Everything in this world has a cause and effect. Your mom and your dad have sex and you are the effect, you don’t pay attention in class and don’t do your work you fail. Its just the way of life in any sense. This idea of cause and effect couldn’t be any truer to a high school who makes a of mistakes off simply doing something they wasn’t supposed to thinking it won’t have a consequence. In “The Perks of a Wallflower” the film we see just that.
The Perks of a Wallflower was first a novel, then later adapted into a film by author and director Stephen Chbosky. It’s a story about a socially awkward high school teenager who indulges his life from the sidelined before being brought into a typical high school teenager’s regular lifestyle. Before high school, Charlie had a life, some would say, unfortunately, after his best friend killed himself in middle school and his aunt dying.
Throughout the story, you find out that Charlie was molested as a child by his aunt, but you also find out that his aunt was molested too by Charlie’s grandfather when she was younger. She did the same thing to Charlie. Charlie also blamed himself for her death. This left significant damage to Charlie and caused him to see things and lead him to a deep depression he tries to hide when he gets new friends and announce his love to Sam.
This semester, I learned a lot of things in the film that brings together the movie. I knew how sound was apart of the film, but I didn’t understand the importance of sound in a movie. When watching the screening of “Dazed and Confused,” another coming to age of film, I realized how the music makes the theme pop out even more even though you can get the hippie 70’s type of vibe.
I also very much appreciate seeing a film I have never seen before and breaking it down. I had my ups and downs this semester, but to do things like analyzing and breaking down the movie “Glory,” which gives much light on one of the first black regiments to lead in war. I never heard of the movie Glory before this. I never knew that information, so to learn things about my culture and things in the film that would help me analyze my script, I am forever grateful for this class.
Glory, directed by Edward Zwick in 1989, is a classic film that depicts real events from the civil war and follows the real-life story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. This film follows a white colonel, Robert Shaw, who leads one of the first black regiments on the civil war’s front line
In the film “Glory,” we start where Robert Shaw faces his first war life threatening experience where most of his fellow soldiers get killed against the confederate. Shaw, after being injured in the war, returns to his wealthy family on medical leave and immediately the promotion from captain to colonel with the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first black regiments in the union.
This movie shows the perception of Robert Shaw and how black soldiers had to become a brotherhood despite the differences of mentality they had to face. The portrayal of Silas Trip by Denzel Washington was one of the best characters I have seen in a movie. Unlike the other soldiers, Trip didn’t give a damn about the authority or fighting for the union for the most part, but he was willing to stand next to his brothers and fight for them. Most of the other soldiers had families but not Trip; he only had himself.
I love how historically correct this film is and how hard it must have been for Edward Zwick to be accurate. I am not pointing out the dates where they fought Fort Wagner, which can easily be looked up. I am talking about the scene where all the black soldiers came together, sung soul music, and initially spoke together as a family for the first time. As an African American, I am deeply connected to this scene because music is essential to my people. This notion originates from our people coming together from the homeland. Music kept my people together during slavery and connected us when we purposely attacked and separated from our loved ones. In this day and age, music connects us to our ancestral roots.
You ever watch a movie, and somewhere in the movie plot, you have this rush of feeling like you can cry at any second? If that’s the case, you may be watching a movie within The Melodrama genre. When writing any movie, watching one, or analyzing one, there is usually a constant in any film, and that’s a genre. Those who don’t typically follow genre conventions are either the greats or someone who shouldn’t be writing a script. Genre is “a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter (definition).” “Becoming Jane” and “The Great Gatsby” will be the movies I focus on as I breakdown the melodrama genre.
The Melodrama genre is the closest thing to people’s feelings, issues, and events currently and considered one of the most dramatized events of our “own” lives. Melodramas, such as any other genre, have similar styles in each of them, but it doesn’t make them the same, which means they have almost identical conventions. The majority of the time in a melodrama, the main character would be a female even though it can be a male. Usually, at the beginning of the movies, power structure and the social order are established early to dignify later events where the central character usually dates someone within the power structure. Dating someone within the social structure becomes a problem for both families because the relationship between the central character and their significant other disrupts the social d structure. Movies such as “Becoming Jane,” “Jerry Maguire,” and “The Great Gatsby” all are movies that have the melodrama genre inside even though someone could consider these as genre hybrids.
