European Socio-Political Commentary - Essay Example

Name: Tutor: Title: European Socio-Political Commentary Institution: Date: 1. Rosetta Introduction The film Rosetta was composed by Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre. Rosetta won the Palme d’ Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999 (Orr, 2003 p. 45). This made the two brothers to be established in a broader perception of audience as two of the key important European filmmakers. Rosetta entails the aspect of social realism, which also can be regarded as a naturalistic drama and a documentary type. The work of the Dardennes concentrates on the representation of the life of the working class and the moral dilemmas that human beings experience. Although the movie deals with issues of morals, which include unemployment and family relations in predicaments, it is not supposed to condemn anybody. The movie is about the effects of poverty and unemployment in people’s soul and the ongoing struggle of an adolescent to obtain a normal life. Plot The movie’s upsetting opening scene gets Rosetta struggling so hard to maintain a job she has been fired from. The security guards then drag her away. Upon reaching her overcrowded trailer, she goes ballistic upon getting her untidy mother enjoying a bottle with a man who is strange. She then chases away the man. The bottom line of the movie rotates around the distrustful friendship of Rosetta with Riquet, an easygoing young man similar age like Rosetta, works at the waffle place and whose job she yearns for intensely that she results in betraying the man. On one of their date together, Riquet harasses her with beer and French toast and plays her some mediocre rock drumming in the tape recordings. He as well makes the blunder of admitting that he has been lifting some of the employer’s waffles and selling them without his notice. When Riquet visits Rosetta at the base camp and by accident slides into the river, Rosetta, who visualizes replacing Riquet at the stand, pauses before giving him a stick to hold and move himself to shore. Analysis Rosetta is a review on human being’s desire for money and a steady job that insures people keep sustaining the fix of items they require. This is truly a social aspect of life. The story takes place in Seraign, the immoral industrial region outside Liege, however, in the movie, there are no indications of difference between the Liege’s suburbs and any other setting in Europe. However, the setting serves as a means to comprehend the look of what it means for one to be human today and the intense situations formed by a specific society. Rosetta’s dismissal from her job had nothing to do with efficiency. The waffle stand manager informs Rosetta that his son was to replace her on the job. Her actions derived from desperation, makes her behave like an animal in the manner that she is only controlled by her instincts of survival, so as to acquire her goal, and turn out to be an effective member of the society. On the other hand, she does not acknowledge the state welfare when she is given, but rather she decides to struggle for her own so as to get a standard job and earn her living through a decent way. Rosetta depicts that she cannot be influenced by political forces instead she would rather make her living the respectable way. Realism has been shown in the movie. Realism develops upon a presentation of situations as they become visible to the eye and ear in the daily life (Auge, 2008 p.67). Dardenne brothers condemn social inequity in contemporary European culture and the social elimination that the poor and immoral part of society faces these days and furthermore they try to display, as practically, as possible the psychological effect of that elimination to their behavior, which is a characteristic representative of that element of society. 2. Time Out Introduction Directed by Laurent Cantet, the movie Time Out considers the socio-political subject matter in connection with the coming back of politics and the new realism in French cinema from as early as mid-1990s (Higbee, 2004 p.245). The film looks at how melodrama has been used by Cantet. It also adds a lot of credence on the family as the location of broader of social crisis, and the Cantet’s clear concern with son-father relations, as a way of expressing the resultant effect of wider political as well as social forces on an individual. The film also tries to explain the way social melodramas of Cantet are convolutedly connected to the main subject of masculinity in predicament, in the course of the relations of the white, middle-class, men of the middle protagonists to the several spaces - social, economic, as well as physical; that they dwell in in the course of the movie (Higbee, 2004 p.247-8). Plot When Muriel is told by Vincent that he is leaving his management job for a good opportunity within the Switzerland borders, she wonders fearfully why Vincent quit his previous position before becoming steadily ensconced in a fresh one. It turns out that Vincent was fired from his previous job, and has not gathered the need to look for a fresh one and has no urgent prospects. He therefore considers faking it. He invents a phony investment system that he manages to sell with outrageous ease to plenty of people, most of them old buddies willing to obtain a rapid if illegally obtained windfall. As Vincent continues selling his fake investment scheme, a stranger overhears him, who ultimately calls his trick and offers him an actual job in his productive corporate of importing substandard replicas of brand-name goods. Since Vincent is desperate to refund his investors, he accepts the offer while guilt. The fact that Vincent managed to convince his family that he works with the United Nations means that he is brilliant. Analysis Although the film is not clearly political and does not evaluate the daily effect of globalization on potential markets, it entails an essential unreality of a managerial business life that concerns the projections and percentages. The social aspect of this movie is that Vincent tries to impress his family by alleging that