As discussed in class earlier this week, some contemporary audiences initially find it difficult to appreciate Grand Illusion (1937). But after analyzing Renoir's war film from a stylistic, narrative, and/or historical perspective, they end up retracting that viewpoint, realizing that the film is, as critic Roger Ebert claims, a masterful meditation on the collapse of the old order of European civilization.
This week, please write about a film that you initially found difficult to appreciate but then after considering it in a different, more thoughtful light, you ultimately came to see it, perhaps like Grand Illusion, as an outstanding work or art.
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
ReplyDeleteI watched an Italian film over the summer called LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Upon originally watching the film I definitely enjoyed it but did not truly appreciate how great it truly was.
The main character in the film deals with many struggles as a Jew in Europe during WWII. He has a great deal of discrimination thrown his way and seems to deal with all of it in a lighthearted, almost humorous way which gives him an extremely likable and endearing quality. The first half of the film is very humorous and upbeat on the outside, however if the viewer looks beyond this humorous exterior, they can see the true interior problems of the war that surround the story. These reminders of the times are revealed more and more as the story progresses. Half way through the film the man marries a woman and has a child. This also is where the story takes a turn for the worst. The man and his family are put in a concentration camp. The man and his wife are separated and he has to conceal his son to prevent him from being taken away and killed. The man eventually gives his own life to save his son.
This story is unbelievably poetic. On first glance it just appears to be a regular story about WWII and the Holocaust, however upon looking closer one can see various layers present within this film. It is a truly heartbreaking story because of the incredible acting by the main character, which in spite of awful circumstances, remains confident and always cheerful in order to keep his son alive. These conflicting emotions of cheerfulness in the man's attitude and the devastating circumstance in which he lives makes this film truly an incredible work of art.
I watched Raising Arizona when I was in elementary school and I did not like it. It may have been because based on the cover I thought it would be like Look Who’s Talking. When I watched it I did not find it funny, I did not get it. Years later, I was in high school and was discovering the Coen brothers movies. I found out that they had made Raising Arizona and I figured that since it was one of their first that they were working on being funny, and their first attempt was not that great. Then a year or so ago someone was telling me about it and how funny it was and I told them that I did not like it and they told me to watch it again with an open mind. So I watched it again and I laughed throughout the entire movie. I watched it without thinking of my previous opinion and just took it as it was and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteThe movie is about a couple who cannot conceive and decides that a wealthy couple who gave birth to quintuplets have one too many and takes one for themselves. The movie is a typical Coen Brothers oddball comedy. I understood the jokes a lot more than when I was younger, and the movie’s jokes are based on the conversations between the characters and rants by various others. The story is a little odd but everything comes together at the end in only a way the Coen Brothers can do. The movie is a real piece of art.
This is a very hard question for me. Most of my movies from childhood involved Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude van Damme. I haven't experienced many movies that I initially didn't like, and then gave a second chance to. If a major HW movie is not good, why watch it again? I have decided the movie that I didn't appreciate at first, then came to regard as a piece of art is Gone With the Wind. My mom used to have the VHS of this movie on constant loop as a kid. I grew up thinking Ashley was a wuss and "Boy those fluffy dresses are a bunch of nonsense. What the heck is wrong with Scarlett?!?"
ReplyDeleteAs an adolescent boy, these were natural thoughts to such an adult movie. I always thought of it as taking up my valuable cartoon watching time. I did not like this movie.
Then, as an adult I saw the movie again. I realized this was a great movie, especially for coming out in 1939. The shots of the town square filled with hundreds of bodies, Scarlett's struggles to remain sophisticated in the midst of the turmoil, Rhett's attitude, the beautiful sunsets and landscapes, and even Ashley's lack of a backbone all made much more sense to me. I even started to like them! The narrative flowed and the characters were real. "I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies, Miss Scarlett" has to be one of my all-time favorite lines now. This movie started out as a childhood nuisance and became a great movie.
The first time I watched the film SALO, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM I was shocked to the point where I couldn't really stand it. I thought the overall film was disgusting, disturbing and just downright hard to watch. But after I let it really sink in, I began to look back over it.
ReplyDeleteThe film is essentially about four fascist libertines who round up 9 boys and 9 girls in Italy and bring them to an estate so that they may proceed to commit unspeakable acts upon them, to put it lightly.
