Representations of race in cinema – after watching Slumdog Millionaire.

Danny Boyle’s  Slumdog Millionaire is an interesting movie for it’s depictions of race and class.  Depictions of these two aspects of humanity are often very contentious territory and I think the film handled it well. However, there are some important critiques to be aware of when watching the film,  a few of them I will out line below. A lot of what I say is bracketed by Edward Said’s work entitled Orientalism where he looks at the idea of “The East” as a vast unchanging, unevolved space, and depictions of the East in popular culture (such as film) often take this road also. Although the work doesn’t specifically mention the people of India, a lot of the work’s key premises can be applied to the way in which cinema sees Indian culture today.

The film’s basic premise –

The biggest day in Jamal Malik’s life. A penniless, eighteen year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, he’s one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” But when the show breaks for the night, suddenly, he is arrested on suspicion of cheating. After all, how could an uneducated street kid possibly know so much

Determined to get to the bottom of Jamal’s story, the jaded Police Inspector spends the night probing Jamal’s incredible past, from his riveting tales of the slums where he and his brother Salim survived by their wits to his encounters with local gangs to his heartbreak over Latika,  the girl he loved and lost.

Each chapter of Jamal’s increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the answers to the show’s seemingly impossible quizzes. But one question remains a mystery: what is this young man with no apparent desire for riches really doing on the game show When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers are about to find out.

However, Mitu Sengupta’s article on AlterNet.org talks about the problems associated with the film’s take on the entrenched poverty and police corruption in India that the film apparently glosses over. He says “Slumdog” has angered many Indians because it tarnishes their perception of their country as a rising economic power and a beacon of democracy. India’s English-language papers, read mainly by its middle classes, have carried many bristling reviews of the film that convey an acute sense of wounded national pride. While understandable, the sentiment is not defensible. Though at times embarrassingly contrived, most of the film’s heartrending scenarios are inspired by a sad, but well-documented reality” (Sengupta, 2013).   Sengupta also goes on to discuss the entrenched police corruption, child poverty and lack of education that many young people face  “Beggar-makers do round-up abandoned children and mutilate them in order to make them more sympathetic, though it is highly improbable that any such child will ever chance upon a $100 bill, much less be capable of identifying it by touch and scent alone” (Sengupta, 2013)

This to me put the film in a new light – one that sought to seek out answers as to why it’d be the interests of a white film maker in Danny Boyle, to present Indian society this way.  This is what leads me to Edward Said’s work.  Danny Boyle no doubt intended his film to be a sensitive portrayal of the plight of poor Indians, but he has unfortunately lapsed into some cultural stereotypes, as film makers who seek to represent cultures they are not a part of often do. To me, it drove home the importance of sensitivity and cultural awareness and it’s centrality to art.  I still ultimately believed the film was a good one, but do encourage it to be viewed through a critical lens.

References.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book) – Orientalism

http://www.alternet.org/story/127845/%22slumdog_millionaire%22%3A_a_hollow_message_of_social_justice   – Mitu Sengupta –  Slumdog millionaire delivers a hollow message of social justice.

When Music Makes a Scene – analyzing the role of music in film.

Music can often make significant differences to a scene – with the use of non diegetic music i.e. music produced from outside the scene, atmosphere can be created and without the music, or put against a different soundtrack, it can be almost completely different.  According to Robin Hoffman’s tutorials for young filmmakers, there are several things music can do, and he adds it’s important the “director/producer  keeps the music in mind when planning/shooting the movie. For example collages that practically don’t work at all without film music can have a fantastic effect later with the appropriate music” (Hoffman, 2011.)   Music can serve the following purposes – but the list is definitely not exhaustive. (all examples taken from Hoffman, 2011)

Commenting: Music can put a judgement on certain movie scenes, it can state that a certain battle scene is heroic, a certain dialogue is sad etc. In the early days of film music, the function of the music was most of the time to comment on the images.

Illustrating movement: Accenting with the music a character’s movement. e.g a xylophone “pings” every time a character raises their eyebrows.

Creating Plot Relationships: The use of music in this way is called a “leitmotif”, or recurring theme.  The use of so-called leitmotifs has been established by Richard Wagner in the opera and has often be used in film context since the early days of film music. Giving certain characters/situations/places thematic identities helps to connect certain plot points together. When the villian gets a theme and later we hear that theme again when somebody talks about a “stranger” we get a very clear hint of who that stranger might be. It doesn’t need to be that obvious for leitmotifs to work, of course.

