Author Archives: bel66

Fire: A Film of Peril and Hope

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I saw the film Fire this past Friday. Fire is a South Asian movie that explores and questions some of the archaic practices of South Asian society. The film choses to focus on sexuality and arranged marriage, and revolves around complex family dynamics. These were and still are out of the ordinary topics for a film of Indian origin to cover, and as a result created controversy in India upon its release.

The movie revolves around one extended family living together in their shop: Sita, her husband Jatin, Radha, her husband Ashok, Jatin and Radha’s mother Biji, and the family servant Mundu. Over the course of the movie it is made painfully clear that Jatin does not care for Sita, preferring his girlfriend Julie over Sita. Jatin Openly talks to Sita about his relationship with Julie and how he prefers Julie. With the other marriage Ashok’s following of a religious fanatic has ruined his marriage with Radha, with Radha being trapped in a dysfunctional relationship for most of her life. After Sita moves in, Sita and Radha comfort each other with words in the beginning, but as time goes on their relationship becomes more intimate. They begin to think of each other as lovers and support one another through the hardships of their marriage. After some time has passed since their relationship bloomed, they think about leaving their husbands who never showed even one bit of affection towards them. As Ashok found out about Radha and Sita’s relationship he was horrified, and resented Radha, even refusing to help her when her clothing caught fire. The movie ended with Radha and Sita going away together to start a new life.

I thought the film illustrated perfectly the negatives of arranged marriage. Here we see two broken marriages, with both Sita and Radha unable to do anything, Radha herself being in the marriage for decades, because the society they live in demands that they remain loyal to their husbands even if they are unaffectionate towards them. This causes them to waste so many years with someone they resent. Homosexuality is also explored in the film, in how it gave Radha and Sita the companionship and affection they had been wanting from their husbands for years. This is unacceptable in the society they lived in, and the film makes the viewer feel angry that it isn’t accepted because Sita and Radha are so happy together, happier than they had ever been in their marriages, and deserve to be together.

Citizen Kane, A Man’s Life in Motion

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I came into watching Citizen Kane with high expectations. Not only has the movie been praised by almost every film critic in existence, it has also been ranked consistently as one of the greatest movies of all time. A movie that redefined what movies could be, in their plots, cinematography, and themes. The movie was incredibly slow, slower than I would have expected even for an older movie. This can probably be attributed to the fact that a summary of Kane’s life is given at the beginning of the movie so when the rest of the movie is just telling the story of the major events in Kane’s life, I already knew how the situations were going to play out. It made the scenes incredibly slow, with each one devolving into me just waiting for the conclusion of each scene to match what was already said at the beginning.  This made the movie terribly hard to watch for me as it felt excruciatingly long.

After the movie ended I felt it did not live up to my expectations of what it would be, it was not what I expected. After a few hours had passed since the movie had ended, I had time to reflect on its themes, how a man transformed in front of my eyes, from someone who means well, a genuinely good human being, to someone that was despised by everyone around him. This is all culminated in his saying of “Rosebud” when his second wife left him and moments before his death. “Rosebud” which was the name of sled that was taken from him long ago when he was child living in rural Colorado. It reminded him of a simpler time, a time where he didn’t have wealth or responsibility, and was just a child. It reminded him of the life he lost by gaining everything most people want in their life at such a young age. It eventually turned him into a recluse in old age after he had lost everyone and everything he had loved.

This is exactly what a great movie does, it forces you to reflect and think about what happened in the movie long after the final credits have passed, and while great movies can also provide great viewing experiences, not all of them must. This movie forced me to consider its themes and examine this man’s life even after I had a negative viewing experience. It is a great movie for this fact, and one that I will keep in mind later when watching older movies.

North by Northwest: A Classic Spy Thriller

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North by Northwest, a classic, done by the master of suspense himself Alfred Hitchcock. The movie revolves around a man named Roger Thornhill, who always happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether it be at the beginning, being mistaken for a fictional man named George Kaplan and subsequently being kidnapped, or being accused of a homicide he did not do, the story is driven by these mishaps. Thornhill stumbles into scene after scene until he finds himself in a government attempt to foil the man after him, Vandamm, while also meeting his future wife Kendall.

This film is very different from Hitchcock’s normal films. This film is much more comedic than his others, and relies much less on suspense and shock, although those elements are still present. The movie at its heart is a thriller, featuring a plot that becomes increasingly complex, adding characters and twists to the story over time. At some points, I feel the twists are over used to drag out the story and extend it for longer than it needs to be. I often find myself disliking the use of multiple twists as it embodies bad storytelling to me, but they were used effectively and not abhorrent like some more modern movies. Overall it was a solid movie, one that I could see having the social impact it did in the 50s and 60s, and one impact that cannot be understated is how it was a building block for the many spy thrillers to come (Dr. No I’m looking at you). Showing how cool spies can be on the big screen, being thrown into all these crazy situations, like the crop duster scene, and coming out unfazed. This movie demonstrated that the villain can be just as cool and collected as the hero, and how they can be someone you don’t really hate right away. North by Northwest has everything that’s great about spy films while being one of the first to do it, and luckily for us future filmmakers caught on to this awesome way of telling a story.

Developing Character: Dead Poets Society

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I honestly didn’t know what to expect from Dead Poets Society before watching it this past Friday. It was pretty evident what the movies focus would be based on the few opening scenes. The movie opens previewing a preparatory school showing bright students destined for an ivy league education and their parents looming over their heads. The students new English teacher challenges them to think differently, explore the world through poetry and escape from the traditionalism enforced by the school if only for the duration of that one class. The students escalate it to another level though, congregating outside of class, sneaking out of their dormitories and reading verse. After the parents caught wind of their actions things started to go south, and this is what I found most frustrating about the student’s actions.