This was by far one of the most graphic films, sexually and violently, and it took me until I truly started thinking about the colors used and the dialog within the film that I began to appreciate it. The film itself showed the true evil that lies within people and really makes you think how awful it is that something like this could, and may have happened. After I mulled this over, I had to watch it again before I really judged it and it is really a marvelous film. Not for the faint of heart though.
I saw Titanic when I was in fifth grade and aside from the nudity I thought the movie was atrocious. There was an old lady who kept talking about her life, and in general the movie was far too long. I would have never dreamed of watching that movie again. However, my junior year in high school it was on T.V and for some reason I was in a lazy mood and decided to watch it. I noticed that Titanic did some phenomenal work with CGI and that technology had really come a long way. This is when it hit me that this was a decent movie with some innovative technology, whether I liked it or not.
ReplyDeleteI remember going to see AMERICAN BEAUTY when it opened in theatres and thinking it was, more than anything, humorous and I could not understand what all the hype was surrounding it. I eventually went back and watched it again and began to understand what made it so special. Though the story is good, the character development is the most impressive part to me. Each character is complicated but given a generous amount of depth which helps guide the plot. When i first watched it I dont think i gave enough thought to the characters, therefore hindering my ability to understand the ending. Being seventeen at the time i don't think i had enough life experience to understand some of the main points the director was trying to convey. I view it as a modern classic, even though it does take some flack for the plastic bag floating in the wind scene.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, I was into the movie from the beginning to the end. The camera work with the action sequences were awesome. What I found was difficult to appreciate was how Jason Bourne (played by Matt Damon)was framed, and how the woman Marie had to die. Marie was a special person Jason Bourne met, and was like a new beginning for him. I won't say how she died, because someone might want to watch this movie. I did appreciate the movie overall, because Jason Bourne was never backing down, and always had a plan to survive. The camera work made me feel like I was right there in the scene, because some parts had me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next.
ReplyDeleteHere's a trailer: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3068527385/
The movie or genra I have learn to like are action movies.One action movie that I can thinking is Die Hard. The ongong suspense. The lighting and the music working togther creating suspense in alot of the scenes.May it not so difficult to understand what was going on in the movie; those technique were helpfull also with foolowint the movie from began to end. I think Die Hard is a movie that you could see over and over again especialy if you are beginer at watching action movies.Bruce Wills takes control of his weapons and the terrorist all at the time. This movie was base on a novel named Nothing Last Forever. If you get a chance to read it, you should it was interesting.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I ever saw Quentin Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS, I wasn't that big of a fan. To me, the film was chaotic and violent, with very little artistic merit. This was a major disappointment at the time, because I had seen PULP FICTION and KILL BILL, and I really enjoyed those movies. To me they had been clever with their emphasis on campy, over the top violence, while RESERVOIR DOGS had come off as just obscene
ReplyDeleteAfter watching it again, I realized what Tarantio was trying to do. I was trying to watch RESERVOIR DOGS as a gangster movie, when really the point was to deconstruct the genre. After that, I watched it again and noticed many jokes that I hadn't even noticed before. Now, RESERVOIR DOGS is one of my favorite movies.
Throne of Blood.... Akira Kirasawa, I remember watching this when i was much younger, hearing such good things and expecting a hyperviolent samurai war film, i mean come on its called Thorone of Blood FFS. As you can imagine i was very let down, and as i had there preconcieved notions of what it should of been, i lost all apprication for what it was.A few years later i sat down to watch it again, this time with a open mind, not expecting films to go the way that i think is important, but more what was intended by the artist.With my new mind set i could appricate all the great elements that i had completely overlooked before, and allow myself to become immersed in a story i had cared little for the first time i saw it. Akira taught me many things, first and foremost never to let preconcieved notions delude the viewing expierence.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to choose a movie that I at first dismissed and now really like it would have to be CAPOTE. The first time I saw it, I thought this is a boring non-ficttional movie about a strange homosexual writer (Truman Capote) and the writing of his book and obsession with the killers. But later when I watched it I really enjoye the story. It was able to give tones of that cold-blooded killer vibe being conflicted with the humanism of the conversations that would take place between cahracters. The suttelty of these secenes, where one could grasp what was being said and thought jsut by body language and actions, going into a psychological mind trip of what should the characters do. Also it had powerful settings. The cops at the farmhouae at dusk really was done really well, giving one that sort of strange feeling one gets on the middle of nowhere, but also the darkness of murder. It really grasped contradicting themes, which is why liked it so much, that being both the terrible and good of life being so parrallel in time.
