HopkinsCinemAddicts

What's Your Favorite Movie? (Tori)

My sophomore year at Hopkins will be tied to a lot of different things.  It’ll be tied to my double in McCoy, meals at Nolan’s, and long rehearsals of Spring Awakening in Swirnow Theater.  It’ll be tied to my friends here, new and old, and the moments we’ve shared together.  It’ll also always be tied to film blogging.  Film blogging has been an integral part of my sophomore year.  I have been constantly on the lookout for films to watch and concepts about which to write.  This post will bring my film blogging to a close, so I knew I had to choose something epic and rich in order to end the year on the perfect, exciting note.  I looked directly to Alfred Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock has completely transformed my relationship with films.  I, like many others, I’m sure, detest being asked what my favorite film is.  My cinematic preferences are constantly changing based on my mood; when I’m frustrated I’ll want to watch something very different than when I’m elated.  But if I were forced to choose—a gun drawn to my head—Rear Window might be the one to slip out due to its emphasis on some of the themes I find most interesting in the world like metacinema, voyeurism, and the male gaze.  It’s one of those films you can watch a million times and still not pick up on all the themes and techniques employed by Hitchcock to tell the gripping story.  Obviously, I am a big Hitchcock fan.  Yet, shockingly, I had never gotten around to watching perhaps his most renowned film, Vertigo.  Until now.  I decided it was fitting, for my exciting final post, to write about what is known as one of the most epic and rich films to ever be created.  I was not disappointed.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

As our protagonist, ex-detective Scottie, is about to enter the church at the end of the film, he states that there is: “One final thing I have to do…and then I’ll be free of the past.”  Throughout the film, I picked up on a preoccupation with time and the contradictory feelings of both nostalgia and disdain for the past.  Characters grapple with the question: is it possible to ever be free of the past?  Near the beginning of the film, Gavin Elster, an old friend of Scottie’s, discusses San Francisco, the setting of the film: “Well, San Francisco’s changed.  The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast…I should have like to have lived here then.  The color, the excitement, the power, the freedom…”  He is clearly sentimental about the way San Francisco used to be, yet it seems that is a distant memory. 

When researching Carlotta Valdes, the woman it seems has possessed Elster’s wife, the bookstore owner explains: “So [Carlotta’s husband] kept the child and threw [Carlotta] away.  You know, men could do that in those days.  They had the power and the freedom.”  Once again, we are reminded of the power and freedom people had in the past, but this time the sentiment of nostalgia is complicated, as power and freedom are tied to the mistreatment of Carlotta by her husband.  Scottie, throughout the film, is set on doing away with the past; he desperately wants to “stop being haunted.”  But perhaps this is a lost hope.  Scottie puts together the different aspects of his deceit by Elster and his mistress, Judy Barton, who was pretending to be Elster’s wife the entire time.  He realizes that Elster was the mastermind behind everything and now has access to: “all of his wife’s money and all that freedom and power.”  Again, we hear these words “freedom and power,” but now in a very different context.  Elster has succeeded in becoming that free and powerful man of the past.  Additionally, he abandoned his wife just as Carlotta’s husband abandoned her long before.  What is more, Judy’s death transpires in the same way the real Madeleine’s death did; they both fall out of the same church window.  All Scottie wants is to stop being haunted—by the death of the police officer at the beginning of the film, by his vertigo, by Madeleine after her death, but it is no use.  Vertigo suggests that the past is not something one can ever escape.

It is crucial to understand this idea of “freedom and power” in relation to gender in Vertigo.  Do any of the women in this film have any freedom or power?  At the end of the film, Scottie interrogates Judy about Elster’s use of her in his grand scheme: “He made you over just like I made you over…Did he train you?  Did he rehearse you?  Did he tell you exactly what to do—what to say?”  The men of Vertigo are consistently controlling the women.  Like Carlotta’s husband controls Carlotta and Elster controls both Judy and his wife, Scottie similarly controls Judy when he implores her to change her appearance to look more like Madeleine.  The idea of the male gaze is incredibly prevalent in this film.  Just as Jeff becomes interested in Lisa after she has become the subject of his voyeuristic gaze, Scottie becomes interested in Madeleine solely after watching her.  In this way, he is introduced to her less as a person and more as an object to be observed.  It is true that Scottie is manipulated by Elster, but I would argue that the women of Vertigo are the ones truly being controlled.

