Narrative Analysis Essay

For the record, I learned recently in my writing course that you should never really end an essay with someone else's words because it's like giving up your entire essay to somebody else and invalidating your own work--or... something along those lines. But I wrote this essay at 3.30 in the morning--around a fire alarm!--and by the time I got to the conclusion, I just didn't care anymore. I still got an A. And he didn't say a word about ending with a quote. So there.

'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind': A Narrative Analysis

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind begins with the assumed protagonist waking up and getting off of a hide-a-bed before, on impulse, skipping work to go to Montauk though he didn’t understand why. As the scene progresses, the viewer is introduced to the second central character, Clementine. Seventeen minutes into the movie, title credits and film score break in and completely cut off the movie in one fell, and relatively confusing, swoop.

From this point, Eternal Sunshine begins to work us backward through the story of Joel’s relationship with Clementine. There’s a lot of vagueness here, forcing the viewer to work to piece things together. Questions that came to mind about the first seventeen minutes: Was that a flashback? Or is that later plotline and we’re being slammed backward in the storyline and space?

We’re taken to a collection of scenes in the quite recent past depicting Joel talking to his friends about going to see Clementine to apologize, but she acted like she didn’t recognize him. His friends give him a card that says she had Joel’s memory wiped from her brain and they weren’t to ever mention her relationship to her.

In this fashion, the movie moves back and forth through the story space and timeline in an almost jarring manner. We move forward with Joel to the doctor’s office to discuss the situation, to his apartment to collect anything that would remind him of his ex-girlfriend, back to the doctor’s office, back to his apartment.

Via this memory-wiping procedure, we’re suddenly being dragged through this series of Joel’s memories that contain Clementine, and at first, the things we see are ugly, unhappy and give us a prejudice against his ex-girlfriend. The movie begins asking us to like her and then instantly turns it all around and requests that we dislike her.

In a manner, the opening of the movie serves as redemption for the next side of Clementine’s character, because it allows us to see that she is a round character, unpredictable and unstable, and it gives us more of her to hold onto. Despite the fact that we recognize from the very beginning that Clementine is at least half-crazy, fickle and eccentric, we do get the idea that she’s not volatile or caustic. Upon the inspection of Joel’s memories in backward motion, that idea is reversed, and we, as viewers, are no longer entirely sure of how to categorize Clementine’s role in Joel’s story.

While Eternal Sunshine takes us through Joel’s complicated relationship with Clementine, we’re introduced to a subplot involving the technicians Stan and Patrick, the company’s secretary Mary, and the doctor, Howard. We come to understand that Patrick stole a pair of Clementine’s panties when they wiped her memory the week previous and then that he was actively seeing her, using her memories of Joel—and Joel’s memories of her—to hold her attention.

Subplot two involves Stan and Mary, who are dating and proceed to get high while wiping Joel’s memory. The film alludes to the two having sex when the scene returns and they’re both naked as Stan realizes that things aren’t going as planned and has to call Howard, setting the two into a panic. When Howard arrives, this subplot stems to involve a history with Mary and Howard and we find out that not only does Mary have an interminable crush on the doctor, but they had, at one point, had an affair that Mary chose to have wiped from her memory.

While we travel back through Joel’s relationship with Clementine, we discover that he’s managed to remove himself in part from the process and he starts to change his mind. In order to attempt to hold onto something—anything—of this relationship, Joel tries to drag Clementine out of the memories as he remembers them, hoping that if he changes things, those changes might stay. The constant back and forth of plot from Joel’s rewinding memories to the present love triangles taking place beside his unconscious body continues to be somewhat jarring, but still manage to bring the story points into each other: points in Joel’s past explain portions of events taking place in the present; Joel keeps getting pieces of conversations taking place around his physical body that allow him to converse with mental images of people in his life, who are, while only extensions of himself, his mental recreation of his interpretation of those individuals’ behavioral patterns.

Joel’s final memory is of meeting Clementine, and when it’s all over, we’re brought back to the beginning scene of the movie, which brings the story full circle, back to Valentine’s Day, 2004. Mary, who resigned her position, sent every patient the company had wiped a letter and a tape of their information. Joel and Clementine, who had begun to begin anew, suddenly were provided with a history they didn’t remember, but regretted anyway. The story and plot ends when the two decide to stick it out together, even though they know from history that she’ll get bored with him and he’ll get exasperated with her and it might not last forever. Herein lies an overwhelming theme of the movie, in that nothing lasts forever, nothing has to last forever. But to mourn something’s end is far better than to force yourself to forget it ever happened. There is experience and knowledge to be gained with every experience, and to cut out two years of your life because the ending was painful is harmful to yourself far more than to anybody else.

“How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot. / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.”