ReplyDeleteA movie that I watched when I was still a little kid, one that I really didn't like was AMERICAN HISTORY X. I grew up in a semi-religious household, attending church regularly on Sundays and Thursdays, until my parents got divorced. This was a movie that I wasn't allowed to watch, mainly because it is rated R. When I was about thirteen, my oldest brother got a copy of the film from one of his friends and we watched it. Aside from the cursing that is prevelant throughout the movie, I didn't find the film remarkable at all. It probably could have been that the subject matter was too heavy for a thirteen year old boy. I was bored one night, watching late-night television, when I stumbled across AMERICAN HISTORY X playing. I stopped and watched it. The first thing that caught me was Edward Norton, who plays Derek Vineyard. He gives such an amazing performance in that film, I don't know how he didn't win the Oscar. Another thing that I liked is the switching from black and white to color to show the terrible parts of Derek's past and the color to show the good future that he is trying to make for himself and his family. The most important part of the film, the thing that clinched this movie as one of my favorites, is the ending. There is no happy ending. Just when you think that everything is going to be all right, Danny Vineyard gets killed. It was shocking to me the first time I watched it and was the second time; however, my reactions were different. The first time it was like, "Ok, he died?". The second time I understood the meaning behind it. It represents the circle of violence that can't be broken, which is supported by the irony of the final lines of the film.
ReplyDeleteSome may call me crazy, but i did not like Scarface (Al Pacino) the 1st time i viewed it. Now let me explain, i was around 10 or 11 the first time i saw the film and i wasn't allowed to watch it all, so the parts i did see was boring to me and didn't keep my interest (i did however sneek and watch it and still found it to be boring when i noticed how long i was sitting, the movie is 3hrs long). As the yrs. went by, me and my cousin was hanging out one night and she had the movie on vhs and wanted to watch it. That night i had a different understanding for that movie and movies in general. Yeah a lot of bloodshed and the use of a lot of foul language, but the director gave the public a great crime story (still to this day it's ranked as the best crime movie ever made by most critics and stars,and my personal favorite Al Pacino film to date!). This movie had a sad ending because everyone was cheering for the bad guy and he dies at the end (technically there was no good guys in the film except for Montannas family, so sad how his sister died), but he was a great bad guy (Al Pacino). This movie helped me to like stories of all kinds of genres (if there good)and appreciate good acting, it also prep. me to sit thru super long movies (eg. Titantic).
ReplyDeleteI can earnestly say that I have never had the experience, wherein I watch a movie that initially I do not appreciate, then upon witnessing it again I like it more. As a matter of fact, when I re-watch movies I dislike, I only find more reasoning for my first assumption of said film. Perhaps I am far to analytical and critical, but there are very few movies I have seen that I truly view as a work of 'art'.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there are films that I've seen and enjoyed, that after the all of the Hollywood induced emotional dribble paces, the smoke from an epic battle clears, or some deeper meaning or message is lost in commercialism I find myself wondering why I enjoyed it in the first place. Movies like 300, DEFIANCE, BURN AFTER READING, THE SPIRIT and even precious little Disney movies. Every single person I know thought 300 was the best movie ever made, but I myself thought the preview for it were far more interesting. The effects and imagery were wonderful, the dialog and character development were interesting... but it didn't arise in me any feelings. I am a very passionate person, but no amount of CGI generated explosions or beautiful women crying seems to move me any longer. I need true intensity, I need for the revelation at the end -the culmination of all the information preceding it- to wholly change my life. I thought CORALINE for example was excellent, the story written by Neil Gaiman was very well portrayed and the animation left quit the impression on me. However in hindsight I may have just been overwhelmed by my feelings for the women I watched it with. Needless to say any movie is a good one when you have a beautiful women to fool around with while watching it.
To conclude, I find it suffice to say, that most movies pumped through the Hollywood s**t-factory leave me wanting. They never feel complete, there impressions are never lasting and I think it a shame actually. It's too bad really, that 90% of filmmakers are mediocre storytellers at best.