“Becoming Jane” depicts the early life of famous author Jane Austen and her love for Thomas Lefroy. In the eighteen centuries, when the story takes place is where Jane Austen, to the disliking of her mother, has aspirations of being a writer but needs to find a husband according to her parents. Thomas Lefroy was a lawyer known for his bad reputation as any other person in that profession. Jane couldn’t stand Thomas Lefroy as he disrespected her writings by falling asleep during the reading of her work; she found him stuck up. As she follows her passions for writing, her family tries to her a suitable partner by the name of Mr. Wisley, who was the heir to the wealth. Jane rejects his proposal because she didn’t have any feelings for him, and once again, she encounters Tom, aka Thomas Lefroy. In due time they fall in love. Now, this constituent with being melodrama because of its stays in the conventions of melodrama. The central character is a woman; she falls in love with someone within her power structure. Still, both families, Jane’s family, who is poor and needs the money, want her to get married to Mr.Wisley, who promises money. Thomas Lefroy’s family believes Jane Austen’s family being poor would result in a lousy marriage and reputation. Both families, for selfish reasons, both deny Jane and Thomas their true love. Even though this takes place in the eighteen centuries, this also connected with our personal life as an audience. We all had that one person our family disapproved of due to personal reasons, but we still wanted to be them regardless of their motives.
“The Great Gatsby,” first written in 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald as a novel and then later made into a film in 2013, is one of the most famous book turn movies of all time as it features Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby. In this movie, we start following the life of Nick Carraway, who moves into a small cottage in New York next to the mansion of the mysterious Gatsby where one in a lifetime parties is hosted. As we get deeper into the bizarre Gatsby’s plot, we find out the luxurious life he lives was all a lie. Gatsby only hosted these parties for the woman he loved, Daisy. Daisy, who did love Gatsby, also had a husband who she loved, which was tom. The difference between the two Gatsby and Tom is that Gatsby was born into nothing and had to work and manipulate his way into a fortune, unlike Tom, who was considered “America’s Wealthiest Bachelor.” Unlike “Becoming Jane,” where a central character is a man, this movie still sticks to melodrama conventions. It’s overly enhancing on feelings, emotions are heightened, and violence is more dramatized. For example, the extravagant parties hosted Mr.Gatsby were thrown in an attempt that one day, the love of his life, Daisy, would come, and he did this weekly to get her attention. When we want someone’s attention that we are attracted to without actually going up to them, we do something public and small, like sending them flowers on Valentine’s day or something in that area. Still, in the movie, he hosted the most lavish parties on earth for one woman’s attention, and when he died, we all felt the hovering sadness.
The melodrama genre plays off our emotions as it is closest to people’s feelings, issues, and events. These movies take place in different past periods but can’t relate to us any more than a film in 2020. The Melodrama genre focuses on the relationship between two lovers who can’t be together because of the power structure or social order. Both Jane in “Becoming Jane” and Gatsby in “The Great Gatsby” were both denied their true love due to the power structure’s lack of power. As humans, we all want to be loved or have been loved somehow, so we can easily relate to these feelings that Jane Austen and Jay Gatsby went through.
Isn’t it scary to be around a person all day and not the devilish intentions they have about you? Not knowing who they are and what they can do and having no one to help you in case of danger. That’s realistic horror and the genre Jordan Peele prayed upon in creating ‘Get Out.’ Many people disagree and find it as a thriller because it doesn’t have blood all over the place, the hallucinations of things the devil and ghost things in that manner. Still, this horror is the best you can get because it shows something that can actually happen to you in your life.
We start off this movie with a black man (Chris) in an intimate relationship with a white woman (Rose) who decides it’s time for Chris to meet her parents. Frankly, this does not bring much interest to be a movie because it is more prevalent now than ever as interracial couples flood our media and TVs. However, when Jordan Peele puts a perspective where a black man and his white girlfriend decide to visit her parents, he finds out the community she claims is innocent is not as innocent as she says. Well, nows that a movie.
While describing ‘Get Out’ seems like a melodrama, it is actually in the horror genre. Some consider it a psychological thriller as it has multiple layers on each of the three genres. Jordan Peele addressed racial tensions in America and was praised for its straightforward and not subtle way, looks at a suburban white America .
As a black man in American, Jordan Peele touched based on his own experiences at places with a high volume of white people and a low volume of black people and how it can get awkward being one of the few black people there. I connected with a specific scene where he was at a little get together with his girlfriend’s community and notices he is the only black person there, but he noticed something was wrong and felt like the odd person out. This feeling to feel like the odd one happened to everyone at least once, so Jordan Peele to hit exactly this feeling on the screen shows not his extraordinary ability to write but also direct.
In a comedic and scary way, Jordan Peele uses this movie to show how white America can love the African American lifestyle and its culture, but the not person itself. This concept is opened to us when Rose and her family try to steal Chris’s body because they like everything about him but not him himself. This is a current issue in America that black people have address time and time again. Black people feel like white people adore their culture but not black people themselves, which Jordan Peele cleverly shows when Rose and her family send Chris’s mind to the sunken place.
Introduction to Film Studies 