Create Atmosphere: This is one of the strongest function of music in the movies. It can set the tone of the movie. Just by the way the score comes in for the first time in the movie makes it possible to know the genre and the “level of drama” (Hoffman 2011)  of the movie. Of course exactly this really strong function can be used to create plot twists.

A particularly strong set of films for the use of music – particularly to create atmosphere and character were the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (LOTR)  directed by Peter Jackson with music by Howard Shore  and Inception  –  music by Hans Zimmer.  In  LOTR, Howard Shore states that “The heart of the film, the music, not only captures its sweeping emotion, thrilling vistas and grand journeys, but also echoes the very construction of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Styles, instruments and performers were collected from around the world to provide each of Tolkien’s cultures with a unique musical imprint. The rural and simple hobbits were rooted in a dulcet weave of Celtic tones. The mystical Elves touched upon ethereal Eastern colors. The Dwarves, Tolkien’s abrasive stonecutters, received columns of parallel harmonies and a rough, guttural male chorus” (Shore, 2010)  Many of the softest scenes in The Shire were accompanied by the softest tones, and the battle scenes were the heaviest and most dramatic sounds occurred. The music, as Shore stated, went with sets of characters, to denounce their evil, or praise their good.

In Inception,  Zimmer was very conscious of Science Fiction and action films having music that was “epic” “outrageous” and over the top.  His score, whilst contributing to the eeriness and key action moments of the film, is a lot less grand that Howard Shore’s score. It is full of synths, keys and looped guitars, that in my mind added to the “science fiction” atmosphere and “otherworldliness” of the film.  I think with any other soundtrack, both films would be significantly different, and may not have worked at key moments.

References:

http://inception.wikia.com/wiki/Dominick_Cobb – Inception Wiki.

http://www.robin-hoffmann.com/ – Robin Hoffman tutorials.

http://www.howardshore.com/works/concerts/the-lord-of-the-rings-symphony/ – Howard Shore, Lord of the Rings.

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall. (Cinema as Mirror)

Mirrors can often take on lives of their own in cinema. From the Iconic Mirror in Duck Soup, To the talking mirror that breaks the Evil Queen’s heart in Snow White,  all of these mirrors act independently – they don’t  neccesarily “reflect”  the reality the viewer lives in, but change and challenge it in some way. The concept of the mirror can be linked to philosopher Carl Jung talking about each person’s being embodiying a “shadow side” one that as we age we seek to distance ourselves from.  Can  the mirror be said to represent this “side” in each character? The following films deal with challenging perceptions via the mirror.

Black Swan

Natalie Portman’s character Nina is an aspiring ballet dancer in New York who’s life revolves around dancing the lead in Swan Lake. It is a psychological thriller that reads as an allegory for the way women consume and compete with each other.  Nina’s psyche is fragmented, and there are many scenes in which we see only her shoulders and torso, completely disembodied.  Mirrors play a vital role throughout the movie – from the makeup mirrors backstage, to the huge walls of mirrors in the studio, to Nina’s bathroom mirror – the film is littered with mirrors. This points to ultimate question of identity that Nina must face. She sees herself reflected so much,  she tries be one person, but who is she really? The doubles that she sees following her also point to her deteriorating mental state. Her feeling of being fragmented is represented to the audience not as unrealistic dialogue but as exciting, suspenseful imagery. This intellectual backbone of the film makes the otherwise ordinary thriller tropes present in the movie into something much more meaningful and interesting.

Mulholland Drive

David Lynch is the master of the “mirror”. Used extensively in his films, and television series Twin Peaks, he looks at the idea of mirrors often literally as a way for character’s to see their dopplegangers or psychic foils. (Think Leland Palmer as Bob in Twin Peaks) Here one can see Rita through the big mirror while seeing the poster of Gilda (Rita Hayworth), through the small mirror, which she use to name herself and the poster itself  at the same time. The use of mirrors here it’s not only a shot saver 🙂 but it goes along with the identity play of the movie where these identities are not fixed nor properly real as reflections are.

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Pretty much my  favourite shot in the entire film is when the child killer looks into the mirrored glass window of a shop and sees the reflection of what looks at what appears to be knives and blades. It reflects not neccesarily his image as a physical  person, but his identity as a killer. It gives a creepy feeling to the audience, one of uncertainty and sometimes disgust.

