Thursday, October 23, 2003
This is a write-up for english that I did on the movie Ghost World:
The movie Ghost World centers around the life of two recent high school graduate misfits. What makes Enid and Rebecca such powerful characters is that they could just as easily be you or I. Many of us are uncertain when we leave high school about our paths in life, not knowing what direction that we want to go and how we’re going to get there. The beauty of this movie is that it takes these two people that are such close friends and shows two different paths that they can take.
When I watched the film, I could relate more with Rebecca’s choices than Enid’s. Rebecca got a steady job, actively pursued an apartment, and lived a somewhat satisfying life. What I bet, though, is that there were some people that watched this film and found themselves relating more with Enid’s choices. I felt that the integral moment in the movie came when Enid and Rebecca came in contact with Seymour at the garage sale. Seymour, who by the way was played wonderfully by Steve Buscemi, is pretty much the stereotypical loser. Rebecca saw him for his loser-ness and refused to associate with him. Enid saw what she felt was a decent person beneath the surface and hung out with him on a regular basis almost to the point of obsessiveness. When this occurred, the two went their separate ways. It was the beginning of the end for Enid. She lost Rebecca, and then eventually Seymour, and got to the point where the only solace she could take from life would be seeing Norman waiting for the bus that never came.
Speaking of the bus that never came, that brings me to the ending. I believe that the ending was sorely disappointing. We saw throughout the last half of the film Enid’s steady decline into becoming a sort of social outcast. She had no one to turn to, and her life unraveled before her eyes. I can think of a thousand better endings than the one they showed, in which this bus that stopped its route two years ago mysteriously returns to pick up Norman, then Enid. I think that the whole movie depends on the idea of plausibility; that what happened to these characters could happen to us, and often does. But having this ghost bus come through and pick up Enid creates a sort of supernatural ending that does not fit at all. I even think the movie would be better served had it cut off the last five minutes.
The movie Ghost World centers around the life of two recent high school graduate misfits. What makes Enid and Rebecca such powerful characters is that they could just as easily be you or I. Many of us are uncertain when we leave high school about our paths in life, not knowing what direction that we want to go and how we’re going to get there. The beauty of this movie is that it takes these two people that are such close friends and shows two different paths that they can take.
When I watched the film, I could relate more with Rebecca’s choices than Enid’s. Rebecca got a steady job, actively pursued an apartment, and lived a somewhat satisfying life. What I bet, though, is that there were some people that watched this film and found themselves relating more with Enid’s choices. I felt that the integral moment in the movie came when Enid and Rebecca came in contact with Seymour at the garage sale. Seymour, who by the way was played wonderfully by Steve Buscemi, is pretty much the stereotypical loser. Rebecca saw him for his loser-ness and refused to associate with him. Enid saw what she felt was a decent person beneath the surface and hung out with him on a regular basis almost to the point of obsessiveness. When this occurred, the two went their separate ways. It was the beginning of the end for Enid. She lost Rebecca, and then eventually Seymour, and got to the point where the only solace she could take from life would be seeing Norman waiting for the bus that never came.
Speaking of the bus that never came, that brings me to the ending. I believe that the ending was sorely disappointing. We saw throughout the last half of the film Enid’s steady decline into becoming a sort of social outcast. She had no one to turn to, and her life unraveled before her eyes. I can think of a thousand better endings than the one they showed, in which this bus that stopped its route two years ago mysteriously returns to pick up Norman, then Enid. I think that the whole movie depends on the idea of plausibility; that what happened to these characters could happen to us, and often does. But having this ghost bus come through and pick up Enid creates a sort of supernatural ending that does not fit at all. I even think the movie would be better served had it cut off the last five minutes.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
This is a write-up for english that I did on the movie Gattaca:
In Gattaca, none of the characters have pale white faces or have the ability to make doors appear. In fact, the striking thing about the characters in Gattaca is that they are human. Some are “better” humans than others, but making all of the characters humans played by real-life actors. In this dystopic film, two distinct classes emerge: those that are naturally born and those that are genetically engineered to wipe out any possibility of bodily ailments that the natural-borns have. Ethan Hawke and Jude Law’s characters are an interesting twist on the situation. Ethan Hawke wants more than anything to go on a space program that he can never make it on because he is in the lower class of natural-borns. Jude Law is privileged enough to be in that upper class but an accident has left him crippled and practically useless. Ethan Hawke believes he can beat the system by a complicated system of his own of taking urine, blood, and fingerprints from Jude Law.
What puzzled me about this movie is how Ethan Hawke’s character, Vincent, could go completely undetected by characters that had seen him previously in his real identity, like the janitor and his own real-life brother. The answer that the movie tries to provide is that no one believed that the system could be beat as Vincent did, so they refused to believe that they actually saw Vincent, and not Jerome, the identity that he assumed. In their subconscious they convinced themselves that Vincent was in fact Jerome, and it wasn’t until the very end that they realized that they had been duped.
The other question that I thought about as I watched the film was: is the life that Vincent lived worth it? He had to go through a long and arduous process each day just to conceal his trickery and continue assuming Jerome’s identity. He carried on a life always looking over his shoulder to make sure that he wasn’t exposed as a fraud, and still lived with the impending fact that he would most likely die in the very near future regardless of what he did. And all this just so he could fulfill a lifelong dream of going into space. I think that that the costs greatly outweighed the benefits in his situation, and it would have been much better for him simply to accept his fate and live out his life as a janitor in Gattaca in a less dangerous lifestyle. If he had done the sensible thing, though, Hollywood would not have been able to make a movie out of it, so we must accept that he is forced into this situation and move on.
In Gattaca, none of the characters have pale white faces or have the ability to make doors appear. In fact, the striking thing about the characters in Gattaca is that they are human. Some are “better” humans than others, but making all of the characters humans played by real-life actors. In this dystopic film, two distinct classes emerge: those that are naturally born and those that are genetically engineered to wipe out any possibility of bodily ailments that the natural-borns have. Ethan Hawke and Jude Law’s characters are an interesting twist on the situation. Ethan Hawke wants more than anything to go on a space program that he can never make it on because he is in the lower class of natural-borns. Jude Law is privileged enough to be in that upper class but an accident has left him crippled and practically useless. Ethan Hawke believes he can beat the system by a complicated system of his own of taking urine, blood, and fingerprints from Jude Law.
What puzzled me about this movie is how Ethan Hawke’s character, Vincent, could go completely undetected by characters that had seen him previously in his real identity, like the janitor and his own real-life brother. The answer that the movie tries to provide is that no one believed that the system could be beat as Vincent did, so they refused to believe that they actually saw Vincent, and not Jerome, the identity that he assumed. In their subconscious they convinced themselves that Vincent was in fact Jerome, and it wasn’t until the very end that they realized that they had been duped.
The other question that I thought about as I watched the film was: is the life that Vincent lived worth it? He had to go through a long and arduous process each day just to conceal his trickery and continue assuming Jerome’s identity. He carried on a life always looking over his shoulder to make sure that he wasn’t exposed as a fraud, and still lived with the impending fact that he would most likely die in the very near future regardless of what he did. And all this just so he could fulfill a lifelong dream of going into space. I think that that the costs greatly outweighed the benefits in his situation, and it would have been much better for him simply to accept his fate and live out his life as a janitor in Gattaca in a less dangerous lifestyle. If he had done the sensible thing, though, Hollywood would not have been able to make a movie out of it, so we must accept that he is forced into this situation and move on.
