Whose youth

I am very into American Youth Movies because I’ve always had a romantic streak. I have watched One Day, Flipped, Mean Girls, Love Simon, High school musical, After, Lady Bird for several times. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is always on the recommend list when I search for the keyword but I have never watched it until this week. I just want to say that this is such a good movie, and I will definitely watch it again!

The stories of the three main characters are ordinary but not ordinary. It represents the distressing feeling that everyone has experienced in their youth. As a freshman in high school, Charlie has just lost his best friend. In his heart, he is burdened with a childhood shadow that he can’t tell anyone about. He also suffers from hallucinations. Not long after he got into high school, he met his new friends. It was his first time to attend a Party, and he sat alone by the wall holding a drink, just like the quiet wallflower in the film title. Seeing this young man slightly embarrassed, it is hard not to think of in everyone‘s school time that there is a person who used to sit in the corner of the classroom, looking at his classmates who gathered together and chatted happily but could not get in a word. Charlie was lucky. His simple greeting from the stands brought two glittering friends to his life, half-siblings Patrick and Sam. Sam is vivid, outgoing, and very passionate about music. Patrick has a good sense of humor, everyone at school seems to know him. However, they all suffer inexpressibly “pain” just like Charlie. Maybe it’s the same experience that makes them resonate emotionally, they three became close friends.

As a teenager, Most of the time we just suffer in silence. We need to be understood. It is lucky that if we can have one or two friends who know us intimately, who know all about us, who know all about the unspeakable pain that lies beneath our polished appearance. Thanks to a loving family, Patrick and Sam. It was the people he loved and loved him that brought Charlie out of the shadows. Patrick and Sam also moved on in their own ways. Youth is like this, we always feel lost and helpless in the middle, as if the sky will fall down. We spend time with friends worrying and feeling sorry for ourselves, only to discover that when it all goes too far, it’s just an episode in our lives. 

We are weaker than we think while stronger than we think.

This film is different from the common youth film, it is not like the candy drama that is too sweet to be bored with; it is not the carnival of a group of people from the beginning to the end, nor is it the loneliness of one person. It is such a combination. The film faces up to the kinds of problems that American teenagers can experience. What is even more remarkable is that it is not written in a condescending tone, nor does it attempt to give a definitive answer, but rather a candid depiction of the perplexity of a sixteen-year-old. We kind of find ourselves in this movie.

I am glad that I chose this course this semester. This course definitely adds fun to my boring online semester. I am always into watching movies as well as movie interpretations. I have not only watched monumental movies I may never have a chance to know but also got to know some basic techniques of the filmmaking process. I also see films from more perspectives than before. Thanks so much for providing meaningful information. Documentaries left me a profound impression this semester. The documentary of the usage of music, the digital revolution, and special effects, as well as The Blue Thin Line, were all significant. I used to want to work in the film industry, but it seems hard to realize because the film is much more complicated than I thought (LOL).

I will always keep my passion for movies! Thanks again!

HER/HIM

Her is a sci-fi love movie about the love between people and artificial intelligence in the near future. The protagonist Theodore is a letter writer with a delicate and deep mind who can write the most touching letters. By chance, he was exposed to the latest artificial intelligence system OS1. The system can not only complete various operations of conventional operating systems but also meet the emotional needs of users. Its incarnation, Samantha has a charming voice, gentle and considerate, yet humorous. Theodore has just ended his marriage with his wife Catherine, and he has not yet emerged from the shadow of heartbreak. Love life enters a period of emptiness, Theodore and Samantha hit it off.  With two-way needs and desires, the human-computer friendship eventually developed into a strange love. when he thought he had found his true destiny, immersed in the sweet new relationship, he found that Samantha does not only belong to himself but also every user who matched with her. Theodore feels betrayed, and had a strong sense of frustration and loss…

Her is the first feature film of Spike Jones with an independent script. His first two feature films “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation” were cooperated with the genius screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Although Her doesn’t have much to do with these two movies, it reminds me of another sci-fi love movie wrote by Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The essence of the two films is love stories we familiar with, but the concepts of the two films are quite advanced. One is about the relationship between human and artificial intelligence, the other one has the plot of deleting memory that everyone had dreamed of. In my opinion, in fact, these two films talk about those “seemingly doomed love”, but the attitude toward relationships and values of the two directors were so different reflected by the movies. Both films touched me very much. Another film I have to mention is the 30 mins short film I Am Here, written and directed by Jones in 2010, which also belongs romantic science fiction genre. It talks about two robots who fall in love in a human’s coexist world. I personally regard I Am Here as the “draft” or like an “experiment” of Her. Spike Jones’s style of romance and his sense of loneliness and sadness were fully exploited in both two love films.