Colour as Transformation in two films – something extra.

In my presentation I looked at Colour as a Metaphor for transformation in two films. I argued that colour can be used to denote physical transformation – the moving through of spaces – as in Peter Greenaway’s the Cook, The Thief, his wife and her Lover (1989) and as a Metaphor for transformation of character  as in Stephen Speilberg’s  Schindler’s List.  I argued that even in a black and white film like Schindler’s list, colour then becomes about the absence of light and  use of shade, as opposed to a coloured film like Peter Greenaway’s where he used high saturation of colour and immense attention to detail.

There were several other films I  found that used colour in an interesting way  and one of them that I’d like to touch on via this blog post. The most obvious film is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Critics have often noted that The Shining is in some ways Kubrick’s live action version of a Roadrunner cartoon, and Kubrick certainly hints at that, using three separate instances of the cartoon in the movie.  The shot leading up to Danny in the bathroom in the apartment in the beginning of the movie shows a number of cartoon character stickers on the wall.  The bright colors in the movie are certainly cartoon-like.  During Jack’s interview, Kubrick edits in a parallel scene of Wendy in her own interview with a doctor.  Stuart Ullman, the manager of the hotel, wears a dark blue suit and a crimson red tie as he shares with Jack the grisly past of the Overlook. The theory that the use of colours in the American is lag vividly represented in character’s costumes  being a statement on Modern Americas ease with violence definitely takes a strong root here.  In the scene parallel to the interview Wendy is wearing a blue dress with crimson stockings as she explains her son’s dislocated shoulder and that something good can come out of it. Films often use colors to establish a tone or theme, and that certainly happens in this film.  Wendy and Danny, seen in their bright clothing, are innocent victims.  The interpretation I am most interested in is how Jack’s descent into madness can be attributed to his jealousy of that innocence,  Jack tries to regress into childhood and can’t due to the responsibility of adulthood  This theory is displayed when the family takes their tour of the hotel.  A man is seen pulling a cart that bears shades of red and blue similar to those worn by Wendy and Danny. Jack wears red and blue also but always darker and more sinister shades compared to Wendy and Danny’s lighter shades. There are several other examples of colour that move throughout  the  film including the infamous river of blood down the staircase – that make this film a fascinating thematic and visual experience.

Cinema as Eye, look and gaze in an episode of Doctor Who.

.  Don’t Blink. Blink and you’re dead.

Thomas Elsaesser and  Malte Hagenar  discuss the concept of cinema as eye, as an “interface between spectator and film”*(96) and that at one point, the “disembodied eye was celebrated as a symbol of power and omnipotence” (97) they discuss the range of “eyes” that take place in cinema and the way they function as a method of looking and seeing.   It is this idea of omnipotent “eyes” and eyes that hold a great deal of power  that I want to discuss when looking at the Doctor Who Episode Blink from series three. of Doctor who.

In the episode Blink it was the first appearance of the Weeping Angels, and what show runner Stephen Moffat called “doctor lite” in that the doctor and companion got not much screen time.  The episode revolves around Protagonist Sally Sparrow who receives a message that a strange new species of monster is threatening to take over.  In an abandoned house in 1969 weeping angels wait and when sally receives a message via an old dvd player in the present day, she travels back with the doctor to 1969 to stop them. The only problem is the angels can move without being seen and at a moments notice. They posess what’s called a “quantum lock” whereby they cannot look at each other and if anyone looks at them they are immediately frozen into stone.  This prompts the doctor to say “don’t move, and don’t blink. If you blink, you’re dead.” .  There are eyes everywhere in this episode.  Although e – particularly disembodied eyes, eyes belonging to the angels that have particular power – the power of life and death.  But also we begin to see the tardis and the elements od Doctor Who through metaphorical eyes – those of Sally’s. Th weeping Angels, Sally is able to through defeating the angels, to turn the “look” back on itself. The quantum lock was destroyed, as broken and the angels are   no longer able to keep turning people  into stone. They could only look at each other, and now they spent the rest of their days in a circle only able to look at each other, not able to move. The point of view or “looking” is now completely with Sally. She has won and is able to claim the vantage points. Another interesting feature of the Angels is the way they are .   Each angel looks directly into the camera when it is about to grab someone – maybe as if to say, no one is safe, that somehow the audience are also potential victims if they too blink.   A new monster developed by Stephen Moffat gave doctor who a whole new life.  Whatever you do, don’t blink!.

