and mood that related more to a modern day audience. For example, Hawke focused on the mood by choosing camera shots during Hamlet’s soliloquy that... ... middle of paper ... ...ter development was sophisticated and artisitic. In this version, the audience was absorbed with Hamlet’s character.

Critics claim that watching films is a passive activity in which the viewer becomes subconsciously absorbed, and creates a reliance or "addiction" to the medium, and thus can be influenced by any perpetual concepts or images. Advocates, however, argue that viewing such programs is an active process in which audience members are able to choose to what they are exposed, and interpret messages based on their individual needs and background. Perhaps both views are too extreme. Film from the 1950s to present, as will be explored in this essay, is an extremely useful medium, often underestimated within the label of "entertainment"; unfortunately, it may be partially responsible for current socio-cultural problems, too. The critical question, then, is whether film has fostered the progress of a more open-minded America, or rather hindered its development through the perpetuation of antiquated concepts of stereotypes, densensitized violence and breeding of normalcy.

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?

This notion drew the attention of the major stakeholders in the film industry into investigating why some of the directors would present the given qualities while others could not (Truffaut 103). From the onset, auteur theory would appear simple; its primary premise that the director under certain circumstances would be recognized as the author of the film (Thompson and Bordwell 105). However, the underlying question is what the issues and circumstances investigated for a director to be considered an auteur would be. Should they be the scripts that the directors choose to use or the dominant th... ... middle of paper ... ...his works. In summary, Hitchcock, Burton and Renoir were each considered auteur based on the dominant theme and the identical style that was evident in their film collections.

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?

Hesiod. Theogony. Trans. Apostolos N. Athanassakis. Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1983.

This accentuates the realism of the film, makes people horrified at the characters and their filthy habits, and really makes the viewer think that t... ... middle of paper ... ...erview. This would attain a more accurate analysis of the film, and more could be discovered from the results of others' thoughts on the film. Bibliography Barker, M. From Antz to Titanic: Reinventing Film Analysis. Pluto Press; London: 2000 Freeman, A. Studies in Scottish Fiction 1945 to the Present.

Print. Giroux, Henry A. “National Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism.” Multicultural Film: An Anthology. Eds. Kathryn Karrh Cashin and Lauren C. Martilli.

ed. London: Methuen, 1977 Wood,R. 1999. “Ideology, Genre, Auteur”. IN: Film Theory and criticism (ed) Leo Braudy and Marshal Cohen, Oxford University Press: London The Wooster Group: »THERE IS STILL TIME.. BROTHER«
Directed by Liz LeCompte.