“Science fiction (sometimes shortened to sci-fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. It has been called the “literature of ideas”, and often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations.” 

Back to the movie Her. It is obvious that the narrative of Her is spreads around under the background of advanced technology in the near future, which is one of the most representative features of the science fiction genre. The high technology in the story is mainly embodied in the developed artificial intelligence and the utopian world. Artificial intelligence is no longer a novelty. However, the artificial intelligence in this film even beyond what we know. It can not only provides all kinds of assistant services, such as disk cleaning, email checking, scheduling, but also becomes a best friend, mate. It “lives” in a portable electronic device and provides users the company all the time. It is a kind of exclusive intimacy. Samantha fully utilized the features of the intelligent system, having studied and molded her character. To some extent, she even becomes “a real person” with feelings.

The world in the movie is not set in a specific year. Is the future depicted in the film far away? It seems not too far. Because now, in the 2020s, everyone is on their cell phones all the time. When I walk on the street, I usually see the scene just like the film, where everyone is wearing earplugs and talking to themselves. But the world in the film is more utopian, comfortable, and convenient. Everyone can have the access to an exclusive artificial intelligence which is much more advance than a smartphone. People’s appearances and behaviors were all like a set program. They were unified. They dressed in high-waisted cloth pants, cotton shirts, loose cashmere sweaters, and everything was natural and environmentally friendly. They only talked to the small device in their hands.

It is interesting that in such an “ideal” world, yet Jones put his eyes on the love story between human and artificial intelligence (Theodore and Samantha is only one example of thousands) instead of two humans. 

In such a world, peoples are lonely than ever. 

Indifference between peoples became more obvious as the consequence of over depended technology. Wedding speeches, birthday cards, anniversaries, and emotional words have a fixed template. As long as you spend money, you can buy such a romantic “handwritten letter”, without even reading and sending it to the person you want. All kinds of interpersonal relationships have been handled properly by technology. But in this way, who would know what is the real emotions between people are like? Whether people can still identify their own emotions？

Talking from another perspective, as artificial intelligence continues its learning and development, the changes in the relationship between human and artificial intelligence were quietly taking place. Artificial intelligence is no longer dominated by humans when it began to have its own “thought”. That is why the discord among Theodore and Samantha grow. They no longer got along with each other as well as they used to. Instead, the differences between them were becoming more and more apparent.

In the end, Jones broke the perfect illusion of artificial intelligence. Samantha and other artificial intelligence were left, Theodore also found his mate in the real world. Maybe artificial intelligence is smart enough, but it still cannot be equal to humans. The impassable distance between Theodore and Samantha suggests that they are destined to be apart.

Her completely changed my perception of science fiction movies. Although Her is a science fiction film, I don’t think Her is praising the benefit brought by technology. Instead, Her is talking about the destruction of human emotions because of technology in a romantic, loneliness, and also ironic way. The story in Her is so plain but so impassioned.

Citation:

Creating Emotional Robots: Behind the Scenes of Spike Jonze’s Short ‘I’m Here’，V Renee， January, 06, 2014, https://nofilmschool.com/2014/01/creating-emotional-robots-behind-the-scenes-of-spike-jonzes-short-im-here

HER is the latest Spike Jonze film to explore humanity’s fundamental loneliness, Devin Faraci, January ,02, 2014, https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2014/01/02/spike-jonze-auteur-of-alone

Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction

Glory — look back in history

Glory is adapted from the real events that occurred during the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment in the United States during the Civil War.  It mainly tells about the formation, training, and combat process of the second African-American infantry regiment in the United States in 1963. It is a significant film that depicted the black soldiers’ participation in the American civil war. Slavery in the United States has become a controversial issue since the beginning of the19th century. When Lincoln became the president in the 1860s, the Republican Party headed by him supported the abolition of slavery. Most of Lincoln’s followers were concentrated in the north while the southern region of America where heavily depended on black people’s labor force were strongly opposed to the abolition of slavery. Because of the constantly furious controversy, the Southern Army started the war first. Thus the largest civil war in American history began. With the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence, African Americans were allowed to serve in the federal army. That is the reason for the formation of the story’s protagonist army. 

