As I was reading the screenplay for Distant Voices, Still Lives, I found it very hard to follow the story line, especially Distant Voices. I've read screenplays before so the directions the director was giving weren't hard to follow it was the story line. It was hard to follow because I would start reading it and then the year would change and go back and sometimes I had to go back and reread the year because I got confused. First the father is in the hospital and then he's yelling at his daughter. I really had to read very carefully to be able to follow it.
While watching the movie I found it a little easier to follow the time line, not only because I had a feel for it already from reading, but I think actually seeing it as opposed to reading helped me understand it better. It was still hard to follow at times, especially since I have never really seen a movie without a liner narrative. The use of music in the film was very helpful and very interesting. The one song that stands out to me is when one of the daughters (i can't remember which) ask the mother why she married her father, they play the song Taking a Chance on Love, and the next thing you see is the father horribly beating the mother. I thought the song choice was interesting because it doesn't fit with what you're seeing. But to me I also felt it was a way for him to say that she took a big chance on him and look where it got her. I also liked the song that Eileen sings ( I'm not sure of the name) about getting revenge for breaking her heart. I thought that song was for her friend Jingles and how she hoped Jingles would speak up for herself to her bastard of a husband. One of the things I found interesting as well, was how after all of the horrible things her father did to Eileen, and her saying if she had a gun she would shoot him, she still cries for him at her wedding. I just don't she how she could forgive everything he did to her. Also I have to say that Uncle Ted was very creepy, but it did make me laugh.
I was able to look back at the inner cell video, and as a science person I've seen a lot of videos about cells and stuff, but this one was the most interesting. Like you said in class, after a while it didn't seem like a biology movie, it seemed more like a science fiction movie and all the organelles inside the cell did start looking like aliens or something.
The paper sounds cool and I think/hope it will really help me to see some of the things that I usually miss or just don't pay attention to.
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ive taken a couple of acting classes so i was not lost when reading the screenplay. The screen play for me helps me picture the characters and you kind of get to know them in your mind and have an idea of how they are suppose to be. Which can be a bad thing because once wse saw the actual movie the way i pictured the family to be was only 80 percent acurate in my mind. But so far i have loved both movies we have seen because they are so different to the things that i would ever watch on a friday night. i am looking forward to the 1st assignment and the challenges that im sure i will have with it.
ReplyDeleteSaldana first: Hey remember to make your own post too! I'm curious to here more about this 80% business..how you imagined things differently in that 20%! We had talked in class about a script functioning differently than a regular piece of fiction because it is meant to also give technical directions as well as communicate dialog.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you are finding these films different than your usual fare. However, this may only be significant with the first two films as I wanted to use that "difference" as a way to get students to recognize the expectations they bring with them. You'll have to follow up on this with commentary about how/what you usually watch.
Samantha: The film really runs counter to our familar expectations of chronological narrative and single characters. Thus, yes, it is "confusing" at first go. However, I think that once you set that aside and see that it doesn't necessarily matter if you can work out chronology, then you've opened yourself to a new way of thinking about sequence and meaning. For example, the scene where the terrible scaffold accident takes place after Eileen and Maisie's emotional outpouring at the cinema. Did the two things take place chronologically? I don't know, I doubt it. But, the two events are layered and connected by bonds of emotion: the feeling of love and romance generated by the film that allows the sister's their cathartic crying jab is set against the "real" trauma of their loved ones coming close to death. Both sets of emotions are REAL, though, the little events of working people's lives having just as much emotional validity as the BIG emotions of stars on the screen.
Eileen's feelings are complex. I don't know that she necessarily "forgives" her father, but maybe it is more that her father represents something to her: her childhood? her family? Something that is lost with marriage...