Cinema As Mind Puzzle – William Buckland, Guy Pearce and Momento.

Before the Dark Knight Trilogy Christopher Nolan made Momento . Guy Pearce stars as Leonard, a broken man seeking revenge on the man who raped and murdered his wife. The trouble is that Leonard suffers from a cinematically enhanced strain of “anterograde amnesia” that has wiped out his short-term memory and kept him from generating any new memories past the incident where his wife was killed. Because of these deficiencies, Leonard has devised a system of notes, Polaroids, and tattoos that establish the essential truths about his situation, and as he gathers more evidence, they lead him to his wife’s killer like a trail of breadcrumbs. The notion of the Mind Puzzle film I think takes on literal proportions here as Leonard’s mind is literally the puzzle – like a jigsaw puzzle with different shards of the narrative of the story being drawn together and different questions being asked on  A lot of the examples William Buckland’s article draws on surround the concept of either a physical trap or puzzle the characters get out of, or some sort of psychological challenge or alternate reality – for example in the first Matrix film. However Momento is slightly different whereby the concept of the puzzle literally exists inside a person and is not imposed externally. Leonard is totally vulnerable to the manipulations of those around him who contribute to the puzzle. Between Natalie and Teddy who claim Leonard’s friends, the treatment of Leonard and the structure of the film itself (Told in 22 different “strands” of narrative set to mirror Leonard’s fragmented memories) is at times deliberately disorienting. We as the audience are drawn inside the puzzled mind and because of this it’s definitely a film worth watching.

The Red Wedding – Television As Skin and Touch.

For those of you who’ve not either read George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series or watched HBO’s Game of Thrones – this blog post may not  make much sense so I’ve provided a link below to the scene I am talking about. (There’s a LOT of blood – you’ve been warned)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M93cVkaQfJI&feature=player_embedded

The “red wedding” named so because of its bloody ending, was a really good example of a scene that elicits a “visceral reaction” from its viewers.  In fact, some viewers, like these men – https://youtu.be/gEp_K_rvwJ0  filmed themselves watching the scene and reacting to the grisly murders.   What shocked me the most, even though I knew it was coming as I’d read the books, was the way in which it was portrayed on screen.  Often time’s adaptations from books to films or television series lose the imaginative ability that one gets from being able to view the scene any way you wish in your own mind.  However, the really amazing set, prop and costume design that this show has become known for, allowed the scene to be played out in its full horror.  Furthermore, I think what makes this a great example was the fact that it was so graphic and in your face, possibly more so than anyone could have imagined.  The sharp transition from peaceful wedding scene, where we are lead to finally think that the Starks have found peace into the start of murder, seems to happen without any prior warning, (although there have been almost invisible hints along the way)   The immediacy and complete unexpectedness of the scene is what has shocked and appalled many viewers.

The Gaze in Two Films.

The Gaze in Two Films.

Laura Mulvey wrote an essay – Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, which if today’s lecture was anything to go by, is still quite polarizing and engenders strong emotions.  The basic premise using psychoanalytic theory that we all enjoy viewing and that there are specific ways of viewing/being looked at – and that usually revolves around women existing for the visual pleasure of men.  Women can be conscious of the gaze or unconscious of it, refute it or play on it, but it still remains.

There are two films I’ve witnessed dealing with the gaze in different ways. The first one is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  There are a lot of opinions on Hitchcock as a misogynist and the way he treats women on screen, but I am not going to deal with that directly here.  The main character Marion Crane is always on display in the film and she is always watched by men.  Even before she meets the Bates Motel, she’s being watched by an overzealous cop who questions her and follows her. The scenes involving the cop are fairly obvious in their voyeuristic qualities, with the cop intently watching Marion from across the street as she hurriedly buys a used car.  Another scene in which she is obviously being watched is the parlour scene where she and Norman Bates take lunch. “Watching” takes place on two levels here. The parlour comprises of Bates himself, clearly looking Marion, but also a large collection of stuffed birds. The birds are mounted on the wall facing out, and are seen as some critics as extension of Norman’s male gaze.   After this scene, Norman watches Marion through a peephole taking a shower. The overwhelming feeling as a viewer is that we are being invited into the voyeuristic world of the film – even if the characters themselves do not know they are being looked at.

