This paper aims to answer the questions: How do directors create metaphors in film to communicate with their audiences? And what are the messages in the metaphors directors impose on their audience? How is the method of conveying a metaphor different or the same in: Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror, Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie, and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver? If one assumes that CMT is true in that all communicating is a form of metaphor for an intended meaning, doing a comparative analysis, on three different films will demonstrate just how filmmakers are using their medium to convey a message to their audience. This is important in the field of communication because understanding how filmmakers use various cinematographic techniques can demonstrate …show more content…
Jeunet often introduces characters by demonstrating what they like and dislike. The audience learns seemingly extraneous factoids about each character, which in reality is an attempt at adding depth to a character's personality. If the goal of the filmmaker is to get their audience to feel like the characters in the film are real, then these idiosyncrasies are synonymous with the known idiosyncrasies of a friend. After all, the closer one is to someone, the more they tend to know about them. Jeunet's goal in character development is to establish that the audience knows these characters like a friend. Hence the metaphor: CHARACTER IS FRIEND. The implication of this effect is that the audience is more invested in the fate of the characters in the film. Amélie and Nino are lovers who have not found each other and Jeunet holds the moment these two get together until the end of the film. Knowing the audience wants what's best for Amélie and Nino, Jeunet uses this desire to compel the audience further into the …show more content…
Metaphors like, FATHER IS SON and MOTHER IS SPOUSE are ideas that are heavily supported in his film The Mirror. The film is about the main character, Aleksei's life from a child to his death in his forties. The film structure is not linear and often shifts to different points of his life without a clear transition. More confusingly, the film has Aleksei as a boy and his son, Ignat played by the same actor. Similarly, Aleksei's mother, Maroussia and Aleksei's ex-wife, Natalya are played by the same actress at times. There are times in the dialogue that also refer to this notion. Aleksei says to his ex-wife at one point that she is a lot like his mother because she shares the same face. Natalya then says their son is a lot like him. Aleksei resembles his son when he was growing up because he is growing up with a single mom and the mom is confronted with having to decide whether or not their son should be sent into the military. Tarkovsky focuses less on individual characters and instead produces a film that focuses on an aura that a person can produce. In this case there are parallel characters that represent the same aura. The only difference is time that they existed, but Tarkovsky eliminates this by creating a film that does not adhere to a chronological timeline at
Maus tells a story of Spiegelman’s, Vladek, and his experience as a Polish Jew during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s Maus gives us a detailed look at the ways Jews were persecuted in German-occupied territories during World War II. The Jews were seen as inferior, disposable and deprived of the most basic human rights. Instead of drawing the characters as human, Art Spiegelman, in his graphic novel Maus, chooses to merge the different identities and draw each character through a definitive scope of animals: Mice were used to represent the Jewish people, cats to represent the Germans, pigs to represent the people of Poland and dogs to represent Americans. He uses metaphors which are figures of speech that is used to make a comparison between two things that aren't alike but do have something in common, in this instance animals. Mr. Spigelman strategically chose the animal characters and had a stereotypical relation to the character the animals depicted in the story. Mr. Spiegelman convincingly argues that he was using “Hitler’s pejorative attitudes against themselves,” and that using animals “allowed me to approach otherwise unsayable things” (Gardner 2011, p 2). There are many times throughout the text
In his essay, “It’s Just a Movie: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes”, Greg M. Smith argues that analyzing a film does not ruin, but enhances a movie-viewing experience; he supports his argument with supporting evidence. He addresses the careful planning required for movies. Messages are not meant to be telegrams. Audiences read into movies to understand basic plotlines. Viewers should examine works rather than society’s explanations. Each piece contributes to Smith’s argument, movies are worth scrutinizing.
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. 247-259. Print.
The best thing about movies like Godzilla and Tarantula are the metaphors. The saturation of metaphors is immense. This shows the importance of films like these in the cinematic industry. People have a way to express emotions and express fears. In the article” Looking straight at "Them!"
In conclusion, by using the production elements of both allusion and symbolism; director Tim Burton has created the film in such a manner by making deliberate choices in order to invite a certain response. The film is constructed and given greater depth through the allusion to elements from other genres and ridicules the suburbia’s materialism and lack of imagination, which in turn enhances the invited response.
character may seem odd at first. We may be apt to think of friends as caring about
The purpose with this paper is to study and compare two different directors, and to compare and contrast the two different works. How are they working with their movies and how do they use mise-en-scene? By studying two different directors that uses different techniques when making movies, we are going to find out how important mise en scene really is, and how it affects the movie.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
Rascaroli, Laura. "The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments." Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 49.2 (2008): 24-47. JSTOR. Web. 08 May 2014.
In the book Metaphors We Live By, authors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson address the traditional philosophic view denouncing metaphor's influence on our world and our selves (ix). Using linguistic and sociological evidence, Lakoff and Johnson claim that figurative language performs essential functions beyond those found in poetry, cliché, and elaborate turns of phrase. Metaphor permeates our daily experiences - not only through systems of language, but also in terms of the way we think and act. The key to understanding a metaphor's effect on behavior, relationships, and how we make sense of our environment, can be found in the way humans use metaphorical language. To appreciate the affects of figurative language over even the most mundane details of our daily activity, it is necessary to define the term, "metaphor" and explain its role in defining the thoughts and actions that structure our conceptual system.
A metaphor can be defined as “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison” (dictionary.com). We use metaphors in our everyday language more than most people realize. But metaphors are also vital in the field of Information Systems, especially in the design of user interfaces. To the “Average Joes” of the world, or those people who have difficulty understanding the complicated concepts of digital storage, information transmission, and processing, metaphors provide them with relevant concepts to which they can easily relate. Therefore, metaphors allow a significantly larger amount of the worldly population to use many of the common technologies that we take for granted today.
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
John Gibbs and Douglas Pye (2005) Style and meaning : studies in the detailed analysis of film. Engalnd: Manchester University Press, pp 42-52.
Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universally understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films; Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films; Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society using sound and editing.
“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.