Conflicts on Film: Breaking Away and Antonias Line - Movie Review Example

While there are many approaches, no single way has emerged as most effective in terms of avoiding destructive action, violence or the use of force. However, all approaches have some tactics in common: talking about the issues, focusing on areas of agreement in the initial stages of discussion, negotiating concessions on each side and arranging for continuing dialogue. Films serve as a mirror of society. What we watch in movies may or may not happen in real life. However, these images that we see could cause us to process the journey of each character of every film.

Thus, films are considered to be a fine introduction to conflict resolution in general and to the efforts of many people and organizations to find effective ways to reduce tension and help people live together in peace and harmony. In films like Peter Yates' Breaking Away (1979) and Marleen Gorris' Antonia's Line (1995), identifying the inner and outer conflicts of the main characters would help us in determining the movie's theme and its prime intention as an image of how the film's creators view their work as a whole.

Conflict, in literary sense, is defined as the opposition between or among characters or forces in a literary work that shapes or motivates the action of the plot. Most people probably do not recognize a distinct difference between the terms "conflict" and "dispute." However, many conflict scholars do draw a distinction between the two terms. As is unfortunately common in this field, different scholars define the terms in different ways, leading to confusion (Burgess & Spangler, 2003).One way that is particularly useful, however, is the distinction made by John Burton (1990), which distinguishes the two based on time and issues in contention.

Disputes, Burton suggests are short-term disagreements that are relatively easy to resolve. Long-term, deep-rooted problems that involve seemingly non-negotiable issues and are resistant to resolution are what Burton refers to as conflicts. Though both types of disagreement can occur independently of one another, they may also be connected. In fact, one way to think about the difference between them is that short-term disputes may exist within a larger, longer conflict. A similar concept would be the notion of battles, which occur within the broader context of a war.

Following Burton's distinction, disputes involve interests that are negotiable. That means it is possible to find a solution that at least partially meets the interests and needs of both sides. For example, it generally is possible to find an agreeable price for a piece of merchandise. The seller may want more, the buyer may want to pay less, but eventually they can agree on a price that is acceptable to both. Likewise, co-workers may disagree about who is to do what task in an office. After negotiating, each may have to do something they did not want to do, but in exchange they will get enough of what they did want to settle the dispute.

Long-term conflicts, on the other hand, usually involve non-negotiable issues. They may involve deep-rooted moral or value differences, high-stakes distributional questions, or conflicts about who dominates whom. Fundamental human psychological needs for identity,