Still Life

I recently watched part of the film Still Life again. It is a recent Sixth Generation Chinese, multiple award winning film directed by Jia Zhangke. The film follows a story using parallel plotting. The first plot concerns a man Han Sanming and the second concerning a woman Shen Hong. The film is driven mainly by cinematographic images rather than the dialogue and narrative. The dialogue and narrative is present but they are not as predominant as the images and cinematography. It involves making choices between types of shot, types, of lenses, camera movement, along with more technical aspects. The cinematographic characteristics in Still Life support the overall themes. It takes all of the other elements of film and ties them together with the art of camera movement, composition, and framing.

The cinematography draws attention to the magnificence of both the natural landscapes and the deteriorating urban scenery. It also compliments the film’s themes urban displacement and change. Since there wasn’t a lot of dialogue I enjoyed analyzing how the movie told the story through all of the other elements. I think each individual element within the cinematography, such as mobile framing, symmetric composition, depth of field, and the immense amount of camera movement, lead the themes and narrative to success.

That's A Wrap.

As the semester draws to a close I am left to look back on and evaluate my first semester of junior year. It has without a doubt been the best semester of my college experience. I have changed in so many ways, my outlook on life has become more targeted and refined. I finally feel that I am beginning to gain the experience and skills that I need to transform my ideas from foggy thoughts in my head into a clear product. I learned the importance of time. Things take time and time always seems to be slipping away faster than you hoped it would. Wait until the coffee is poured, and the cigarettes are lit. You cannot expect to arrive at your destination without taking the proper steps, steps that may seem unimportant or unnecessary at the time but in the end will come around to make a fool out of you. You need to know what you're getting into before you put everything you have into it. I am proud of what I have accomplished this semester, I know the quality of everything I have done could have been higher but that is not as important to me in this moment. What is important to me is that I now know what doesn't work. That is important to me because now I can try different things, those different things may or may not work but after trying them I will have one more thing that I know works or doesn't work. This semester has impacted me enormously as an individual and made me excited to try different things. Arturo, you have given me so many things to dwell on and think about. I have an entirely new take on film after taking your course. Thank you. That's all I can say to you, thank you. 

Got Gump?

I don't think I've written about Forrest Gump, directed by Robert Zemeckis, yet so here it goes.

I'm going to focus on an aspect to it that I noticed it last time I watched it. This movie is highly adaptive to its audience. By this I mean that the same person, depending on their mood can get different meanings out of it every time they watch it.

Last night I watched it in a slightly darker mood than I normally watch it. And scenes meanings changed for me. For example in the scene where he says his last words to Bubba. Forrest Gump narrates "If I'd have known this was going to be the last time me and Bubba was gonna talk, I'd of thought of something better to say." Bubba asks Forrest why did that happen. And Forrest replies "you got shot." And then Bubba dies in Forrest's arms. In the past I had laughed because it was a funny line since he states the obvious, like always. But last night it had weight behind it, it wasn't funny. It was actually a very sad scene. He tried to save his best friends life, willing to lose his own, and he failed. 

There are many other aspects that were different too. Story changing too. Normally when watching this, pardon the french, but Jenny is a bitch and Forrest is the helpless victim to her acidic lifestyle. Last night though I was sympathetic towards Jenny and Forrest was more of her savior. It was more of Jenny's story and Forrest was just a tool used to explain it. I was drawn a lot more to her and her problems. Almost all of the references to birds, being free, and running came through.

It wasn't so much the story of Gump anymore, not the American Dream, but probably the human dream. The contrast between Forrest and jenny really showed this. Jenny, trapped by her past, drug addiction, not satisfied with her life and always trying to escape it. Forrest while "constrained" by his intelligence, "broke out" of it as a kid in the scene where he breaks his leg braces. He never lets anything hold him back and just lives life freely. He went with the flow, without too much thought as to what the consequences could be. He is completely free. Which is where Jenny wants to be, she even says she wishes she was like a bird. And birds typically and in this case as well are symbols of freedom. By the end she gets there right before her death.

There were many other examples of these new meanings depending on the mood. But I'll let you figure out the meanings for yourself.