So, my film is not finished, but I've been
showing a lot of people the stuff I have so far. And it's really interesting to
hear what people say about it. Everybody has a different interpretation.
Everybody has a different perspective -- telling me things that I never thought
of while filming.
This got me thinking a lot about interpreting
story and how different backgrounds and beliefs can cause different
interpretations.
Here's a little story.
A while ago, I dated this girl named Courtney.
She wasn’t the nicest girl -- actually, she was downright cruel, but I can’t
deny the love we shared for television and movies. After watching a show or a
movie, we would both share our individual opinions and reasons for our
opinions. Though we may not have always agreed, (which happened frequently thus
resulting in our break up) we would both have educated and thought-out reasons
for why we liked or didn’t like a show or movie. This was one of her few redeeming
qualities.
Courtney and I both followed the show Breaking
Bad very closely. It was perfect for television junkies like the two of us
because it had strong character development, clever symbolism and great
cinematography. We would watch season after season guessing what would happen
next. The show follows the life of Walter White, who is an under
appreciated chemistry teacher who turns to cooking methamphetamine to
provide for his family after he is informed that he has lung cancer. As the show
progresses, you see how the life of crime changes Walter White as he deviates
from simple family man to becoming a megalomaniac drug kingpin.
Breaking Bad shows the transformation
from the good guy to the bad guy. And what usually happens to the bad guy at
the end of a movie or television show? They die. When Breaking Bad was
coming to its final season, Courtney and I made predictions on how the show
would end. Opposed to popular belief, Courtney did not think that Walter was
going to die at the end. She was certain that the writers were going to show
how Walter pushed away everything that he valued in his life and then show him
living with nothing left. I thought that was absurd. There was no way that the
writers would let Walter White live after all of the villainous things that he
had done throughout the series. Courtney and I had legitimate fights where we
would yell and scream at each other because we couldn’t agree how it would end. More of her yelling at me because I didn't agree with her. Well, at least, that's how I remember it.
She was convinced that Walter White would have
to live with himself after ruining his life that he worked so hard to afford.
She thought that this would be the punishment that Walter deserved giving the
viewers a satisfying ending. I thought that Walter was going to die. I thought
that the whole show revolved around how Walter tied to escape death, from when
he first found out he had lung cancer to killing his drug competitor, and the
conclusion would show how death finally caught up to him. Courtney did not like
this. But when the finale premiered and Walter White died, I didn’t let
Courtney forget it. It felt great being right. But more importantly, this
showed how our different beliefs resulted in our different interpretations.