–Alexander Pope

Mise en Scene Essay

Mise en Scene is a French term that basically means everything that's already in a scene before the camera gets involved. Setting, lighting, costumes, placement of props, etc. I watched a British indy film for this paper and it was... an experience.
I did get half a point marked off for discussing the plot too much in this paper, but you'll get over it. hahaha.

An Analysis of Mise En Scène as Employed by “Fish Tank”

Fish Tank immediately thrusts us into the life of this girl named Mia, who is, most succinctly, volatile in demeanor.  Mia lives in Essex, one of London’s biggest counties and referred to as “London’s backyard.” Andrea Arnold, the director, explained her choice to set Fish Tank in Essex with “I drove out from east London and loved it straight away. The madness of the A13, the steaming factories and the open spaces, the wilderness.”

And Fish Tank definitely employs both of those sides of the city in its dark, largely run-down, claustrophobic flats and neighborhood streets and the enormous, agoraphobic, blindingly-bright green spaces around the urban areas. The film takes what is an otherwise ordinary location and spins into it mystique and charm via complex relationship developments, character interactions and perpetual conflict.

The tight spaces of the flats force a level of intimacy in familial relations and can easily work to incubate dysfunction. We find that Mia and her little sister Taylor have acquired from their mother a love of cheap convenience store alcohol as well as a set of violent defense mechanisms to mask emotional pain or vulnerability: Mia, Taylor and their mom automatically lash out viciously any time any one of them is upset, startled, confused or frightened. The instant one lashes out, the next returns the motion, and before long, all three members of the family unit are screaming and cursing at each other, calling each other “stupid cunts”, “fucking bitches,” or any other colorful thing they can come up with.

Once all of this violence has been sufficiently displayed, the film takes us up into Mia’s bedroom, where we are suddenly swathed in soft pastels—purples and greens with pokka-dots and flowers, a tiger poster on her door. Suddenly, Mia isn’t just a violent, angry 15-year-old, she’s a girl.

Alongside the pastels, we’re introduced to Mia’s deep-set devotion to and love of animals when she encounters a malnourished horse chained to a cinderblock and tries to free it until she’s caught. She returns later with a hammer to finish the job, but only has time to get close to the horse and really look at her before she’s found by two men who then try to rape her, bringing the hardness of violence back into the soft moment she takes refuge in.

Almost immediately, there’s a sense of sexual tension between Mia and Connor, Joann’s new, mysterious boyfriend. The tension is complicated, however, because it almost flip-flops between her physical attraction to him and her desire for a father figure, which allows the viewer to understand that what Mia’s really desperate for is someone to truly love her and actually demonstrate that affection because her family is incapable. The flip-flopping starts relatively distinctly—the compliment that sets the tension versus taking the family to the country—but then soon the lines between what’s sexual tension and what’s desire for love or family begin to blur.

All of this finally comes to a head in what is likely the most dramatic moment of the entire movie. It’s late at night and Connor puts her drunken mother to bed before she meets him downstairs in their living room, and she performs for him the dance that she’d been putting together for her live audition. The light from the street lamps and headlights outside the window create for the scene a honey-colored haze that makes an otherwise (for the viewer) awkward moment notably intimate, visibly seductive. This dance inevitably leads to the couple having sex on the couch. What should be disturbing to the viewer is suddenly made unnervingly beautiful and passionate, though when it’s over we all realize how dishonest that beauty and passion was.

The next morning, Connor leaves with no intention to return. When Mia tracks him down, she breaks into his house and then discovers that he has his own family that he had been keeping from them—a wife and a daughter probably half Mia’s age. Spiteful, Mia pees on his living room floor and then steals his daughter, but inevitably brings her back. Walking back home in the dark, Connor tracks her down, chases her through a field and then slaps her across the face, stares at her and then walks away without a trace.

Mia goes to her audition and finds a group of overly sexualized girls dancing like they want to be taken on stage and she walks out.

She goes to meet up with her boyfriend and finds out that the old horse she’d grown so fond of had gotten sick and they’d had to shoot her.

Suddenly, everything that Mia has, or had, is violently wrenched from her grasp and she’s left crying on the ground with no direction, no plans, no ideas—until her boyfriend invites her to go to Wales with her.

In the second-most moving scene of the movie, Mia goes home to pack her things and then dances with her mother in the living room when she announces she’s leaving. The dance represents the small element of sensitivity in otherwise unsympathetic characters and allows us to understand that it’s a reconciliation of sorts.

The movie ends when Mia escapes from her life and into a realm of something that she’s heretofore unfamiliar with: Hope. Hope in a new beginning.

Film Essay

Btw, in case anybody noticed that there are suddenly "two authors," there aren't. It's just me. On two different accounts. Because I started this blog AGES ago, back when I only had Hotmail. and Blogger REFUSES to let me make my gmail account the primary. Sooooo.... I just made my gmail account "another author" with admin power...?  I guess. Either way, both are me. hahaha.

