1984, East Berlin. 100,000 East German Secret Police. 200,000 informers.
In a society where more than one-third of the population is victimized by surveillance, people are forced to choose: to betray or to silence. A secret police Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) and a successful playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) in The Lives of Others are no exception. At first, they appear to be securing a firm stand. Upon Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert)’s death, however, they start questioning their stances. The movie unfolds as the two main characters become alike. Hneckel von Donnersmarck’s use of outstanding mise-en-scene and sound—especially the musical leitmotifs—powerfully persuades the viewers that the pursuit of goodness alone can bind two seemingly
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The viewers rarely see anyone’s point-of-view shots since Donnersmarck wants us to perceive each moment as it is, without any distortion. Even when Wiesler imagines the couple’s reunion as he reads the report, the scene itself unfolds in objective depth, de-emphasizing its subjective value. Moreover, we easily notice the dissimilarity between Wiesler and Dreyman through the camera that thoroughly observes their lives. The audience knows how Wiesler gradually starts to sympathize with Dreyman, who is completely unaware of his informant until the very end. We see the most, thereby recognizing how the two separate lives begin to …show more content…
Wiesler is often associated with “The Invisible Front” motif, largely characterized by its driving bass ostinato and creeping string chords. It is ominous and rigid, representing his unwelcome presence. Contrastingly, full emotional strings define Dreyman’s motif. His motif develops into a love theme that plays when Christa-Maria decides not to meet minister and comes back to him. While mise-en-scene and music suggests nothing in common between Wiesler and Dreyman, they seem to share one thing: a typewriter. However, the content cannot be more different: Weisler coldly writes an official wiretap report while Dreyman passionately works on his next
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.
...is helps to show that they both have achieved happiness even though it is away from each other. Altmans views on the dual-focus strategy, the parallel between the couple and the plot, and relationship between music and plot are all shown in this scene.
Griffin explores Heinrich Himmler and the secrets that are hidden within him. Throughout his childhood Himmler’s secrets and thoughts were hidden, overshadowed by a mask or barrier formed by his upbringing and culture.
reflects a modern idea of love. One of the pieces of music in the film
Within the German Democratic Republic, there was a secret police force known as the Stasi, which was responsible for state surveillance, attempting to permeate every facet of life. Agents within and informants tied to the Stasi were both feared and hated, as there was no true semblance of privacy for most citizens. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the movie The Lives of Others follows one particular Stasi agent as he carries out his mission to spy on a well-known writer and his lover. As the film progresses, the audience is able to see the moral transformation of Stasi Captain Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler primarily through the director 's use of the script, colors and lighting, and music.
Throughout the second and final act the musical content within the play acts as a story of it’s own through theme and variation. Each separate song represents a feeling and or mood and is enhanced as it is varied throughout the act. Like the first act, the songs are used to portray poverty, suffering, hardships, and even death. However, unlike the first act, there is also a theme of love and happiness. Closure is brought about with a sense of warmth and this is often heard through the display of the tempo. When the times were tough the tempo decreased and was often slow and morbid like.
This paper seeks to show the comparison and the scrutiny of “"The Mad Trapper"” as a novel and its adaptation as a film. Both as a book and as a film it provides a good fiction which attracts an affluent legacy of folks, fables and myths. Rudy Wiebe’s recent novel The Mad Trapper (1980), the legend, presents a basis for the frame. Further than any distress with chronological events, the writer categorically depicts legendary dimensions to intertwine his fiction into conflict. Weibe’s argument, nevertheless, is not merely involving thermo and Albert Johnson; his contention lies amid the impending desires of self independence and reliability and the problem of multifaceted and distant progress.
For this assignment I have chosen to analyze a scene from the 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums, directed by West Anderson, where Richie Tenembaum, portrayed by Luke Wilson, attempts to commit suicide. This scene provides a shift from the previously established editing style of the film, its mood, pace, and camera movement as the filmmaker presents the climax in this one character’s story. This is done through the use of a specific mise en scène and an editing style which conveys the emotion behind the character’s actions.
Aspects of good and evil are portrayed in a number of different ways throughout the film, ?Schindler?s List?. The story of Schindler's List reminds us that there is hope; that sometimes the actions of one person - one ordinary person even, for Oskar Schindler is not the stereotypical altruistic hero - can make a difference, even in the face of mass apathy and e...
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.
‘Das Leben der Anderen’ (The Lives of Others) is a striking example of how a director can convey narrative links within a film by employing various styles and film techniques. The Lives of Others relies upon these visual means to assist with the telling of the story as much as it relies upon the script. In this selected sequence of the film, several narrative links are drawn here to form the conclusion of ‘Operation Lazlo’. These narrative links are further cemented by Donnersmarck’s use of various lighting styles, diegtic and non-diegtic sound, revealing camera shots and intricate mise-en-scene.
The sequences of events in the movie were largely intertwined. The movie begins with the death of Beethoven and proceeds with a friend and employee of Beethoven obsessed with justifying the rightful will of Beethoven’s assets and estate to an unknown lover. Avoiding Beethoven’s greedy brother, he travels around to meet with Beethoven’s previous lovers, listening to the tale of each, becoming closer to the truth as the movie moves forward. The stories told narrate many different significant events in the great composers’ life, including many mishaps, struggles, and disappointments that seem to fuel his music and its robust passion. By the end of the movie, an unlikely lover is found, the immortal beloved, a girl that Beethoven had once loved and conceived a child with. The audience is led to beli...
The beliefs and views of modern society are hypocritical and unjust. By the time an individual matures from a young child to an adult, they have been taught an uncountable number of life lessons. One of the outstanding lessons that each and every person has learned is that killing another human being is wrong. This is perhaps the first recognizable lesson on the value of human life. Most children know that killing is against the law and learn religiously that it goes against all religious morals and beliefs, yet society is bombarded by violence everyday in the media and in real life. Today, the value of human life can be questioned, especially that of the young. Through numerous examples of child murder and abortion it is rather obvious that the lives of the unborn or newly born are not valued to the degree that they should be. In most cases, the young are not recognized as "people" and are robbed of their human rights and freedoms. Young lives, both born and unborn, are seen as more of a commodity these days, than as precious, magical miracles.
The theme of love is brought up over and over again in the play. It is
The songs which are 11 in total, are used to interrupt the acting which can be called “verfremdzeffect” or alienation effect. Brecht neither used the songs as discharge of emotions nor any psychological state but to focus on the theme of the play or to comment on incidents. With the exception of scenes 5 and 11, almost every scene contains a song. The final scenes contain two songs.