Upon further reflection, I probably could have written about a different aspect of Vertigo for every single one of my blog posts this year; it’s the kind of film that clouds your mind with thoughts.  However, one thing is absolutely clear to me: I think I have a new favorite movie.  

All Show Business (Tori)

Recently, there has been a widespread trend of making films into Broadway musicals.  There’s School of Rock, Groundhog Day, Sunset Boulevard, Amelie, Waitress, and countless others.  But what about when it’s the other way around?  How do you take a highly successful stage musical and turn it into a film?  I looked to Chicago, arguably the most famous of this smaller number of film-turned-musicals, to attempt to answer this question. 

“It’s all a circus, kid.  A three-ring circus.  These trials.  The whole world.  All show business.”  Lawyer Billy Flynn says this to Roxie Hart, a young aspiring performer who murders Fred Casely, the man with whom she is having an affair.  A few months ago, I wrote about a musical entitled The Scottsboro Boys, written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, who also wrote the music and lyrics for Chicago.  Kander and Ebb are notorious for the way in which they point out flaws in our society.  They are masterful at holding a mirror up to nature.  Chicago focuses on the problems surrounding crime and the media.  It condemns our entertainment-centered society by depicting a world in which there is virtually no difference between being a murderer and being a performer.  Roxie Hart is able to gain fame and fortune because of this crime she commits.  Thus, the fame of a performer and the infamy of a criminal are depicted as one in the same.   This relationship is shown starting with Roxie’s arrest after committing the murder, as she is trailed by hoards of photographers taking her picture.  When discussing her future as a performer with Matron Mama Morton, Roxie states: “I don’t even have an act yet” to which Morton responds “Killing Fred Casely was your act.”  Roxie’s life post-murder is less the life of a criminal and more the life of a big star. 

Chicago was (and still is) undoubtedly a huge stage success.  It currently holds the title of the longest running American musical on Broadway and the second-longest running musical of all time.  I was lucky enough to see this show on Broadway several years ago, and it is truly one of the most astounding shows I’ve ever seen.  Part of the reason why I loved it was because of its meta-theatrical nature, particularly surrounding its songs, which are incredibly self-aware.  By this I mean that characters know they are performing in front of an audience when they’re singing.  They break the fourth wall and sing right to the crowd.  Each song is introduced by an emcee; it is almost like it’s a cabaret show dispersed throughout the musical.  A plot point will occur, and a corresponding song or act will be announced and then performed.  For example, Roxie is brought to her press conference by Billy Flynn.  The song “They Both Reached For The Gun” is announced, and we watch a song and dance number in which Billy Flynn functions as a ventriloquist and Roxie is his dummy.  He tells her exactly what to say to win the world’s sympathy.  Another example: it is revealed that another woman in the jail was said to be guilty and is sentenced to death.  Then, a sort of circus act is announced: The Hungarian Disappearing Act, which she then performs, symbolizing her hanging.  This structure is invoked seamlessly in the stage musical, but becomes more difficult in a film.  How do you preserve the meta-theatrical nature of Chicago when it is no longer performed in front of you on a stage?

