'A film about somebody whose stuck on the outside, somebody who you would normally walk by'[1] This is how Lenny Abrahamson describes two of his most famous films, Garage, and Adam & Paul. These are the films I have decided to discuss in relation to the statement ' Drug users and village idiots, Abrahamson manages to make those considered to be invisible to society clearly visible to his audience, and the unlikely heroes of his films.' as I feel the main characters in both reflect those invisible people in society, in a light we would have never imagined them in before. Abrahamson uses some slightly unusual directing techniques, which in turn makes the audience empathise with the characters in both films. Characters that an audience would never have thought they could ever relate to. Two addicts in an urban inner city Dublin, and a lonely pump attendant in an isolated rural town. These characters suddenly become interesting to us, though we're not quite sure whether to laugh or cry for them. But why do we empathise with these ghostly characters? What are the tools used by Abrahamson to bring us to that point as an audience? These are the questions that I intend to answer.
Lenny Abrahamson is no Hollywood director. No car chases, no sex or violence, no jump-cut fast-edit flashback fractured storyline. No crashing rock 'n' roll soundtrack. No big stars (yet) and none of the glossy production values that has taken so much of mainstream cinema. No, his films don't shout for attention, instead he asks the audience to sit down and to look and listen while he tells a story. He says himself that the function itself of film and art 'is to take away a conventional way of looking at things'[2] People get used to seeing things in a certai...
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... he took from the films of Bresson. He says 'I don't have the luxury, like him, of doing take after take, but I do it beforehand in rehearsal.'[3] This way of rehearsing with actors really brings the characters to life. They have a great understanding of who it is they’re playing, or rather, whose life they’re taking on.
It was always Abrahamson’s intention to have us empathise with the characters in society we never imagined we could feel for. And we do empathise. For both Adam & Paul and Josie, these characters are recognisable to us all in one way or another, but in Abrahamson’s films, we are suddenly pulled into their world. He says himself that the films take ‘the idea of taking a very marginal and small life - one that seems limited.........rehabilitate a character that's just a sort of comedy staple in most films. To give him a three-dimensional life’. [4]
The writer incorporates a lot of repeated names for the characters which made it difficult to distinguish the certain characters a different given times and their connection to Josie in the script. For example, in the beginning, the writer shows Josie in a soon to be ended relationship with
Just like most of his other films like, Broomfield uses the Cinéma-Vérité style for this documentary. Cinéma-Vérité is a style of film making which uses minimal equipments and editorials. It helps capture the truth of the film and its characters. As the documentary moves forward, it takes on a more interactive mode. This, as the name suggests, implies that there is an interaction between Broomfield and the people he meets. This is also mainly because, it is essential for Broomfield to interview people who were either directly or indirectly related to the late artists to gain more understanding of their individual upbringings, when they were growing up and also after they attained fame. By using commentary for most parts of the film, which, for example, may show an archived footage of the late artists, it provides us with a deeper understanding of who is present in that particular footage and even what was happening at that moment. Broomfield was also able to share with the audience his exact emotions at each moment.
The podcast I listened to on RadioLab is called “An Equation for Good,” which portrays a long conversation between three different guests Richard Dawkins, Oren Harman and Carl Zimmer and the producer is Lynn Levy. This podcast was very interesting to me because Robert Kulwich shared a story about his discussion about natural selection with Richard Dawkins and eventually natural selection gets known as “the total horror of this suffering in nature” (Levy, 2010). From this remark, I quickly realized that one of the main points of this podcast is to enhance our understandings of natural selection by realizing that it exists. Most importantly the introduction was strong and creative because it drew my attention as the music was pleasant and effective while listening intensively.
November 1998, written for FILM 220: Aspects of Criticism. This is a 24-week course for second-year students, examining methods of critical analysis, interpretation and evaluation. The final assignment was simply to write a 1000-word critical essay on a film seen in class during the final six-weeks of the course. Students were expected to draw on concepts they had studied over the length of the course.
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
Certainly, being born into a privileged family have their advantages. Unfortunately, for those who are born into poverty may struggle for their success, but it is not impossible. The podcast “Three Miles” is a great example of that. Comparatively, on the surface Melanie and Raquel are two individuals coming from the same unfortunate circumstances. Although, both girls were introduced to the same pen pal program their outcomes would travel different courses. Initially, the purpose of this program is to give students from poor neighborhoods a glimpse inside their wealthier counterpart’s lives, from another school. Raquel and Melanie’s backgrounds were similar, because they were afforded the same opportunities, but they turned out differently. Raquel was driven while Melanie is unambitious.
