experimenting with hope since sunrise (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} april_wednesday) wrote,@ 2005-08-23 17:14:00 |
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divorce italian style / marathon
just a quick note that i checked out divorce. i thought there was a remake and there wasn't. i found out after renting it that it's from the 60's. i hesitantly put it in(with slight positive outlook because it was a criterion edition) but i was pleasantly surprised to find a film that still looks good and stands up against test of time. although it may not be relevant today as it was 40 years ago, the film is hysterically funny and imaginative. handful of times i said to myself i have to try some of these film tricks. definitely check this out, i don't usually watch movies that are older than 20 years but this was an awesome find.
marathon: wow. wow. i have to preface that there's been only 3 movies that made me on the verge of crying or welled me up in the past. they are grave of the fireflies, iron giant and braveheart. and intensity of tears in that order and all for very different reasons. i'm proud to admit tears rolled down my cheeks 3 times during this film...
i'm almost 95% sure no one reading my blog has heard of this korean film nor have access to it, readily. like many of the films i watch i grabbed this from torrentspy when i was in school and boy am i glad i did. my cousin recommended this film and i wasn't sure if i would like it. the only thing i knew of this film was that it was about someone dealing with a disability. so i assumed it was one of those cliched "heartwarming drama about human will, going against all odds" type of story. in the easiest sense of the word, it is. but there's so much more than that. i think this one is slightly different from movies from this sub-genre because the disability is autism and the protagonist can't sense pity and can't express emotions. and this film really is about a mother and a son striving to prove that one can be extraordinary even with deficiencies. but more than anything the mother character blew me away. in the beginning of the film you see her struggling with her son who clearly lives in his own little world, the one that she doesn't reside in. she's on the verge of giving up and in one scene she lets her son's hand go and he wanders off into the crowd and disappears for half an afternoon in the zoo. you can feel the pain of this mother, of wanting to get rid of this 'defective' child but she soon realizes her mistake when she finds her son again. towards the end of the film she finds out that her son remembers all this(even though he was only 5 or 6 at the time and he's 20 or 21 now) and know why she let his hand go. she's shocked as you can imagine and the burden is almost impossible to realize. at the end of the film, they're put into a scenario where she has to decide whether to literally let her son's hand go. she knows her son may die if she lets his hand slip out of his. and even though the scenes are pretty close, you witness the change from beginning to end and the context and risks are vastly different. it's a heartbreaking scene...
there is another really great scene where the mother realizes her mistake over the years. she's trained her son to respond in certain way for the past 15 years, such as "are you tired? you're not tired, right?" and he'd reply "right". it's phrased in a way so that someone with autism will reply as a natural extension of the question. towards end of the film she realizes that no matter how her son feels physically and mentally, his response is always the same, whichever makes her happy and she can't tell which is true. she questions herself whether she got her son to run because he truly enjoyed it or because his ability to run gave her a sense of reason for HER to live. and when asked about it, she gets the answer she's wanting to hear but after realizing this she just doesn't know anymore.
i always tell ppl that i learn filmmaking from watching both great and bad movies. when i was watching marathon, i was witnessing a great storytelling unfold and it's worthy of dissection and figure out exactly what it did right. one big reason off the top of the hat is the cyclical nature of the story, especially the two "hands" scenes. one in the beginning and another at the end, which are almost replicas but the morphing of context of the scenes is what makes it so great. i need to learn to write in this matter. this is a great way to show change that occurs inside characters, which is one of the key points in writing a great story.
just a quick note that i checked out divorce. i thought there was a remake and there wasn't. i found out after renting it that it's from the 60's. i hesitantly put it in(with slight positive outlook because it was a criterion edition) but i was pleasantly surprised to find a film that still looks good and stands up against test of time. although it may not be relevant today as it was 40 years ago, the film is hysterically funny and imaginative. handful of times i said to myself i have to try some of these film tricks. definitely check this out, i don't usually watch movies that are older than 20 years but this was an awesome find.
marathon: wow. wow. i have to preface that there's been only 3 movies that made me on the verge of crying or welled me up in the past. they are grave of the fireflies, iron giant and braveheart. and intensity of tears in that order and all for very different reasons. i'm proud to admit tears rolled down my cheeks 3 times during this film...
i'm almost 95% sure no one reading my blog has heard of this korean film nor have access to it, readily. like many of the films i watch i grabbed this from torrentspy when i was in school and boy am i glad i did. my cousin recommended this film and i wasn't sure if i would like it. the only thing i knew of this film was that it was about someone dealing with a disability. so i assumed it was one of those cliched "heartwarming drama about human will, going against all odds" type of story. in the easiest sense of the word, it is. but there's so much more than that. i think this one is slightly different from movies from this sub-genre because the disability is autism and the protagonist can't sense pity and can't express emotions. and this film really is about a mother and a son striving to prove that one can be extraordinary even with deficiencies. but more than anything the mother character blew me away. in the beginning of the film you see her struggling with her son who clearly lives in his own little world, the one that she doesn't reside in. she's on the verge of giving up and in one scene she lets her son's hand go and he wanders off into the crowd and disappears for half an afternoon in the zoo. you can feel the pain of this mother, of wanting to get rid of this 'defective' child but she soon realizes her mistake when she finds her son again. towards the end of the film she finds out that her son remembers all this(even though he was only 5 or 6 at the time and he's 20 or 21 now) and know why she let his hand go. she's shocked as you can imagine and the burden is almost impossible to realize. at the end of the film, they're put into a scenario where she has to decide whether to literally let her son's hand go. she knows her son may die if she lets his hand slip out of his. and even though the scenes are pretty close, you witness the change from beginning to end and the context and risks are vastly different. it's a heartbreaking scene...
there is another really great scene where the mother realizes her mistake over the years. she's trained her son to respond in certain way for the past 15 years, such as "are you tired? you're not tired, right?" and he'd reply "right". it's phrased in a way so that someone with autism will reply as a natural extension of the question. towards end of the film she realizes that no matter how her son feels physically and mentally, his response is always the same, whichever makes her happy and she can't tell which is true. she questions herself whether she got her son to run because he truly enjoyed it or because his ability to run gave her a sense of reason for HER to live. and when asked about it, she gets the answer she's wanting to hear but after realizing this she just doesn't know anymore.
i always tell ppl that i learn filmmaking from watching both great and bad movies. when i was watching marathon, i was witnessing a great storytelling unfold and it's worthy of dissection and figure out exactly what it did right. one big reason off the top of the hat is the cyclical nature of the story, especially the two "hands" scenes. one in the beginning and another at the end, which are almost replicas but the morphing of context of the scenes is what makes it so great. i need to learn to write in this matter. this is a great way to show change that occurs inside characters, which is one of the key points in writing a great story.