I think Chicago is a successful film because of the way that it actually emphasizes this meta-theatrical nature of the story through the use of techniques unique to cinema.  There are two different “worlds” present within the film.  First there is the world of the plot, which takes place in 1920s Chicago, on the streets, in the jail, in the courtroom, etc.  Then there is the world of the songs and acts, which take place on a stage in a theater.  We see the bright spotlights and dazzling displays behind the performers as they sing and dance.  We literally become a part of the audience, as the camera is often stationed behind other audience-members, putting us right in that crowd.  It emphasizes the fact that these moments are incredibly performative.  Then, it is able to beautifully weave these moments of performance into the narrative through the usage of tactics such as eyeline matches and close-ups.  My favorite of these moments is a number that is only found in the film and not in the musical.  This number occurs during Billy Flynn’s cross-examination; he discredits a piece of evidence in a masterful way, extremely powerful with his words.  As he walks confidently across the courtroom floor, the camera follows his feet.  We then cut to his feet on a stage, and he begins performing an unbelievable tap dance.  We constantly switch between him in the court room and him tap dancing, blurring these two “performances” together in a way that can only be done on film. 

There is really nothing like live theater, sitting in the audience and watching performers right before your eyes.  It’s unpredictable, and there is a thrill of knowing that each and every performance is unique in some way; there will always be small differences between performances of the same show, and this is a truly thrilling feeling.  Yet I got a similar sort of thrill when watching the film of Chicago.  I think Chicago works because it is somehow able to preserve this sense of live performance onscreen. Moreover, through techniques unique to cinema, it is able to even further emphasize the theatrical nature of our justice system, our media, and our world.  The film, maybe even more so than the musical, makes it clear that the world is all show business. 

Fake News: The Truman Show and Media (Tori)

When I logged into my Facebook account yesterday, I was greeted by an alert describing a new experiment on the popular social networking site.  This trial will introduce banners teaching Facebook users how to “spot fake news” given the recent controversies regarding the accuracy of news sources.  Also, users will be given the opportunity to mark unreliable news stories as “disputed.”  The media plays an influential role in our world today—we are constantly bombarded with news everywhere we look.  I think it’s good that Facebook and other sites like Google, which has recently unveiled plans for a similar experiment, are taking an active stance in attempting to improve the way users consume media.  But is that enough?  Can we be certain that what we know is true?  To tackle these questions, I turned to one of my favorite movies, Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show. 

The Truman Show tells the story of a TV show starring a man named Truman Burbank.  The twist is that everybody knows the show is a TV show except for Truman himself.  The town Truman lives in, Seahaven Island, was created just for him.  His friends and family are all actors.  Truman was born on camera and has gone his entire life believing that this constructed studio world is all there is—it’s all he has ever known.  After a couple of things go wrong on the show (a studio light falls from the sky, Truman hears cues being given as he drives down the street, and Truman sees extras waiting in a green room) Truman begins to question everything he has ever been told.  In the end, Truman finally discovers the truth—or, rather, falsity—of his situation. 

This type of show is very appealing to viewers both within the film and in our world.  Shows like The Bachelor, The Real Housewives, Keeping Up with the Kardashians are some of the most widely watched and talked about shows on television.  While billed as “reality” shows, these shows are calculated to a high degree to ensure engaging drama and high ratings.  Within the film, viewers also cannot get enough.  A man is consistently shown watching Truman in his bathtub; it seems his entire life revolves around the 24/7 footage of Truman’s life.  We even see waitresses watching the show at a Truman bar, in which people can go watch the footage and buy Truman merchandise.  So why are these types of shows so appealing?  Marlon, Truman’s best friend on the show, explains about the show: “It’s all true.  It’s all real.  Nothing you see on this show is fake.  It’s merely controlled.” It seems this is exactly why it’s so appealing.  Though it’s controlled, people feel that the show contains a degree of realism due to Truman himself.  But is that a legitimate distinction to make?  Can something “controlled” be real?  Isn’t calculation and falsity the same thing? 