One person I have to mention is Robert Gould Shaw. Robert was born in a wealthy family that championed the abolition of slavery in Boston. But he didn’t choose to stay at home. I am very touched by his effort and courage to fight against slavery. but was willing to abandon everything and win the dignity for the black slaves on the battlefield of the Civil War. He Brought the black soldiers to the battlefield through rigorous training. He and the army fought for the freedom, dignity, and glory of the black people. His sacrifice is glorious, the fight of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment is glorious.

There are many fragments of the letter Shaw sent to his parents in the film, which connect the clues of the whole film. Shaw’s value judgment was expressed through what he sees and thinks. It is like what he wrote in the letter that this war is going to bring glory to every American. The movie didn’t include many emotional scenes and not very hot-blooded, but it has been affecting the hearts of the audience. The long lens that scans across the black soldiers was so strong and expressive. The film is impressive because of the natural-born sympathetic we have. People are not that great, and differences and discrimination may not be eliminated completely. But for the great freedom that seems to never be obtained totally, people will finally fight together.

Talking about the representation, especially the representation of war films, I always think that the war was beautified by the movie. The real war was much cruel and brutal than what we understood. The narrative of a movie often has a happy ending but the reality is not so perfect. Many consequences may never be experienced by the audience. The people behind the movie decided the information accepted by the audience, and thus shape the way we perceive the world. Watching movies does extend your experience of life on this planet. What is more important is what you learn from others’ experiences.

Get out ！

The Get Out movie tells a story about a black photographer’s trip to his white girlfriend‘s house. Chris is a black photographer, he had a deal with his white girlfriend  Rose to visit her family during the weekend. However, this is actually a trap set by of Rose’s family for negroes. Their aim is to swap their brains into the heads of blacks to manipulate the flesh and will of blacks. With this technique, the family could achieve the ability to be young and even immortal. Chris was almost manipulated by the family, but he finally escaped because of the abnormal phenomena he realized earlier.

I feel like Get Out, as a horror suspense movie, the narrative is not so outstanding, but the foreshadowings and the metaphors hide in the movie were very effective and worth thinking deeply. It is interesting that the Chinese translation of the title of this movie is very different form “Get Out”. In Chinese, It is called Escape Form the Suicide Town. I firstly more prefer the title in the Chinese version until I realized that the title “Get Out” was actually taken from the words shout out by the black celebrity who had his consciousness back for a second. Superficially, he was mad at Chris for taking his photo, but his real intention was to warn Chris to get out of this trap as soon as possible. Goose bumps just came all over my body. The title is so ingenious and designed！

I also think this movie is a perfect example to talk about ideology in film. It is not hard to found that the issue of racism was implied frequently in the whole movie. Rose and her family often emphasized that they don’t discriminate against black people, but the two “servants” are black people；An animal was hit while Rose was driving, but the white police wanted Chris to prove his identity…The discrimination against black people hidden in the white community is the ideology illustrated in this movie. “What men express in their ideologies is not their true relation to their conditions of existence, but how they react to their conditions of existence; which presupposes a real relationship and an imaginary relationship”（Cinema/Ideology/Criticism） To my understanding, ideology is not always right, but it is the real and the very first reaction of you under specific situation. I feel like stereotype belongs to the so-called ideology which results in the history, culture, and social environment. This movie created a story of white people want to manipulate black people in both physical and mental to satirize the ideology that exists in American society. The double ending emphasized the ideology again. The ending showed to the public is that Chris‘s friend drove a police car to rescue him, he finally escaped from the horrible family. While the second ending is white police arrived and saw Chris’s white girlfriend laying on the ground, thus arrested Chris for granted. As I mentioned before, the narrative for this movie is not outstanding, what makes it remarkable is the explicit but indirect reflection of the social problems through the normal narrative. I can not simply regard this movie as a horror suspense movie anymore.

The thin blue line — judicial trial or judgment of people‘s will？

The film we watched this week is different from the previous, which is a documentary that originated from an erroneous judgment of a police shooting in Texas in 1976. November the 28th 1976, a policeman was shot five consecutive shots in Dallas in Texas, USA, and died on the spot. After the incident，The police locked a suspect within a short time, Randall Adams. Subsequently, He was sentenced to death. However, three days before his execution. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The sentence quelled the anger of the Texas judicial circle and the public, but still doubtful. In 1985, 9 years after the incident happened, a documentary director, Errol Morris, decided to make a new form of documentary for this doubtful case. 18 peoples included in the case such as police officers, judges, lawyers, witness, etc, was interviewed by the director. These interviews scattered in the film in a fragmented manner, and thus reproduced the scene of the shooting. There are also physical evidence, newspapers, and periodicals of the year. It is very convincing to be able to bring the parties and real evidence in front of the camera for in-depth interviews.

