Analyzing Chicano Film - Essay Example

Analyzing Chicano film ANALYZING CHICANO FILM Soviet film director Eisenstein lived, in the country of Mexico, to work on the film. This epic film dramatizes more than four centuries of Mexico’s history. This paper answers some questions that revolve on the setting of the film and the message that the film tries to pass across to the viewers. Question # 1 The most arresting images of the film are those of the monks and the priests. They are the leaders of the procession, and they are seen in their black robes and hoods like images.

This is in contraction to the colorful costumes that people have worn. Their presence is imposing with the skulls, which they hold in their hands like talismans. Eisenstein uses a triangle, a figure of three and the cross in the film; this is in an abstract sense and deliberate balance within the frame. The triangle relates to the pyramid, the sombrero and the serape, and the three women who as per tradition guard the cross during the Easter period. Question # 2 He does not try to retell the Marxist history; however, he dramatizes the history that combines, the history of the class struggle and the development of the modes of production of the economy and the evolution from the peoples own contradictions.

He displays the synchronic class struggle to be subjective. The film also represents the history of the Mexican people to be objective in such a manner that it represents the class struggle and represents the successive modes of production are all valid and reinforce each other (Dashiell, 1998). In the introduction of the film, there is the dramatization of the Mexican history both synchronically and diachronically. These two levels of the film are glued together by what he calls intellectual montage.

It is a method of narrative construction and editing, which accentuates discontinuity not to be a merely expressive tool, but as an equivalent of the ideological breaks, which have revolution themselves. He was not in any way interested in the emotion and the expression as ends in themselves, but he showed his interest in the means of directing the social awareness of the spectator and commitment to revolution and brotherhood. In addition, what he had defined as poetical as the social principle of life, which is affirmation (Dashiell, 1998).

Question # 3 There are many heroes in the film; including the priests who the people have too, much faith in. the film utilizes the masses of people to contrast the different views that arise among the great multitude of the people. The priests wore gowns that were dark, when this is compared to the colorful clothes that were worn, but the people, one can see the difference that the scriptwriter is trying to bring to light. I think that he was able to escape the dialectic of the Marxist and the binaries of the Manichean of good and of bad.

Question # 4 Eisenstein portrays the Mexican people to be a strong people, people who faces their oppression with all they had and finally they were able to defeat it. These persons formed a revolution against their oppressors and managed to get rid of them. This people were also God trusting individuals who did not lose their faith in God even when they were in bad situations. They kept of observing the holy days and maintained the faith that they had on their priests. Question # 5 It was an old idea of an alliance between the Bolsheviks and the Jews in undermining the American way of life.

This idea had once been used to flog Hollywood once before, and this could happen again. The episode of the prefigures, Eisenstein’s had difficulty in the understanding of the Hollywood methods due to his radical views both artistic and political, some similar clashes of attitude and sensibility concerning the money and the motivations for the film making were to plague the Mexican adventure. Question # 6 The tone that Eisenstein uses in the fiesta is one that is melodramatic. This part was meant to center on the triangular plot of a woman who belonged to the upper class, her husband being a young picador.

The climatic sequence of this part was to have the husband surprising the wife in a moment of supreme ecstasy as they shared a kiss in front of a huge crucifix on the top of an isolated mountain (Dashiell, 1998). In this final version, no constitution of the evidence points to the lack of political awareness; on the contrary, the husband belonged to an army of the Pancho villa. This was second to the force of Zapata, and, in fact, in the reversals of the Mexican revolution, there was a moment where the soldiers who guarded the villa and the Zapata fought each other, and at the same time, both were fighting against the central government of the Carranza.

The development pancha represents the development of Mexico, which as it passed from hand to hand; it gradually realized the strength that resided not (Dashiell, 1998). Conclusion This film is unique to the scriptwriter because it has gone beyond the synchronic treatment of the class struggle; it is a dramatization of the struggle over a span of more than four centuries and has at least three distinct modes of production. Reference Dashiell, C. (1998). EISENSTEIN'S MEXICAN DREAM. Retrieved from; cinescene.

com: http://www.cinescene.com/dash/eisenstein2.htm