Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Distant Voices, Still Lives
I know in class I didn't say much, but I felt it would bring the opportunity to use this blogger thing. So, I honestly found Distant...Lives very interesting. There were a few aspects a liked about this film. The first was the story line, the other two aspects I found very interesting was the way the movie was filmed (I might of looked way to deep) and the meaning behind alot of the scenes. The way the scenes faded into each other really gave me the illusion of how memories come into your mind and then fade way (which was probably obvious). Every time we looked outside that hallway through that door, time changed, once again like memories. Sometimes the characters would look directly at us, like we were looking through someones eyes and we were relieving the memories. At one point we'd see the father hitting the kids or yelling and then we'd get the father sick laying in the bed and the family standing around him. The family had blank faces and I felt as if the family didn't know how to feel just as we didn't know how to feel towards the father after seeing him doing the horrible stuff he did. Songs that the characters sang were completely based on the mood (example when the bombing happened they made the girl sing, to try to comfort themselves in a time of fear). Eileen was clearly the strongest out of the siblings, I thought we saw the father having the biggest effect on her. She always said she'd tell a guy off or not let a guy push her friends around, she also told her dad she'd kill him showing know feelings towards him. She became stronger because of the father. Although we went over this in class, when I mean some scenes had meaning well there was the the white light after a scene ended, clearly standing out for peace after the fathers death. I also believe that "fire" had a big role too. Whenever we saw Fire we got an uneasy vibe. At one point the mothers face faded into the fire place, I felt that stood for the pain she had. Fire was mostly used when the dad was around. In class we spoke about that uncle walking in and shining the candle to his face. That gave me an uneasy feeling ( he was also related to the father). There was also another scene that was almost identical. When the kids were at the grandmas house ( I think also related to father) she shined a candle to her face and mentioned that if the kids looked in the mirror they'd see the devil ( I thought that line there had a lot of meaning). Now I might be looking way to deep but thats the interpretation I got. Great film, looking forward for more.
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You bring up some interesting points here. One has to do with the film's structure mimicking the structure of memory (a series of discrete moments coloured by symbolic rather than literal meanings), another has to do with the open-endedness of meaning in general in this film. You might want to think about how the film handles "closure" (or if it does). You also come close to making the point that there is no single main character here and we get instead of individual memories a kind of group memory---these are memories of a family as a unit, rather than individual memories of any one person.
ReplyDeleteYou also point out the way that much subtextual meaning is expressed via the songs sung and listened to: as if the character's themselves don't possess the means to express them more directly. I think that is literally the case, especially in relation to the women of that era.
I agree with you about Eileen's strength in that she is the only one we see "talking back" to the men of her world. And yet, she is the one who has the most mixed feelings about her father. Perhaps your point about her strength deriving from the family's suffering under the horrible father explains some of this.