I am fascinated by the complicated concept of truth, and perhaps that’s why I find myself watching this movie over and over again.  How can we ever be sure what we’re being told is accurate?  Christof, the creator of the television show, is asked in an interview at one point in the film why it took Truman so long to begin questioning his life.  Christof responds: “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.”  Though this clearly applies to Truman, who accepted the reality of his world for thirty years, this also applies to each and every one of us on a smaller scale.  We are endlessly bombarded with facts and information from varying sources.  If you aren’t willing to scrutinize—to dig deep and work hard until you can determine what is true and what is not—you can really be led to believe anything.

It seems that this scrutiny is exactly what Facebook and Google are trying to do with these new tools.  But my question is…what if that isn’t enough?  The Truman Show has a happy ending.  Truman is committed to figuring out what is going on and doesn’t give in until he has discovered the truth.  With this ending, the film seems to say that the media is inherently calculated and misleading, but its deceptiveness is not impossible to overcome.  The truth is out there waiting to be uncovered.  However, I think this might be an old-fashioned, idealistic hope in today’s society – a society in which technology is further integrated into our lives every day, and thus falsities become easier and easier to disseminate.  The perpetration of inaccurate information is more concerning than ever.  Is it possible to escape The Truman Show in 2017?

Use Your Imagination: Violations in Amélie (Tori)

When discussing films with my peers, a critique I have heard more than once is that someone did not like a film because it wasn’t realistic.  In fact, this is a critique I’ve heard about other art forms, too, such as novels, plays, and musicals.  This sort of criticism has always seemed problematic to me.  Why is it assumed that art forms are meant to be realistic?  Why do we care if art is true-to-life?  The 2001 French film Amélie, also known as Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, is decidedly unrealistic and thus provides the perfect case study when exploring these questions.

The audience is made acutely aware, from the very first few minutes of the film, that Amélie knows it is a film and does not pretend otherwise.  It sits itself very firmly on the avant garde end of the spectrum.  This is a sort of film of consciousness.  It is emphatically a story, and it is emphatically artistic.  At the very beginning of the film, the narrator explains that at a young age, “Deprived of playmates, slung between a neurotic and an iceberg, Amélie retreats into her imagination.” Amélie’s vivid imagination is crucial to her survival amidst a difficult home life.  It is only fitting that the audience is given a glimpse into that imaginary world, as well.  The result is a multitude of cinematic violations in which common conventions are routinely broken.  These violations are made in order to convey this deeply subjective, creative, dream-like experience of the world.    

One of the most commonly used cinematic violations in Amélie is a violation of a dramatic convention: the breaking of the fourth wall.  Characters in the film, particularly Amélie herself, are constantly looking directly at the camera in a sort of wink to the audience.  The film is seemingly trying to say that it knows the audience is there, and it is not going to pretend as if it doesn’t know it is being watched.  A perfect example of this comes near the beginning of the film, as the narrator explains: “In 48 hours, [Amélie’s] life will change forever.”  While this is being said, Amélie, knowingly, looks right at the camera.

Another example of this occurs at the very beginning of the film and poses some questions about the function of these cinematic violations within this particular film.  As the audience is first being introduced to the world of imagination Amélie has created for herself, the narrator explains: “In this world…the neighbor’s comatose wife has chosen to get all her life’s sleep in one go.”  Then, this woman, at first lying motionless in bed, sits up and says straight to the camera: “After this, I can stay awake day and night.”  Amélie’s imagination is the only way she is able to make sense of the complicated and confusing world she experiences.  This method of dealing with the world will continue throughout Amélie’s childhood and into adulthood.

There are countless other departures from cinematic conventions throughout this film that support this idea of the necessity of imagination in a world that can be so difficult to comprehend.  A violation of consensus reality is made when Amélie falls in love with a man named Nino, and we are given a shot of in which her heart can be seen beneath her clothing.  It beats visibly, and it glows.  When Amélie is upset, she watches TV and views her own funeral, with a huge crowd in attendance mourning her loss.  When Amélie undergoes a moment of realization, the screen becomes lighter and lighter until her image fades away; she is both literally and figuratively enlightened.  Additionally, practically every scene in this film is given a sort of green tint to it; thus imagination is quite literally depicted onscreen.