So here's the deal. I write movie reviews sometimes, right? It's rare, but they happen. Anyway. So I've been taking ENGL 225, which is Intro to Film this semester, and I've been doing REALLY well in it. I seriously haven't gotten anything less than an A on any of my papers or tests. I  have another test tomorrow, but I'm not concerned about it.

So here's what I'ma do. Because I actually LIKE my film papers. I'm gonna post them! Because they're actually pretty informative. And they're interesting. At least I think so. (Jacobs seemed to think so. lol)

This is the most recent one. As in... the one I just got done writing... hahaha. There's only three. Unless I decide to share some of the weekly response papers...? Don't count on it. Unless you want to read them? Then sure. I'd be happy to oblige.

So here you are (it doesn't look like a 3 page paper when posted here. But it is. So there ya go.):

Cinematography Employed by ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’

Game of Shadows was produced in 2011, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. Though it was a follow-up to Sherlock Holmes (2009), it was created to be a stand-alone film, requiring no existing knowledge of the previous film.

Approximately halfway through the film, Holmes, Watson, Simza and a few gypsies follow Professor Moriarty to Germany, where they uncover his plot to start a world war in order to make a fortune. Holmes is captured, tortured and interrogated; Watson is under fire from Moran. The group makes an escape from the warehouse, however, and flee through the forest under fire. Thus begins the discussion of what I may consider the best scene of any film I have ever seen to date.

The subsequent four minutes are shot in slow motion, time lapse and sped up cinematography styles (courtesy of Gavin Free). Cameras follow individuals in profile, keeping perfectly level with their heads while the environment around them moves—defined in technical terms as “sequence shots on Phantom Flex”—and then instantly switch to speeding up actions, immediately returning to stop-motion photography and back to sequence shots in varying orders, setting no pattern and no giving the viewer no opportunity to predict the next motion.

Our heroes, Holmes and Watson and Simza, are shown in alternating shots with the Germans firing upon them and Moran, who takes off in pursuit to kill them himself. Suddenly the Big Guns are brought out, and trees are exploding around people in slow motion—until suddenly time returns to normal speed, which seems fast because of the dedicatedly discombobulating manipulation of the very short time that passes.

To add a further layer to the scene, Hanz Zimmer creates a sound environment that lends itself to the innate drama of wounded heroes evading death. The beat is precise—adding to the addling time manipulation of these four short minutes that seem much longer than they are. The pulse of the brass instruments coupled with the intensity of the stringed instruments beneath them creates chords that are proven to invoke a certain sense of suspense in listeners (with or without any visuals to accompany them).

Interrupting the score are exaggerated air movements and the muted sound of wood shattering around bullets and cannons. The addition of surround sound takes these sounds which come from one finite point and place them all around you in order to swath you in the thrill of their panic, the suspense of their potential success or failure.

Displaying the miniscule and precise mechanical motions of the cannon, Little Hanzel, used by the Germans in order to hopefully destroy Holmes and his party, has a relatively similar effect. It draws the focus into the very small, very specific, simple motions that in themselves are perfectly innocuous but come together with the right final step to create mass chaos and destruction.

In this manner, this scene manages to metaphorically embody a major theme of the entire film in question: Mass chaos is generated by taking a series of innocuous, arbitrary, simple events and pulling them from the Jenga tower until the final move brings the entire game crashing to the ground. Sherlock Holmes has an extremely heightened logical capability that allows him to foresee events before they happen based on tiny, innocuous details that, in themselves, mean little to nothing at all. Together, however, these things add up to create something large, something indelibly complex, as life always is when most inopportune.

Cue the French horns and the first trumpets, who take turns playing two notes at a time as the world around us explodes into shards of splintery death should you be so unlucky as to be in the wrong spot at the wrong tenth of that second. We now move on Moran, who is still in pursuit, but shot by Watson with the aid of Holmes.

The music again begins to mount in intensity, creating a tension that is nigh tangible, until Moran leans against the tree and all falls silent, save for the sound of three deep breaths, depicted in slow motion, before the instant that he recollects his composure and, back to normal speed, loads a shell, raises his gun and shoots the only individual not yet in the train car.

A Game of Shadows introduced a method of cinematography that was hitherto largely unutilized, at least in the case of major film. Guy Ritchie, Gavin Free and Hans Zimmer together created a cinematic environment that was all-encompassing in its drama and suspense, but also highly illustrative of psychological patterns that chaos produces. The mind has a tendency to slow the world to a crawl and/or speed it up past comprehension in the midst of disarray; this notion is visually demonstrated so flawlessly that the need for an explanation of its mirroring effect is superfluous. The effects of continuous, methodical rhythm and beat of background music interspersed with the encompassing silence of the moment between fire and explosion creates just as much of that psychological involvement for the viewer, thereby making fully effectual the purpose of the scene individually and cohesively as a small piece of a much larger, beautiful, complex puzzle.