” … an auteur is able to maintain a consistency of style and theme by working against the constraints of the Hollywood mode of production.” – Warren Buckland (2008)
... movie stars like royalty or mythical gods and goddesses, viewing the drama between great archetypal characters in a personal psychic realm. By considering the statements made and their societal impact from a Marxist perspective, Benjamin’s method is highly effective, as it does not simply consider art in terms of pure aesthetics anymore, but considers art’s place in a society capable of mechanically reproducing and endlessly duplicating film, photography, and digital art. His qualm with losing the aura and mystique of an original work is negated by the cult of movie stars, the adoration of fame, the incorporation of soundtracks which embody a particular time period, cinematographic allusions, and time-capsule-like qualities of a film such as Basquiat, a 90s tribute to the 80s, produced both as a part of and resulting from the art movements and trends it addresses.
Modern day directors use a variety of methods to hold ones interest. Ethan Hawke and Kenneth Branagh’s created versions of Hamlet that shared some similarities, but ultimately had many differences in respects to an audience’s appeal. An appealing movie is one that has an alluring ambiance and an intellectual stimulus. With these two movie versions, a setting and a mood forced an audience to acquire specific emotions, but Ethan Hawke’s version generated emotions more strongly and effectively. Also, these movies had extremely different uses of music and visuals, but both movie versions incorporated them well for the ambiance it tried to obtain. Finally, both movie versions drew characters to captivate the audience; however in Ethan Hawke’s version, the characters were used so effectively that it was easy to feel involved with them. While both these versions of Hamlet had a captivating ambiance, Ethan Hawke’s version was more appealing due to the intellectual incentive that it offered.
...use of documentary style lighting and discontinuous editing that diverges from the Hollywood “invisible” editing. Through understanding the historical climates these two seemingly similar French cinematic movements were in, the psychology of a generation can be visualized in a way truly unique to the indexicality of the cinematic medium.
Growing up in a more privileged environment things may come easier to one. But one should not be surprised of those that are in a less fortunate situation that are not able to reach certain heights, compared to someone from a more privileged back ground. Even if one is not in the best environment, they are able to make a choice to keep fighting for a better life. In the podcast “Three Miles” that is exactly the attitude described from a girl name Raquel, on the other hand Melanie froze her life doing what she thought she deserved. Though Raquel and Melanie had similar backgrounds in that they were raised in the same poor neighborhood and attended the same indigent high school, in the end Raquel was able to succeed in her life after getting denied a Posse scholarship, whereas Melanie worked in a supermarket for ten years, feeling that was as good as it was going to get.
This New Wave aesthetic solidified film as a mainstream artform, stressing that film was carefully crafted similarly to literature. Individual directors, or auteurs, were expected to “author” their films in much the same way that an author would write a novel. This auteur theory and its accompanying aesthetic became the backbone of the French New Wave and was what drove innovation. Breaking free from the screenwriter, producer, and studio driven systems of the past, and putting the creative power back in the hands of the director was seen as a crucial step in solving Cahiers’ perceived problems with French cinema before the movement.
Think about your favorite movie. When watching that movie, was there anything about the style of the movie that makes it your favorite? Have you ever thought about why that movie is just so darn good? The answer is because of the the Auteur. An Auteur is the artists behind the movie. They have and individual style and control over all elements of production, which make their movies exclusively unique. If you could put a finger on who the director of a movie is without even seeing the whole film, then the person that made the movie is most likely an auteur director. They have a unique stamp on each of their movies. This essay will be covering Martin Scorsese, you will soon find out that he is one of the best auteur directors in the film industry. This paper will include, but is not limited to two of his movies, Good Fellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street. We will also cover the details on what makes Martin Scorsese's movies unique, such as the common themes, recurring motifs, and filming practices found in their work. Then on
Gallagher, T. 2002. Senses of Cinema – Max Ophuls: A New Art – But Who Notices?. [online] Available at: http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/ophuls/ [Accessed: 8 Apr 2014].
“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.