Movie Characters and Objects - Essay Example

1. Provide short (one third of a page) identifications of 3 characters/objects etc. from the 4 required movies covered by this exam, listed below. Inother words, write a few sentences of explanation from which movie a given character/object etc. comes and why s/he or it is important in the movie. Your total answer should be 1 page long. A stone letter A broken typewriter Boston and Butcher Termeh Peepsie The Russian woman A Stone Letter A stone letter comes from the Japanese movie Departures. The stone letter is significant in the sense that in old times when no letters were written, a stone was sent to convey feelings. For instance, if a person sends the other a stone, he would look at it and feel what feelings it stirs in the person. The shape, size and touch of a stone are three primary measures. A small smooth stone would mean that the person is happy for the other while a rough surfaced stone would mean that the person is worried. Daigo gives a stone to his wife Mika and asks her what she feels by touching the stone; she blushes and says she won’t tell. Moreover, Daigo works at coffin services; sometimes, people leave stones in the coffin for the deceased. Termeh Termeh is the daughter of Nader and Simin from the movie A Separation. She is important in the movie as she is the embodied reason why her parents put up with each other many times instead of separating. Simin is fighting to give Termeh a better future and wants the husband to leave this place and build a better future for her. When the movie reaches the point where her father Nader is charged with injuring the maid knowing that she was pregnant, Termeh gives a false statement to protect her father. In the end, when the court confirms the separation of Nader and Simin, the court asks Termeh with whom she’d like to stay with; her mother or father? The Russian woman In the movie Volver, Sole’s mother Irene pretends to be a Russian woman to hide her true identity when she stays with her daughter. Sole has a hair salon and her mother wants to stay with her working at the salon as her assistant. The irony is that Sole’s mother is, in fact, dead and now her ghost has returned to earth to take care of some unfinished business. So, Irene works as Sole’s assistant at her salon pretending to be a Russian woman to hide her true identity. 2. Provide short (one third of a page) identifications of 3 of the following quotations from the movies covered by this exam, listed below. In other words, write a few sentences of explanation from which movie a given quotation comes and why this quotation is important. 1 page total. --“It’s a niche market” --“Women’s troubles” --“I don’t know how I know, but I know” --“Can dreams come true?” --“I fear” --“Decency” --“Shut the door” “Can dreams come true?” This question is asked by Liesl in the movie The White Ribbon. The context of this question goes like this: Lies asks her teacher “Can dreams come true?” She is going through trouble with a dream that she saw. She sees Hansi, the midwife’s little boy who gets hurt real bad, and that is what boggles Liesl’s mind. She can’t get rid of the thought and that is why wonders if it’s possible what she saw in her dream might become reality. “It’s a niche market” It is uttered by the brisk secretary of the firm in the movie Departures. The background of this sentence is that Daigo is a cellist and newly unemployed. He sees a job ad in ‘Departures’ and applies for this job. Initially, he thinks that it might be a travel agency. When he goes there with his application, he becomes a little surprised that he gets instantly hired and at a substantial salary. But later on, he finds out that the real business of the firm is not travel arrangements but encoffinment. And his job is to ceremonially wash and garb the deceased in front of the family and other mourners. The firm’s secretary tells Daiko that “It’s a niche market” when he tries to tell him about different coffins and how they burn. “I fear” “I fear” is almost the central theme of the movie The Secret in Their Eyes. The context of this phrase goes like this: Benjamin scribbles something on a paper about a man and woman and how that man remembers his final morning with his wife, the impression is as if they’re departed. Then in the middle of the night, he wakes up from his sleep and frantically writes something on paper. The next morning, he wakes up and reads that he’d written “Temo” which means, “I fear”. The importance of this is that at the end of movie, he changes this “Temo” by adding A in the middle which makes the word meaning “I love you”. 3. Write a 1-page identification and explanation of the importance of 1 quotation from a movie, listed below. Your answer should state what movie the quotation comes from, and why it is important in the movie. --“May I have your wife’s favorite lipstick?” --“It’s the look in their eyes” --“No, but I know him” --“Crooks always come undone, always, one way or another” --“You must be very unhappy to be so mean” ---“Every man has a name. A real name…” ---“Some people say they have seen her” “It’s the look in their eyes” This line is from The Secret in Their Eyes, where Benjamin and Irene are sitting at a table and discussing Benjamin’s papers. He asks her what she thinks of it and she replies that she finds the photo a bit senseless; to this Benjamin replies that, actually, the more important thing is the eyes: “It’s the look in their eyes”. He tells her that the way the boy looks at his love tells that he worships the girl. As