The film Distant Voices/Still Lives can be interpreted in many ways. Something that stood out to me was the importance of characters throughout this film. The father is probably the most important character in the film. He is mentioned throughout the whole film. They speak about him sporadically or mention him to get our emotions going. When movies focus on important things, such as family in this film, that is to emotionally get the audience connected. When the movie refers back to the father, it usually showed dark and/or distracting memories which were used to capture our attention. This exemplifies the impact of the fathers life on his own family and to the film. The graphic scenes of the father beating his daughter and wife work hand in hand with attention grabber. Most "sane" people can not sit through those scenes without cringing or feeling somewhat wrong for what he was doing.
Another point that i would like to bring up about this film is the time frame of this movie. This film described a time period with a working father supporting his whole family. One thing that our generation doesn't experience as much is the strictness of the father/mother in the household. At this time, it was socially acceptable to beat your children. It was definitely frowned upon sometimes, but i have heard stories from grandparents and family that can support the idea of strictness at that time.
Jason mentioned how the singing in a way was to express themselves, or to relieve a tense situation. I noticed that the singing at times did relieve some sort of awkward and tense situation. Someone would say "Well why dont you sing us a song?"--This happened in times when people would be upset, and it would alter the mood.
Overall, i enjoyed this film and it did show many things such as the importance of lighting and music in this film. The way the film is lit up, can set moods just like music can. Another thing i also enjoyed was the message that was drawn out for us about this time period in Liverpool, England. They illustrated the importance of family and their communities. This was showed in scenes such as the ones in the pub while they were all singing along.
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For better or worse, Father does dominate the film, as he did the lives of his wife and children. And perhaps "he" lives on in both the way his dominating is replicated by other males, but also in the way his rage became the forge for other character's strength and compassion (I'm thinking of Tony and Eileen).
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in exploring in class what both this and the last film say about memory. Also, I think it's interesting to think about the similar way we also use music today...