“If Amélie chooses to live in a dream and remain an introverted young woman, she has an absolute right to mess up her life!”  Though Amélie does, eventually, act on her feelings and begin a relationship with Nino, she does not ever leave the dream world she has inhabited her entire life that is visibly shown through these cinematic violations.  In the final scene, she and Nino ride happily along the streets of Paris.  There is still a greenish tint to the screen.  The scene is sped up, the camera shakes, the image is blurry, and Nino and Amélie even make faces directly at the camera.  Even after acting directly on her feelings and beginning a relationship with the man she loves, Amélie unapologetically remains a dreamer.

Amélie is undoubtedly unrealistic, like many other forms of art, but it is enjoyable not in spite of its unrealistic nature but because of it.  So I think the question isn’t whether a film is realistic or not, but why a film is realistic or not.  Does it make sense for a film to be unrealistic?  What is its purpose?  Is the film’s purpose to be realistic?  I believe Amélie’s purpose is to be an embodiment of imagination so the audience can truly understand what it is like to live in a dream-world.  So, yes, Amélie is unrealistic, and that’s exactly why I liked it.

Who Rules This Domain? (Tori)

    

    Followers of my posts must be acutely aware, at this point, of my love of theatre in addition to my love of film.  So, unsurprisingly, when I saw a class offered this semester called “Stage and Screen,” I added it to my cart immediately.  We started the semester by diving into some Shakespeare, and a few weeks ago we watched Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, which is based on Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear.

    I could easily devote multiple blog posts to this one incredibly rich film.  In class we primarily discussed how an epic tale like King Lear can be adapted for the screen, taking into account factors like the storm, the madness of Lear, the massive-scale battles, etc.  What I was most interested in, however, was one particular character in the film whom we discussed briefly in class but whom I want to explore further.  What better place to do that than in a blog post?

    One of the most thought-provoking discrepancies between Ran and King Lear is a major gender-swap that occurs.  Instead of the king dividing up his kingdom amongst his three daughters as he does in the play, Hidetora divides his kingdom amongst his three sons in Ran.  When we initially discussed this modification before watching the film, I was apprehensive.  There is definitely some justification for making this choice.  Ran is set in Medieval Japan, in which men held immense power over women.  Yet I still found this choice problematic, as the daughters are so central to my vision of anything remotely based upon King Lear.  Additionally, the other Kurosawa films I’ve seen, Seven Samurai and Rashomon, are also both male-dominated, and I was frustrated by the fact that Ran, with this gender-swap, looked like it was moving in the same direction.  However, my frustration did not last long.  Ran definitely is dominated in quantity by male characters, but Kurosawa actually does give authority to women through his implementation of a female character who I would argue is an extremely powerful and intriguing character.

    Lady Kaede is the wife of Taro, Hidetora’s oldest son.  From her very first appearance in the film, we become aware of the extreme power she has with words.  It is after Taro has moved into the First Castle in the kingdom to assume his position as head of the house of Ichimonji that we first meet Lady Kaede.  Hidetora has just made the announcement that he will be dividing his land among his sons due to his old age, yet he will keep his title as king.  We encounter Lady Kaede sitting on the floor in the middle of the throne room, staring into space.  The different levels in this scene stand out immediately; Kaede’s positioning almost makes her look subservient in the presence of Taro, who stands.  She immediately inquires as to the whereabouts of a banner that used to hang in the throne room.  This banner is in the possession of Hidetora.  Taro explains that he gave the banner to his father’s men when Hidetora gave Taro the First Castle.  Lady Kaede says simply “My Lord, it belongs with the head of the house of Ichimonji.”  Taro responds: “But Father is keeping his title and insignia.”  Kaede explains: “Without [it], you are a shadow.”  Taro answers, confused: “What do you mean?  He made it clear that I am now in command.”  Kaede answers, “In that case, behave as if you are” and swiftly leaves the room without another word.  Taro remains, and it is clear that Kaede’s words have resonated deeply with him.  Upon Kaede's exit, he quickly stands up and runs from the room to give the order to his men to seize this banner from his father.  It does not seem as if Lady Kaede would have any authority in this scene.  She sits throughout and is thus situated in the very bottom corner of the frame; she takes up almost no space.  Additionally, she makes no eye contact with her husband at any point; she merely stares into space.  Yet, it is her words that set the entire story in motion.  It is only after this moment that Taro becomes power-hungry and begins to take away the little power Hidetora left for himself upon the division of his territory.  And this is only Kaede’s first scene. 

