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.