Experimental Films and The Spectator Experience

 

    I believe that this film is modern art at its finest.  Out of the box thinking, executed properly, is something that can push the envelope and create a new way of telling a story.  This film made me rethink art and being a spectator because it shows that with a little bit of imagination a whole entire world can be created inside a small confined space. The short film tells a story of a girl and her dream as she lies in bed. Her dream is represented on the bed, which becomes the exterior world, depicting what she is dreaming. Everyday props like socks, pillows and bed sheets become things like fish, stairs and even water! Another thing this film did was to make stop motion animation, something I only thought to be for cartoon and figurines, into something that actors could do with time and precision.

    Thanks to Youtube, this generation has more access to avant-garde films. Unlike past generations who were used to only watching big Hollywood movies, Youtube has made it possible for anyone to tap into this unknown art form. I also feel that because of the fact that Youtube is such a predominant part of our generation, we are more open to abstract and avant-garde films. They are entertaining and inspire a lot of talk in the viral world. This generation is not closed off to what others might think as “weird” or “different” but actually embraces the differences and attempt to interpret the film on their own. 

    Not to mention the fact that, now, there are more artists who have sprung up solely on Youtube expressing their feelings, concerns and opinions artistically on the web for the world to see, and actually being heard by the masses. This is the great thing about this generation, I think, we see beauty in all, even the weird and uncommon.

The Hurt Locker

  "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug” –Chris Hedges. From the bitter darkness these words emerge, slowly fading in. The white lettering contrasts the pitch-blackness of the background and they slowly dissolve, all but the words “war is a drug”, which lag behind, and remain on the screen for a moment longer then they too begin to fade away.
Jump-cutting in to the action, as if just turning on an old television, we see the ground moving from a very low angle. The ground is uneven, dry, and desert like. The camera glitches, and a side angle of the bomb robot is seen moving at a fast pace.
They are in Baghdad.
 Women and children are running. Cars are honking, stuck in traffic. Soldiers are running out of vehicles on to the streets; guns loaded and running towards the center. Not knowing what is occurring, the public begins to frantically look at all directions for the cause of the commotion. All at once the world seems to be in the action, focused on the unorganized mayhem. The soldiers in the trucks, the pedestrians running away, spectators from afar, all are watching; confused and scared.
  

 An extreme close-up of soldier’s eyes is seen. Jumping back between the soldiers eyes and the point of view of the robot, a Kuleshov Effect is created, letting the viewer know they’re in control of the robot.
The robot reaches the target. With unsteady hands the soldier is unable to uncover the object. Constant vigilance is a must. Thompson, one of the soldiers by the computer, takes over the controls and discovers a bomb is lying on the ground. People from the surrounding buildings are now watching the spectacle. Thompson decides to use the robot once again to blow up the bomb.
 

 Navigating through a herd of goats the robot is sent on the rocky terrain once again towards the bomb. Attached to the robot is a small two-wheeled wagon with explosives. Reaching an unsteady rocky hill, the wagon unhinges and a wheel falls off. They’re stuck. The audience grows. Thompson decides to go in himself.

Strapping on the bomb suit with the help of his comrades, “blaster one” heads down the train tracks. Eye line match shows Thompson looking at buildings, a helicopter, and people in shops as he walks.
 

 A stranger comes in the scene and Sanborn pushes him away. Thompson reaches the bomb and sets up. Success. Blaster one turns around and slowly walks back as Eldridge and Sanborn chitchat about their grass business.
 

Eldridge sees a man with a phones and senses danger. Sprinting towards the man, yelling at him to put the phone down, the bomb detonates and the world seems to extremely slow down. By this point Blaster one had already started running away from the bomb. His breathing is heavy and as the ground and rubble rise up, so does the explosion. The blast sends Thompson to the grown, and in silence he lays there as the smoke clears, lifeless.

 The establishing scene sets a tone of desperation and fear, which are two common themes throughout the Fabula. Another great scene that leaves a deep impression is when the bomb squad is called into a location in the middle of the night to see if the bomb that had just gone off was a suicide attempt or just a bomb. The darkness is confusing, and the constant change of point of view shots disorients the viewer, like the first scene the camera is unsteady and swish pans take up most of the shots. It distills in us a sense of uncertainty and desperation.

  The darkness changes up the pace of the film compared to the first scene. The viewer cannot see anything more than what the flashlights shows, and the constant fires around the area add to the disorder of what is occurring. Different to the first scene in which we could see everything, the fact that little to none was shown at that point makes one more anxious to keep watching. The way in which the form is used, using the hand cameras and eye line matching, creates an effect as if one is there alongside the soldiers, fighting and trying to survives the war.

Real or not????