    In subsequent scenes, her masterful way with words only grows; she blackmails, maims, and seduces her husband’s brother and slowly usurps the entire Ichimonji family.  She functions as a sort of Lady Macbeth character within this King Lear narrative, yet I actually think her character is more fully developed than Lady Macbeth because of the clear motivation for the evil acts she enacts.  We learn throughout the film that Hidetora killed her entire family; thus, her motivation is to enact revenge.  Towards the end of the film, she is beheaded, but she has done what she set out to do.  Though again only occupying a small portion of the frame, she forcefully declares her final words: “My sole desire was to avenge my family by watching the house of Ichimonji fall and seeing this castle burn.”

    Ran is a very long film, and Kaede does not get very much screen-time as the trials of Hidetora are explored.  Then, when she is onscreen, she often takes up only a small portion of the frame, and she is almost always shown sitting.  She is even sitting when she is killed.  Yet she still manages to achieve immense power over the men in the film through her words.  As a general says at one point in the film to Taro’s brother: “Who rules this domain?  You or Lady Kaede?”  Though Ran is, once again, a male-dominated film in terms of quantity, this film proves that women are capable of being powerful, even in the immensely patriarchal society that is feudal Japan.

A Fortunate Decision (Tori)

I know it’s always a bad idea to start watching a new TV show during the semester, particularly during a week riddled with midterms and essays.  Yet recently I started watching Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and I’m immensely grateful I made that unfortunate decision.  

The show, based on the popular children’s books of the same name, follows the trials of three siblings: Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire.   After the death of their parents, they are taken in by the malicious Count Olaf—a man driven by greed as he attempts to usurp the Baudelaire fortune left to Violet when she comes of age.  I remember reading the first book in elementary school and then trying to check out the other 12 all at the same time because I was so eager to find out what would happen next to the three orphans.  So, of course, I was very interested in the Netflix television series when it was announced, and it did not let me down.  The show manages to be both hilarious and heinous simultaneously.  This juxtaposition is best seen through Neil Patrick Harris’ characterization of Count Olaf.  He is ridiculous and theatrical at some points and abusive and frightening at others.  The way this show is able to blend the scary and the silly is masterful. 

The show’s premise isn’t out of the ordinary: three children, mistreated by adults in their lives, must prevail in the face of adversity.  It reminds me of a Matilda vs. Miss Trunchbull or Annie vs. Miss Hannigan story; we are not strangers to the theme of children vs. oppressive adults in literature and film.  Yet I would argue that this show is still extraordinary due to the narrative and visual choices made to bring the series' pages to life.

The books themselves are narrated by their author, “Lemony Snicket,” who sets up the story at the very beginning and is consistently appearing and reappearing, offering everything from warnings to anecdotes to vocabulary lessons.  This feature poses the difficult and extremely important question of how to handle Lemony Snicket’s presence onscreen.  The decision made was to cast an actor as Lemony Snicket who would make frequent appearances onscreen in order to incorporate Snicket’s clever quips seamlessly throughout the episode.  Thus, like Lemony Snicket’s narration in the novels, he commences the story and is consistently popping up.  Using Lemony Snicket in this way, rather than employing some other technique like a voiceover narrator, was the only way to portray this function of the novel really accurately.  A voiceover, though it would function similarly, would take away from Lemony Snicket’s character by making him seem omniscient.  While that choice works for many films and TV shows, it is crucial to A Series of Unfortunate Events that Snicket is not just an all-knowing, nameless, invisible voice but a subjective character with thoughts, ideas, and motives. 