he has found a better job than the previous one, yet he was indeed fired. Moral values come in the sense that he uses corrupt means to earn a living. This depicts how Vincent’s extreme response to executive stress. Undoubtedly may not be the first movie to generate cynical parallels between the crime of industry and the industry of crime. Still, instead of escaping the numbness of his business job, Vincent simply transferred the theoretical stress entailed in sustaining a business lifestyle into a practical and actual fright. He glides through his illegal project as any business drone would during his office day, and thus able to somehow preserve it. Losing whichever of his jobs must essentially entail a shattering of his personality. Far from refusing his business life, Vincent yearns for its return. In the European countries, everyone tries to suit in the modern society despite the hurdles (Taylor & Francis, 2007 p.125). 3. Lilya 4-ever Introduction The Sweden film Lilya 4-ever was produced by Lukas Moodyson in 2002. The movie is a continuously wicked and realistic story of the descending spiral of Lilya, a girl growing up in poverty in the past Soviet Union. Her mother deserts her to relocate to the United States. The film is loosely grounded on an actual case and evaluates the issue of sexual slavery and human trafficking. Plot Lilya is a sixteen year old lady brought up in poverty in the past Soviet Union. Her mother decides to set for the United States with her latest boyfriend, and Lilya has been informed she will be accompanying them. When it is time for departure, Lilya is told she will be left with her aunt Anna, and later on she will be joining her mother. The apartment Lilya shared with her mother is instantly taken over by Anna, and relocates her niece into dirty, much smaller flat some blocks away. Lilya spent a lot of her time with her best buddy, Natasha for the several times left alone by her aunt. Lilya comes to the salvage of Volodya, a desperate fourteen year old boy who has been chased away from his home and has a severe problem with drugs and alcohol. One night while clubbing, Natasha encounters a man who is ready to pay her in exchange of sex; when her father discovers the money, Natasha asserts that it is Lilya’s, and the story rapidly spreads that Lilya is practicing prostitution. While Lilya discovers that her mother has no plan of taking her to the United States, she turns out to be pessimistic and starts sleeping with men in exchange of sex. After a short period of time that Lilya takes up the trade of sex, she encounters Andrei, who guarantees her an easier and better life if she accompanies him to Sweden. But, Lilya learns through the hard way. Analysis Social realism is always depicted in the European films (Wendy, 2005 p.132). This is a real situation where young girls are caught up in very desperate situations and they have no family to turn to. In the case of Lilya, her mother deserted her and was left behind with her aunt who appears not to care so much about her niece. Her best friend betrays her by spreading rumors that she is a prostitute. Lilya becomes pessimistic that she results to sleeping with men in exchange for money and other favors. After pursuing her prostitution for a while, she encounters a man who promises her a good life. She definitely falls into this trap due to her desperate situation. Upon accompanying the man to Sweden, she discovers that the man lied to her. She is subjected to sex slavery. Human trafficking is also depicted here because what Lilya was promised did not come to pass and she was in a foreign country. The author has done a good job on bringing out what takes place in the contemporary world. For instance, the practice of sex slavery and human trafficking whereby people, especially young girls are taken to foreign countries by people who promise them good life and jobs yet they indeed want to trade them. Sex slavery and human trafficking are among the most common social issues that need to be addressed. The underlying factors like child negligence, stress, alcohol and drug abuse are key causes of crimes like sex slavery and human trafficking. The European films mainly illustrate how domestic issues could lead to some vice like prostitution (Sorfa, 2006 p.97). The government should bar agents that run the prostitution trafficking business. This is so because innocent girls like Lilya who thought that their solemn prayers are responded to when they get people who promise them good life and well paying jobs only to learn the hard way that the jobs and the good life they are promised is indeed not true. All the above three films clearly bring out the social realism of what takes place in human being’s day to day lives. Social realism is a main feature in the European film (Wendy, 2005 p.151). All the authors have illustrated how various principles of morals are being practiced in the society especially in the contemporary East European characters and the world at large. Poverty seems to play a big role in the some unpleasant behavior in the society. In the first film, Rosetta, we see how Rosetta struggles to achieve a good life despite their poverty status. In the second film, Time Out, Vincent struggles to make his life comfortable and lies to her family that he has a good job. The third film, Lilya 4-ever, the author has depicted how poverty can lead to desperate measures like prostitution. Bibliography Auge, M. 2008, Non-places: an introduction to supermodernity, London, Verso. Higbee, W. 2004, Elle est où, ta place? The Social-Realist Melodramas of Laurent Cantet: Ressources humaines (2000) and Emploi du temps (2001). French Cultural Studies. 15, 235-250. Orr, J. 2003, New Directions in European Cinema, in Ezra, Elizabeth (ed.) European Cinema, (Oxford University Press) Sorfa, D. 2006, Uneasy Domesticity in the Films of Michael Haneke, Studies in European Cinema, 3.2, pp.93-104. Taylor & Francis, 2007, Stone , R. 'Notes from Region 2', Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Vol. 15 Issue 1 Wendy, E. 2005, European Identity in Cinema, Bristol, Intellect Ltd. Read More