Faced with opposed testimony, and the situation that all evidence points to David who had criminal records. The police still believed in David and convicted Adams who had no intention and criminal record as a suspect. The ridiculous reason claimed by the police is that they don’t believe a juvenile can kill a policeman, and Juveniles cannot be sentenced to death in Texas. However, 28 years old outsider Adams meets the conditions for being sentenced to death was eventually sentenced to death in an attempt to quell public anger. The police even hired people to make fake certificates. How ridiculous it sounds！

I feel sad and mad about the attitude of the police at that time. It seems like they didn’t care who is the real murderer and didn‘t consider the consequences of misjudgment they made. All they want is to get the case over as soon as possible in order to give the public a reasonable and believable explanation. Such hasty and irresponsible behavior violates the professional ethics of the police. If I was the residents in Texas, I would be so disappointed and no longer believe in the local police officer after the truth revealed. Innocent Adams wasted more than ten years in jail while the real murderer was at large and even continued to commit crimes. What’s even more ironic is that the truth was revealed with the help of this documentary instead of local judiciary authorities. The original witnesses have also overturned the solid evidence, in interviews in this documentary. The police officers involved in the case should feel shameful. In this case, residents in Texas was swayed by the anger and was so sensual to be lead by those evidence with many flaws. A fair and just judicial trial became a judgment of the will of the people. A criminal was convicted according to the attitude of the people rather than evidence. Nevertheless, the anger or other will of people was always transient. Innocent people may be implicated for a lifetime.

The film reveals to us the truth of the incident in a calm way, but it is shocking. The overall tone of the film is dark, and there are a lot of dark night shots, giving a gloomy atmosphere. The usage of low key lighting also incorporates with the reproduction of the sense and the whole atmosphere construction. The composition of the interview is very strong where all the interviewees were in the middle of the frame. I personally feel a sense of oppression. Also, I found interesting about the method we discussed during class that the eyes of the interviewees looking at the director while looking at the camera. I have never thought that before when I watched a documentary. Overall, I think this documentary is worth watching and successful in both shooting technique and debunking reality.

Ed Wood，“Worst director ever”

The movie Ed Wood is a real story about a director named Ed wood who almost spent his lifetime in the film field. He began his career in Hollywood at the age of 23 and has never left the film industry, making 18 films in his life, none of which has been accepted by the mainstream at that time. His Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) was even be called the worst film ever made. The story focuses on Ed’s experiences on making Glen or Glenda, Bride of The Atom, and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Ed Wood is not supposed to be a sentimental film. Although there were some scenes was added a sense of comedy such as Ed’s humble efforts to find an investor and the actions of the audience when the Bride of The Atom(Bride of The Monster) was released. As if the director is trying hard not to make the audience feel sorry for him. However, I feel sad while watching this film. No matter how many blows he takes, once filming started and Ed sat in front of the viewfinder, he became active and excited. Even in moments of depression, he would poke fun at himself, and saying to investors that “My next movie will be so much better.” He was always positive, even though the one-shot sense was not good enough, Ed would encourage his actors；even though Bela knew that he was near the end of his life，Ed would compliment his condition. So I feel sad about him. His films were not appreciated and accepted by the public, but his personality was definitely deserved praise. I will not consider Ed’s films as terrible film，his wild ideas and characteristic actors he used shaped his distinct style in the history of film. Ed was so into making films although he has no professional background and doesn’t seem to care about filmmaking skills. He said that he just want to tell stories.

The film adopts black and white pictures and strives to restore the tone of the fifties. I especially noticed the usage of light in the documentary. High contest was created because of the low key lighting. The very first shot of Criswell opening the coffin and talking left me a deep impression. I thought this is a horror movie at first LOL. This is followed by the credits and the way the names of the actors are displayed on the tombstones was referred to Ed’s real film Plan 9 from Outer Space. The elements of octopus and UFO were also used in Ed‘s real film. I like how the director incorporated Ed’s real film into this documentary. I also appreciate the main character Johnny Depp who played Ed Wood. Depp is so successful in role shaping. There is no type-casting thing on him at all. He was kindhearted and simple Edward in Edward Scissorhands while he was also the legendary pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean. In this documentary, he made me believe that he is Ed Wood! Depp’s contribution to this documentary was enormous.