The design elements are just as key to the success of the show as the choice to portray Lemony Snicket as a narrator.  The design of the show is almost cartoon-like; for example, the contrast between Justice Strauss’ bright, colorful, welcoming, immaculate home that is the embodiment of good and Count Olaf’s dark, crumbling, haunted mansion that is the embodiment of evil right across the street could not be more stark.  In a show devoted to the power of children, this design is perfect because it gives the viewer a sense of unrestrained childlike wonder in which extremities are not avoided and something like a house can feel truly good or evil.            

As an English major and a life-long lover of reading, I sometimes get nervous when novels are adapted for the screen.  It can be frustrating to see a world you’ve envisioned in such detail in your head come to life in a way you did not imagine; then that film-world is what you see in your head every time you come back to the novel.  I was concerned about all of this when watching A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I shouldn’t have been.  Through the narrative and visual choices made, the world of the Netflix series was just what I imagined the Baudelaires' world would look like in my mind when reading the books in third grade.  So, maybe, in retrospect, I should have waited to start watching this show and avoided the late nights it spurred.  However, this is one of those shows that’s worth it.

When Tragedy Becomes Entertainment (Tori)

   

    When I first heard about the movie Patriots Day, I was shocked.  As a proud Bostonian, the horrific events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon have a personal effect on me, and I was appalled when I heard that a film recounting the attack and its aftermath was going to be made.  There were people who wanted to use those terrifying few days as entertainment?  Less than four years after the event took place?  Spectators re-living a real attack that took and changed lives forever?  I remember that day so clearly.  I remember thinking how unreal it seemed; how it was as if real life had become a film as my family watched the news and listened to sirens blazing and stayed locked down in our home as a manhunt took place.  I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't a movie.  It was real.  It was frightening and disturbing and actually happening.

    Now, it is important to note that I have not actually seen Patriots Day, nor do I know anybody who has seen it, and though I find the link between tragedy and entertainment interesting and thought-provoking, I will not watch this film.  That this painfully real event was turned into a movie so quickly doesn’t seem right to me.  It’s as if the creation of a film could diminish the actual event, as real people are made into characters, and horrifying actions are accompanied by background music and artistic cinematography.  But this is certainly not the first film to depict a tragedy.  In fact, this sort of thing happens all the time, and it is not something I always find so disturbing.  Why is this?  Is it just because of my more personal connection to the marathon bombing?  Is it ever okay to link tragic events with entertainment? 

    Over winter break, I saw a musical called The Scottsboro Boys at the SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston that raised many of these same questions.  The 2010 musical, written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, composers and lyricsts of other renowned shows such as Chicago and Cabaret, tells the true story of nine black teenagers in Alabama who were sentenced to death in 1931 for the rape of two white women—a crime they did not commit.  I was actually unfamiliar with this particular story, something I now find appalling, as it is such an important one to know and is thought to have been a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.  At the same time, the story is horrifically familiar, as it is reminiscent of modern day injustice for black men in the court of law.  I found it particularly evocative of the infamous Central Park Five/Central Park Jogger case of 1989.  I received tickets to this show as a Christmas present, and honestly, upon entering the theater, I was very unsure what I was about to see. 