The documentary Catfish is a great film that goes deep into the world of fake identities in the Internet. The controversy revolving around this film is whether it is real or fake.

Most people automatically think that just because a film is a documentary that it is “real” but what they fail to understand is that most of the time, the filmmaker can influence the film and the perception in which we see certain things. Although Catfish seems very realistic, some things do not add up to the movie. Like most documentaries in the same genre, it seems very amateur. The only problem I have with that is that they specifically say that the people recording are “professional filmmakers” and not amateurs, so then why are there so many little mistakes and why did it come out so obviously. The camera angles are not straight sometimes, the white balance is off, and corrections are made on the spot as they are filming, if the are real filmmakers, those are things that should have never occurred, because those are amateur mistakes that people who have no idea what they are doing make.

Another problem brought up was the fact that the chances of having the narrative unfold so eloquently and easily as it did on the film is very unlikely, granted the filmmakers have not said its fake, but if highly improbable that anything of this sort could randomly start occurring as a camera happens to be filming the life of a person. They say that they start filming because of the relationship the main character is having with a young girl that likes his photography, but that is not something that would be interesting to the point for busy filmmakers to take time off and film what is happening. To me, it feels too set up and so easy to follow for it to be such a good documentary.

With all that being said, I would like to say that I enjoyed this film a lot and although it may or may not be real, it is very realistic in the sense that people do create fake profiles on Facebook, and that we all need to be careful with the people we meet because one never really knows who is on the other computer typing words to you. I personally don’t care if it is fake, but my natural human curiosity dose come up and leaves me with a yearning to know the truth behind the movie.

Blog Assignment #2: Moments of Choice in Shark in the Head

“Shark in the Head” is by far the one movie that is the furthest away from Hollywood’s Classical Paradigm.  The stylistic depiction of the German Expressionism that was shown truly conveys the difference between two cultures and what they deem to be a good film.

One particular scene that stands out in the fabula that lets you understand that you are in the protagonist’s head and that his perspective in life is sometimes skewed is when its a very rainy day in his world. As usual he’s standing by his window of his apartment looking at strangers go about their day.  Like the rest of the scenes the protagonist is looking at the street, which is somewhat gray and plain colored. People are walking in only two directions in a very plain and similar manner. But this scene is particularly different than the other times you see strangers walk the protagonists window in the fact that you don’t see anyone’s faces, they are all dressed very similar with black clothing and black umbrellas moving at a fast pace. The scene stands out and its  bit depressing until you see a woman run along the mans window. She is wearing a bright red dress and has no umbrella. From that moment the audience can tell that in his world, she stands out and she’s different than the others. Whether or not that occurred in the diegesis or just in his mind its not clear, but from that moment on its apparent he holds her at high regards. This scene definitely contributes to the visual themes of the film. It stands out and brings you back to reality, forcing you to realize that not everything you are watching is actually accruing.

I believe that this film is all about  style and only a tiny bit about the manner. The narrative is about a schizophrenic man who is struggling with reality, a plot that can be easily be told, but the director chose to show the viewer ,with style, how this man’s mind worked and how he was perceiving life itself. The point-of-view shots in the film help one understand that you are seeing things through his eyes, and when the world strays from the norm, the close mouth shots and eye shots make one feel that we are cornered and somewhat confined like he is. To add to that, his world, or diegesis, is relatively small and confined, with three trash cans in front of his door, and very bland colors to show that his life is somewhat the same.

All in all this film has nothing but style, and leaving it up for interpretation, it couldn’t be about anything, from a love story, to a parallel about how humans are the same way with the Internet and social networks.

Critique of Critique

Full Metal Jacket

I have to start off by saying that Robert Ebert was very critical of the movie. After seeing the movie I was left feeling a bit lost throughout all of the character changes and dry humor. It was refreshing to see that I was not the only one with mixed feelings on this movie, with not so positive ones being the strongest.

Ebert truly is a critic because he called it as it was. He made great points as to how Kubrick did not really build a character for us to follow and get attached to. The last scene of the movie is intense, but in retrospect it did not hurt me as much because I barely knew the character of Cowboy or any of the other ones.

He also talked about how the movie sets us up for certain things yet fails to follow through, like the “sexual parallels” that are started in the beginning of the movie with the homophobic slurs to the men sleeping with their guns, but nothing came from that Kubrick left us high and dry.

All in all, I believe that Ebert was a bit too harsh with the critique of the movie but it was very honest. I felt he at least should have commented on the whole “duality of man” that joker talked about in the movies for me to see what his opinion was.

I have to admit that I have not seen any other of Kubricks movies, but after this one I would like to see another one, to maybe further understand his style of directing and hopefully coming full circle with the movie Full Metal Jacket as well.

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