Business of War and War of the Business - Essay Example

? War of the Business and Business of the War This essay contains the analytical assessment of two of the Hollywood movies, Life and Debt by Stephanie Black and Lord of War by Andrew Niccol. The essay would look into the plots of these two cinema masterpieces from the cultural and film perspectives based on the theme business of war and war of the business. The analysis contains the ideology on which these movies are produced, the genre they belong to, subjects of the movie, the use of montages and auteurism in the screenplay. Before discussing the analytical assessment, a brief introduction of both movies is presented below. Life and Debt is a documentary based on A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. Released in 2001, Life and Debt analyze the economic and social scenario of Jamaica with the discussion of international financial institutions like International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank’s impact on Jamaica’s macro-environment. Moreover, the impact of globalization and global financial institutions’ structural adjustments on Jamaica’s economy are also discussed in the 80 minute long documentary. The documentary won 8 internationally renowned awards due to the ideology presented in the documentary (Internet Movie Database line 1-10). Lord of war was released in 2005 and is considered as belonging to crime war movie genre. Produced and directed by Andrew Niccol, Lord of War portrays the life of an illegal dealer of arms and presents the psychoanalysis of Yuri Orlov. Nicolas Cage has played the anchor role in the movie as Yuri Orlov and the majority of the part of the movie revolves around acknowledging its audience that how international arm dealers adds to the ongoing wars in different parts of the world for the sake of increasing profitability of their business (Internet Movie Database line 1-8). First of all, the focus would be laid on the mise en scene that these two films were based on. Both movies project the deteriorated scenario of two different but financially similar societies initially. Lord of war starts with the manufacturing of bullet at a Soviet firm and its shipment to an African war zone, thus reflecting how the fire arm trade is worsening the already worst scenario in African nations like Zimbabwe, Congo and Somalia. On the other hand, Life and Debt starts with the voice over of lead artist telling the story of Jamaica’s financial system’s destruction in the hand of global financial institutions and their efforts to implement globalization policies into the business systems of Jamaica. In this sense, the plots of these two movies are almost same, but Lord of war focuses on acknowledging its audience about how arms dealers create wars in different regions of the world so that their revenues keep on increasing. Whereas, Life and debt focuses on acknowledging its audience about how financial institutions of the world had used their power to enrage war of business and finances in Jamaica. In this manner, both these films are same to each other when it comes to projecting war culture in different movies and the social abuse that business commit towards different nations of the world. But at the same time, these movies contrast to each other as far as the basic tool projected in both of the movies, i.e. fire arms used in Lord of War and financial resources used to create war in Life and Debt. The biggest similarity between Lord of War and Life and Debt is that these movies focuses on delivering the message that business should not forget their social responsibility and ethical boundaries to expand the size of their revenues. Lord of war explains how Yuri Orlov committed himself to international crimes by selling weapons to militant forces in Africa. While dealing with African dictators and militants, Yuri forgot his social responsibilities and ignored the innocent people who will be killed with the weapons he sold. Even he did not considered his brother’s death and wife’s love on the course of making huge amounts of money. Yuri took his orders from CIA and Pentagon and used his connection at these two organizations to first break the international war crime laws and than used these connections to overcome his competitors by hook or by crook. On the other hand, Life and Debt explains how IMF, World Bank and other global financial institutions made their way into Jamaica and than deteriorate the social and political scenario of than peaceful Caribbean Island. To make fortunes, these financial institutions gave loans to businesses and government in Jamaica and than trapped them in the cage of interest amount on that loaned amount and strict financial policies and laws so that the country’s financial situation is damaged. In return, the Jamaican government would ask IMF and World Bank for further loans to stimulate its financial stability and promote the tourism industry. This section of the essay would focus on understanding the similarities in the subject’s feelings and desires reflected in the above mentioned movies. Nicolas Cage is the subject in Lord of War and the movie revolves around depicting his personal desires and needs that urged him to engage in the dangerous business of fire arm trading. Yuri (Nicolas Cage) strives to earn huge amounts of money to fulfill his personal desire of purchasing a home, personal jet and to get married to a top model and film actress. To achieve what he wants from life, Yuri does not care of thousands of children dying because of bullets and fire arms he sold to militants and terrorists in Africa and just cares for his profits soaring. On the other hand, Life and Debt portrays IMF and World Bank as the documentary’s subject. Both these financial institutions identified Jamaica as the next business destination and invested billions of dollars into the West Indian island to promote tourism and trade liberalization. These investments were made by IMF and World Bank on certain conditions which required Jamaica to open its businesses to the global stage and implement tough economic and financial policies into the financial system of the island. All these initiatives of IMF and World Bank were aimed at bringing Jamaica under the grip of global financial institutions with the help of the huge amount of debts and the amount of interest that Jamaica would require to pay. In the light of auteur theory, similarities can be found between the creativity used to direct and produce both films, i.e. Lord of War