he’s explaining this to Irene, focus shifts on him and there is a lot that his own eyes are showing (Benjamin is deeply in love with Irene) and to distract, he adds that eyes lie too. “You must be very unhappy to be so mean” This sentence is uttered by the Midwife in the movie The White Ribbon. There is a heated argument going on between the doctor and the midwife. The doctor is completely sick of the midwife and wants her to leave. He starts humiliating her and says that he can’t take it anymore. He hates the bad breath of the midwife and isn’t attracted to her at all. While making love to her, he says that he’s even tried imagining other pretty women who smell and dress nice, but in the end, it is she that he has to look at and that shatters the fantasy. The midwife asks if he was through, he replies he’d been through for ages. This is the conclusion point for the midwife and she utters: “You must be very unhappy to be so mean”. “Crooks always come undone, always, one way or another” This line is uttered by J Cody and, in fact, sets up the story for the movie The Animal Kingdom. There is an implication here that he’s deducing how a gangster family, like the Cody’s, came down on its knees. J had to live with his grandmother Smurf when his mom died because of heroin overdose. When he moves in with her family, he realizes that it is a family of crooks. Later in the movie, J is asked to become a part of a court trial against his cousins. There is a double murder in the movie and J is asked by the police to become part of a witness protection program. The trial and its verdict is never shown but when J utters: “Crooks always come undone, always, one way or another”, this pretty much sums it up that J believed that the family had a hunch of their ultimate demise all along. 4. Which of the 7 movies covered by this exam has the most interesting setting? How is place/space constructed in the movie? What are the elements (image, sound etc.) of “place” that add up to create a specific image of, say La Mancha and Madrid in Spain, a small town in Yamagata and Tokyo in Japan, Iran, Argentina, Melbourne in Australia or Soweto in South Africa? Discuss 1-3 places. 1-page answer. The most interesting setting is, probably, of the movie Volver. The space and setting in the movie are constructed right along with the progression of the script. For instance, the setting for Madrid, Spain, was crucial when Raimunda tries to dump the body. They had to move the freezer containing the body from her house and carry it in the van. The way the setting is shown tells that it had to be Madrid. With the movie A Separation, everything about that is so unique, especially to American audiences. The house in which Nader’s family lives is typical of an upper-middleclass Iranian family. The use of fine brown wood indoors is so unlike of the US and Europe. And, of course, the head scarves of women immediately tell the audience that it must be some Middle Eastern country. In the movie Departures, the low ceiling houses are typical of Japan. Moreover, the design of door frames of the small company ‘Departures’ is also typical of Japanese culture. Such setting immediately tells the viewer that it’s a foreign culture they’re witnessing and there will be drastic contrast from what they’re habitual of seeing. 5. The concept of “family” is complicated in all 7 movies from this batch: White Ribbon, Volver, Departures, A Separation, The Secret in Their Eyes, Tsotsi, and Animal Kingdom. What is a “family” in these movies? Does it exist? Compare family units in 1-5 movies. 1-page answer. The concept of family is complex in some movies while in some it doesn’t exist at all. Take Volver, for instance: there is a happy tone to the family bonds; we blissfully see how Sole takes care of her mother Irene’s ghost. But in the end, when it is revealed that the girl was raped by her father, the concept of family shatters. On a similar sad note, the family in Tehran is on the verge of breaking up in the movie A Separation. Throughout the movie, the husband and wife have to live with each other. In the movie The White Ribbon, there is hardly any concept of real family. The midwife is raising a child and doesn’t have a usual family of her own. She stays with the doctor who only considers her a whore because real whores live quite away from town so he can’t afford that ‘family’, that is why he keeps the midwife. Contrary to the falling apart families, the movie Departures shows the immense love for a family through encoffinment. The way family members give stone letters to the deceased and how they cry for their deceased loved ones is a remarkable onset of how firm family bonds can be. There must be the strong love and positive vibe between the husband and wife; it is demonstrated by the way Daigo gives stone letter to his wife Mika. The beauty of this family lies in the fact that even after marriage, they still have romance going on. The most complicated family system is, perhaps, in the movie The Animal Kingdom. J has to live with his gangster cousins at his grandma’s. It’s a matriarchy at that house; mom is, in fact, the leader of the gang. The way J has to adjust to this new family is very intense yet very complicated as it all falls apart in the end. In the movie The Secret in Their Eyes, there is hardly any family worth mentioning at all. Benjamin is just going through writing his first novel and the only family he writes about is no more, the wife got brutally murdered. So all in all, no real concept of family is present in this movie. Read More