Movie Reviews Pick Pocket and Money - Essay Example

Movie Reviews Pick Pocket and Money By: Location Introduction Reading logs provides individuals with an opportunity to react to the readings. The logs are there to strengthen students reading and comprehension skills. This essay summarizes the response of two readings from the module giving practice in critical reading. The readings are Pick Pocket and Money. Summary on Pick Pocket Pickpocket is a film directed by Robert Bresson. The anecdote is about a man who earns a living by snatching wallets from other individuals without being noticed by the public, commonly referred to as a pickpocket. In my opinion, the act of taking things from other people without asking for their permission is theft. Pickpockets are individuals who are skilled in stealing other people’s sweat. The actions of these individuals are immoral, since they are not in harmony with the laws of ethics that governs relationship of individuals in the society. They vigorously take what does not belong to them, and considers it as theirs. The protagonist in the film Pickpocket is a young a man named Michael. His perceptions towards crime are that individuals possessing high intellectual capacities should not be held accountable for their doings. He takes this theory into practice by snatching wallets from individuals. In the beginning, Michael encounters difficulty in his pick pocketing tendencies as he is constantly arrested by police officers. Moreover, life is unfair to him because he lacks the knack to live luxuriously. He is ashamed of visiting his sick mother in the hospital. Instead, he resorts to develop a love interests on a woman he clearly knows he can not date. The situation gets worse when even the apartment he resides in depicts his deteriorating financial status (Cunneen, 2004, p.73). However, his continuous practice and intelligence in pick pocketing exalts him to a status where he changes his life style. He develops a sense of fashion in his dressing and becomes mildly mannered. These traits make it impossible for outside individuals, and even neighbors to group him as a pickpocket. Michael’s first encounter as a pickpocket was when he stole money from a lady’s handbag at a Paris racetrack. He was propelled to become a mastermind in pickpocket by his own compulsion. The story ends when Michael is torn between making choices. He is locked up in a cell, and the only person who pays him a visit, is his mother. His freedom of choosing between his mother and his habits are limited in the end because he lacks the freedom of choosing, since he is sentenced to prison (Cunneen, 2004, p.71). Summary on L’ Argent (‘Money”) L’ Argent (“Money”) is one more film directed by Robert Bresson. The film revolves around a young man who requests his father for a monthly allowance. The base for his request was that he wanted to have some little money with him for his daily secondary needs. His attempts to persuade his father that he owed money are all in vain because his father does not fall for the prank. Attempts made to try and convince the husband to give their teenage kid monthly allowance is also in vain by his mother. This is because the father strictly abides by his decisions. After being denied the monthly allowance by the father, the boy sells his watch to a friend, who presents him with a five hundred forged franc note. In my opinion, the exchange of money for a watch by the two teenagers depicts corruption in the society. This is because the boy did not stop at his quest of being given an allowance; rather he took it a step further when he decided to exchange his watch for the fake note. In addition, the exchange depicted the position in which money was upheld in the society: with high value. Individuals went to all ends to obtain money. An example is in the boy’s action of exchanging his watch for a fake note which he manages to change in a local photo shop. He pretends that he is a customer buying a picture frame from the shop. He is served by a shopkeeper who is incapable of differentiating real notes from fake notes. I deem the shopkeeper to be an easy victim of the fake note from the boy. This is witnessed when he is scolded by the photo shop co-manager for having accepted two fake notes the previous week. He gets angry with himself and vows to dispose the notes when provided with an opportunity. Yvon, who is the protagonist in the story, is the first victim of the shopkeeper who had previously made a vow to dispose the notes. Yvon, a gas man, is presented with the fake notes when he visits the photo shop to purchase items. He runs into trouble when he uses the fake notes to try and pay his bills in a restaurant. Unluckily for him, the waiter recognizes the notes presented to him as counterfeits and reports him to the authorities. The shopkeeper who gave the fake currencies to Yvon denies doing so when he is confronted by policemen. Luckily, Yvon avoids being sentenced but looses his job because of the incidence (Cardullo, 2009, p.203). Having no source of income because of loosing his job, Yvon gets desperate and involves himself in a bank robbery because he has a consort and a kid who depends on him to sustain them. He takes the role of driving his friends on a bank robbery mission, but is arrested again when the robbery is foiled by police officers. He serves his prison term for three years, and while serving his term he receives a message of the demise of his daughter. Moreover, his wife writes a letter informing him of their separation. When he is released from prison, he is a broken man because everything that he once held dearly is gone. He resorts to a life full of crime and finally surrenders himself to law enforcers to be charged with numerous counts of murder (Cunneen, 2004, p.167). Conclusion Conclusively, the two readings are about individuals forced into crime because of their life situations. The lives of the two individuals depict social difference, corruption and the position of money in the society. The connections in the L’ Argent (‘Money”) and Pick Pocket are the unfolding of events that the protagonist in the two stories found themselves. They both end up in prisons at the end of the story. References Cardullo, B. (2009). The films of Robert Bresson: a casebook. London, Anthem Press. Cunneen, J. (2004). Robert Bresson A Spiritual Style in Film. Continuum Intl Pub Group. Read More