Another film – one I have only seen snippets of, is Brian Di Palma’s Femme Fatale.  Here, although we are definitely looking at a woman, the awareness of the gaze alternates. The character is at sometimes aware she’s being looked at (when she tells a photographer to fuck off) and times when she’s not aware (the scene where she’s entering church but the viewer sees her being remotely viewed by a computer screen and a person with binoculars) Even when a woman is being deceptive, or “not herself” (the character here was in disguise) the gaze still operates. This is a film I’d definitely like to view in its entirety*

* As of the 16th of May I saw this film and its entirety and the way the gaze plays out is incredible.

The Astor Cinema – An Exercise in Framing

When discussing experiences of thresholds and the conscious presence of screens, nothing surpasses the experiences of Astor in Windsor. This cinema is a Melbourne Icon, unfortunately one we are about to lose. The cinema itself was built in 1936 and still remains in its original heritage glory.  One of the things I am most conscious of when I see a film at the Astor is the large screen that seems to take on a life of its own.   Soft curtains cover the screen, opening and closing with each film.  This to me makes me very aware of the artifice of the screen, that I am a viewer taking in images rather than being part of them. The Astor is different in the sense that it is a single screen theatre – meaning that only one screen exists in the theatre and only a few movies are shown each week.  It makes me think that movie going must have been a completely different experience in 1936 contrasted today with the multi-screen theatres that can show 6 or 7 films at a time.  Films take on a lot more intimacy despite the huge theatre (1150 seats down from the original 1700). Intimacy to me means knowing that I can be engrossed in the world of the film, on the one screen, and not know that there are other films going on around me. 

Thresholds are an interesting facet of the Astor also. Before you get into the cinema itself you’ve gone through a few.  There’s one central entrance on Chapel Street, surrounded by bright flashing lights and depending on the film – usually quite a long line and a crowded foyer. The next threshold is the long winding staircase from the foyer, and another long line to get access to the cinema itself.  These thresholds, to me, hark back to when going to the cinema wasn’t as common as it is now. – You really had to want to go, and it was an organized and planned event.  Either way, this cinema will always be one of my Melbourne highlights.

The Grand Budapest Hotel – an Exercise in Framing

The Grand Budapest Hotel is such a fantastic film that I loved deeply. Mostly for its excellence in technique but also the way that the techniques director Wes Anderson used enable the key elements in plot.  For this post it’s probably a good idea to read David Bordwell’s article here where he discusses the use of the technique in detail (http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2014/03/26/the-grand-budapest-hotel-wes-anderson-takes-the-43-challenge/) The technique Anderson uses is colloquially referred to as the “coat hanger” technique or “Planometric technique” because each frame is set out in a row, or “plane”. This allows shots to be crowded in, and each of the actors to be facing forward.  I first noticed Anderson’s use of this technique in The Royal Tennenbaums, a film David Bordwell mentions but also noticed that in Grand Budapest Hotel, the technique is slightly modified.  The actors weren’t as crowded into each shot, as they were in Tennenbaums, but often times you had a single actor facing the camera head on. This was particularly evident when the audience was taken inside the hotel and we were shown frames of the hotel staff. The one single performer, looking head on into the camera made the frames look less like movie shots and more like highly stylized photographs. This allowed the audience to develop relationships with the characters – particularly the main protagonist and the staff of the hotel.  Here are some examples. Note that in the first picture  – the character is actually in dialogue with another but the way the shot is set up it looks as though she is in direct contact with the audience.

To me however, it was the way in which this technique was used to further key elements of the plot that made me really interested by it.  For instance, without a word being spoken, when we see the frame of the Nazis outside the Grand Budapest, and Mendl’s delivery truck also in the frame, we know straight away that the love between the two young people was thwarted because Mendl’s daughter was Jewish.  We also can tell from the way in which Ralph Fiennes is placed next to Tilda Swinton that his character is up to no good.  When the relationship between the two progresses, instead of facing the camera head on they begin to face each other at 90 degree angles. Once again, without much dialogue, we can see that the relationship deepens and that there is a growing intimacy between them due to the close nature of the shots. To me this film is a really perfect fusion of technique and plot, and a really good example of an established but innovative technique.