This conflict between the children and their parents can be seen in every person in the Dead Poets Society in one form or another. Each one of them has not had an opportunity to even develop a personality as their parents loom over them with every waking breath. Only after these meeting were they finally able to mature and grow and be something other than carbon copies of each other. They were all force to go to the school, and knew nothing else other than academics. I kept thinking to myself constantly during the movie, why are they not telling their parents how they really feel? I was lucky enough to have parents who would have been supportive no matter what I decided to pursue. It was just so hard to process for me, being in a situation in which you cannot freely do what you want, with your parents exerting control over every aspect of your life. The parent’s perspective can also be rationalized, and it is depicted by Neil’s father, how he values the financial security of a more orthodox career path for Neil. His father made the decision for Neil that the happiness from money is more important than the happiness of fulfilling his career aspirations. The decision he made for Neil ultimately cost him Neil’s life as he committed suicide because he could not bear the fact of spending the next 10+ years of his life becoming a doctor, and not pursuing his acting aspirations. The blame was placed on Keating, but by then Keating’s job had already been done letting the students find themselves through reading poetry and unlocking its meaning.

The Importance of the King in The Kings Speech

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The King’s Speech follows King of the United Kingdom, George VI in his time as the Duke of York, and then after his brother’s abdication, his ascension and early days of his reign as King of the United Kingdom. The film focuses mostly on his speech impediment and the various lengths he goes to cover up and suppress it. I found the film’s depiction of the monarch’s role in U.K. nationalism during the periods right before and during World War 2 to be interesting.

As the film points out, with even George himself saying it at one point, why does it matter if he is an effective speaker? The King had not held and significant power in the UK government for more than a century and was just a figure head by the time he ascended. It would make sense that the prime minster be the face of the nation during war time as they are the most powerful individual in the U.K., and not the king who might as well be a glorified celebrity. During a few points in the film George’s pedigree is symbolized and stated. In his first speech as king to his government officials, George stands in the great hall and looks upon all the portraits of the kings before him. Legendary figures who will be talked about in history books for many centuries to come, and there he stands there a stuttering man, holding the most legendary office in the kingdom. He feels he must hold himself to a higher standard as to him and many people, it is not the power of the crown that influences nationalism among the population as it does not have any, it is what the crown represents. It is not just an entity of power, but also an entity of the culture of the nation, and as its head him must fulfill his duty as the cultural leader of the UK, and rally them during wartime behind their nation.

The Martian, a Film of Solitude and Togetherness

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The Martian is a movie adapted from the book of the same name by Andy Weir. It follows an astronaut, Mark Watney, who is abandoned on Mars, and the attempt to bring him back to earth. The movie features the themes of individualism and cooperation, which is a rather ironic pairing considering that they are opposites.

For the bulk of the screen time, the movie follows Watney and his attempt to survive on Mars, following his crew’s abandonment of him. Watney begins to talk to himself, makes computer logs, farms, and even cracks jokes when no one is around. This highlights the theme of individualism in the movie, as he becomes completely self-sufficient as his survival is dependent on it. The storyline of Watney on Mars is not the only place where individualism can be seen. It can also be seen by looking at the crew, after they left Watney, as an individual unit. They at one point, defy NASA’s commands by rerouting their flight pattern to return to Mars and recover Watney. Even the commander of the crew, Melissa Lewis, also makes a series of tough decisions in the movie, from leaving Watney on Mars in the beginning to deciding she must save him herself at the end to further highlight this theme.

The theme of cooperation is also heavily explored in this movie. After Watney is found to be alive on Mars, NASA tries to do everything in its power to bring him back; teams in NASA communicate and work together to devise plans for how they should bring him home. One notable occurrence of this is the back and forth cooperation between the NASA administration and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to construct a vessel to carry supplies in an incredibly short amount of time. There is even cooperation between the CNSA and NASA when the first iteration of the supply rocket malfunctions, and NASA uses the CNSA’s resources to launch another rocket and resupply the Hermes.  The film juxtaposes these themes in a way that provides a rather unique feeling of both individual and group achievement.

Farmer’s Markets: A Cultural Snapshot

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I used to go to the Boulder farmer’s market with my parents on Saturdays when I was a little kid. It was the perfect was to spend a morning with the family. After going to the Ithaca farmer’s market, I was immediately taken back to those old day of roaming around the market with my older sister looking for some sweets while my mom and dad were busy buying produce. It showed me how different the markets were. The one in Boulder is massive as it has grown along with the population over the years, bigger than the market in Ithaca, although that is to be expected given the difference in the populations of the cities, and along with that, the other characteristic that stood out to me was how culturally different each were.

Colorado is many miles away from here, in the southwest corner of the country, and Ithaca is about as far northeast as one can get. The first thing I noticed was how different the produce was at each market. Ithaca’s market highlighted some of the staples of the northeastern United States: beets, eggplant, fennel, and parsnips. Walk into Boulder’s market on any given day and one can expect to find too many chilies to count and a ton of tomatoes and corn. It is from these differences one can see how culturally different the regions are based on their background. Colorado getting most of its Spanish influence from its neighbors of New Mexico and Arizona from when it was first settled in the late 18th to early 19th century.  Ithaca derived its cultural identity from the English and Dutch settlements in the 15th and 16th centuries along with the native American tribes that inhabited the region before the Dutch and English. These differences are very apparent from not only the produce, but also from their products up for sale all the way up to their layouts, Boulder opting for a more open western layout and Ithaca opting for a more cozy and protective layout. They are both great markets, I just thought it was interesting to note how different, culturally, the markets are.