and Life and Debt. In lord of war, Nicolas Cage’s character “Yuri” possessed a soviet background and he has seen extensive use of weapons during the cold war. His family belonged to a culture where the use of guns is an ordinary matter. This was the time when Yuri realized that the most demanding commodity in this world is fire arms which could make its traders billionaire within no time. Therefore; Yuri adopts trading of fire arms as his business instead of giving a hand to his father in the restaurant business as it does not pay off well. The major difference between Lord of War and Life and Debt is that the character uses his childhood dream to convert it into reality and make a fortune, whereas in Life and Debt, the director of the documentary Stephanie Black uses her childhood experiences to reflect it in a documentary with creativity keeping in mind the requirements of the modern times. The director of Life and Debt reflects in her documentary, that how she captured the essence of dirty investments made by international financial institution in the tourism industry of Jamaica, how the socio-political structure of Jamaica got disturbed due to these investments and how these investments left feelings of frustration and complex among the people living in Jamaica. The use of montage in both movies, i.e. Lord of War and Life and Debt, is entirely different from each other. Being an action packed movie, Lord of War makes extensive use of special sound effects and music to increase the indulgence of the audience into the movie. The sound of gun fire or the sound of grenade blast was all enhanced to the capacity where they appear to be real to the audience. And than there is classic montage used in the first scene of the movie in which the director takes a bullet’s eye view while the bullet is moving out from the factory and travelling straight into a young African kid’s brain. All these montages make Lord of War a movie which addresses the destruction caused by arms in the world. On the other hand, Life and Debt makes extensive use of special sound effects due to the fact that it’s a documentary. The sound collage used to show the entire story in one go at the beginning of the documentary is considered as being a masterpiece and helped the documentary winning 2 awards at a different forum. Than there is a montage used when the foreigner vacationer speaks out: “When you sit down to eat your delicious meal, it's better that you don't know that most of what you are eating came off a ship from Miami. There is a world of something in this, but I can't go into it right now.” (Life and Debt 11-13) Another thing which is similar between Lord of War and Life and Debt is that both these movies show its audience the self-proclaimed hegemony established in African Nations and Jamaica. In Lord of War, Orlov used to work under the influence of Congolese Dictator and was involved in multi-billion dollar weapon deals with the Congolese President. These weapons were used to kill those who were against President’s regime and against the trade of these arms, Orlov used to get precious diamonds in return. On the other hand, in the documentary Life and Debt international financial institutions were trapping Jamaica into financial debts so that its economy can not stabilize and hence establishing their own global policies and regulations. Moreover, in the documentary Life and Debt, another dimension of the typical Hollywood movies is shown in the form of critics on free trade movement. The movie portrays that sub-standard food items were being exported to Latin American Nations and Jamaica where people were poised to purchase it on high rates due to inflation. On the other hand, in Lord of War, Yuri was portrayed as being taking full advantage of free trade movement where he was delivering unlimited supplies of weapons to his clients throughout the world. Moreover, his financial transactions and his movements from one place to another were never questioned by any authority. To conclude the essay, Lord of War and Life and Debt seemed to be different due to the genre they belong to, but overall, these movies both found to be delivering the same message that globalization and distribution of global wealth into few hands has stimulated illegal trade and borrowing throughout the world which empowers the stronger to rule the weaker. Important Definitions War Movie: A movie genre mainly concerned with warfare, army, navy, air force or military training (Browne 89-91). Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud stated that psychoanalysis is the combination of psychology and mental therapy associated with the understanding of childhood experiences and their affect on rest of the life (Schneider 257-260). Ideology: The ideas of a person that determines his objectives, goals and actions to reach those goals and objectives. It is a person’s perspective of what is happening in his or her surrounding or life (Edgar-Hunt, Marland and Rawle 94-95). Mise en scene: The means, by which a film’s visual themes and central plot is expressed, is called mise-en-scene. It contains the storyboarding, set designing, direction and cinematographically implemented ideas into the movie (Pramaggiore and Wallis 55-75). Subject: The being that is the center of focus in the movie and the whole story revolves around him or her. Auteur: Movies based on auteur theory are defined as based on the movie’s director’s own creativity or ideas (Wollen 74-80). Montage: A technique which is used by film-makers for rapid editing, sound and visual effects. Hegemony: A dictatorship or a form of government which dominate its sub-ordinates with the help of threat of force or enforcing power against the sub-ordinates’ desire or wish (Edgar-Hunt, Marland and Rawle 164-165). Works Cited Browne, Nick. Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory. NJ: University of California Press, 1998.Print. Edgar-Hunt, Robert, John Marland and Steven. Rawle. Basics Film-Making 04: The Language of Film. NY, London: AVA Publishing, 2010. Print. Internet Movie Database. "Life and Debt." 2001. www.imdb.com. 28 August 2013 . —. "Lord of War." 2005. www.imdb.com. 28 August 2013 . Life and Debt. About the film. 2001. 28 August 2013 . Pramaggiore, Maria and Tom. Wallis. Film: A Critical Introduction. London: Laurence King, 2005. Print. Schneider. Horror Film and Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2005. Print. Wollen, Peter. Signs and Meanings in the Cinema. Indiana University press, 1972. Print. Read More