The look and feel of Rashomon

Alex Holt

Jan-17-2012

Rashomon

               The look and feel of Rashomon was very different, because of the setting is out of the United States. The type of houses or tents that the people were in looked different from what I would expect a home in America.  This movie was about how 4 different people tell a story from their point of view of what happened.  One critic said “There’s a moral here, and its best expressed by one character’s assertion that it’s human to lie, even to ourselves”. This is the message the director is trying to get across to the viewer. No matter the country or the color, or race of a person we are all human and we will tell the story the way our mind interrupts.

               I also think this movie was very different because in the 1950’s ,when this movie was made ,most people only knew about western movies in America for the director to take the chance at a movie like this was very outside of most boundaries.  This was a phenomenal film and it influenced cultures for many years to come by showing different cultures and world to a Japanese film which most people were not interested in before Rashomon. The role the woman played in this movie reminds me of how woman of American cultures were when film noir was present. She was very quiet for most of her scenes and then towards the end she makes the men fight for her love until one of them dies. Just like in most film for tall movies the woman gets what she wants at the end. I really liked how the director made the connection between the genres, and cultures.

               As each character tells there story about what happened the lighting is very intense at the beginning to draw the viewer in. As there story starts to climax, music and quick motions become a part of the film as well. The bold lighting and storyboard effectively enables characters to convey their potent mockery of the story, which also brings the viewer’s attention past the story telling and makes it seem like this is what really happened. The man who was sleep in the woods as the woman and her husband came past, played a big role in the movie. He was the one who fought for the woman and showed off his talents and strengths to win the woman over from her husband. Towards the beginning of his role, it seems as he is just the normal guy who goes crazy once he sees the woman he likes he will do anything to get her, and the woman played the role that she was not interested.  Over all the movie had a good message and strong content. It also lets the characters tell the story in a different way each time and at the end it let them express there opinion on what happen when they were confession on the roof top, I feel this helped the characters get their own identity . I feel like in this movie it could have had a better ending and more scene changing events to keep the viewer’s attention better.               Overall it was a decent movie.

For The Love of Movies

Alex Holt

Jan-16-2012

For the love of Movies

            For the love of movies was a very intriguing movie because from the start of it, you can’t tell if it will be a documentary or a short film or some kind of narrative. So it comes out to be a little bit of all of the above.  In this movie it really shows different views of how movie critics are viewed. I never  knew that critics played as much of a roll in the movie industry as it does, I believe the reason why I never realized that is because the movie industry doesn’t give critics the energy or light they should. In this film they also talk about two different styles of criticism dating way back to the 1920s and these styles are still somewhat used in styles of writing by critics in recent films.

            From watching this movie it seems that the hardest job of a movie director is to get their message across to the critics as well as the viewers in a way that pleases everyone. The critics show no mercy on the directors. The directories seem to value the film critic’s opinion because in the movie it shows the director giving the film critics readings some thought. In the movie they talked about high vs. popular culture. I feel like this was an important because high culture wasn’t taken serious and pop culture was taking serious and influenced the rest of the cultures to go with popular culture , this seemed like to me to be the turning point in the critics viewing and writing style. I also really like the change in the film when Elvis Mitchell talked about why he became a film critic. I feel like this part of the movie turned it from a short film to a film with meaning, I feel like this was the game changer in the movie it showed that film critics had a point to prove as well as do a job. It also showed that they weren’t there to just bash the directors as most society thinks. They were there to show the world that movies still have room for growing , and that’s the whole objective of film critics is to give the people a higher power of directing and movies. Another game changer in the movie was when Pauline Kael talked about her views on women films.  She feels that woman are portrayed show a nonrealistic view of what is going on in society it is made up on the motion picture, but in reality it is different.

            I feel this was a very interesting film it touched a lot of topics, which I felt needed to be address for film critics to be taking seriously in the industry. I am glad it got its message across to me because it would be a shame for a film about critics to not be interrupted the way it was intended to because this is the struggle the directors have to face every day they direct.