    Musical theater does so many things.  It can provide a means of escape from everyday life.  It can capture you in nostalgia.  It can transport you to faraway places and it can be uplifting and poignant.  But I had never before seen a musical based entirely upon a horrific, disturbing, and, most importantly, true tragedy.  The musical is told through the medium of a minstrel show, a choice that is controversial and provocative given the long history of terrible racism against African-Americans in that particular genre of performance.  The show features big dance and song numbers and on paper sounds as though it could be extremely offensive and destined to be a massive failure.  But, in my opinion, it somehow works.  This musical punches you right in the stomach in the way that it confronts this tragedy in an extremely creative, thoughtful, and heartbreaking way.  It is consistently demands self-reflection.  It asks a plethora of questions—questions about the truth in regard to race (one chilling line that has stuck with me ever since I saw the show was when a lawyer states: “you’re guilty because of the way that you look”).  It asks questions about what it means to be free in the world and in your own mind.  It asks questions about ingrained prejudice and bias in each and every one of us.  This show is truly impossible to accurately convey in words because of the constantly conflicting emotions it incites in you.  The Scottsboro Boys  is so much more than a retelling of a tragic event.  It starts crucial conversations about the long history of racism present in our country.  The music is fantastic, and the choreography is stellar, but you are simultaneously loving it and hating it. 

    Those who know me are familiar with my adoration of musical theater.  Throughout my 19 years, I have managed to see and listen to a multitude of different musicals, and each one has affected me in its own, unique way.  But I can easily say that The Scottsboro Boys provided me with the most profound musical theater experience I have ever had.  However, it is true that what the Scottsboro boys went through is not something I ever have to or ever will have to worry about happening to me.  As a white woman, can I even decide that this musical is justified?  I’m not sure I can.  But I do think that condemning a show like The Scottsboro Boys would prevent crucial conversations from being held.  It would stop people from gaining a better understanding of the tragedy of racial injustice in America.

    So maybe I have misjudged Patriots Day.  It is certainly important to keep these types of stories alive through film and performance and to use these stories to better the world in which we live.  Often people forget what entertainment is capable of doing and how powerful it can really be.  It’s great to go see a film or a musical and forget about your life for a while, as you focus only on the characters and the fictionalized world you see in front of you.  But these types of art forms are capable of so much more.  They can make you think profoundly and painfully.  They can hold up a mirror to reveal the injustices in our world.  They can pose questions so poignant and powerful that you can’t stop thinking about them.  The Scottsboro Boys does all of this.  I’m not sure about Patriots Day, but perhaps it does, too.  The connection between tragedy and entertainment is always going to make me a bit uneasy, but if done right, it can provide a means of improving ourselves and our world.   

Whom Do You Trust? (Tori)

(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Whom do you trust?  Do you trust your friends?  Your family?  Classmates?  Professors?  Politicians?  How about the films you watch?  Do you think you can trust them?

The films Rashomon, The Usual Suspects, and Atonement each deal with this question of trust between the audience and the film in their own, unique way.  However, all three coincide in the way they force the realization that the audience is all too willing to trust what it sees.  Why is it that the camera is able to so easily convince us that we are witnessing the truth?

The great Akira Kurosawa's renowned 1950 film Rashomon provides the perfect jumping off point to delve into this question, as the film's impact is truly remarkable.  For example, it coined the term "the rashomon effect," which is a psychological concept used to describe the phenomenon when one occurrence is perceived in distinct ways by different witnesses.  The film follows three men: a woodcutter, a priest, and a commoner, as they discuss the case of a murdered samurai; the two men assert that they have never heard "such a strange story."  The woodcutter claims to have found the body of the murdered man, and the priest claims to have seen the samurai earlier walking with his wife in the woods.  Thus, the two were brought into court to testify.  There, they witness the testimonies of the particulars surrounding the murder, first from a "notorious bandit," Tajomaru, then from the wife of the samurai, and then from the samurai himself, speaking through a medium.  Each character introduces his or her story, and then the camera cuts to what initially seems like a flashback, but actually proves to just be a visual aid to the story they tell, accompanied by a voiceover narration of their testimony.  Eventually, the voiceover stops, and the audience becomes fully immersed in the world of their story.  As each testimony begins and ends, you find yourself believing whichever version of the story you are watching and hearing, yet they cannot all be true.  After the third testimony, the woodcutter reveals that his initial account of the discovery of the body was a lie; he claims that he actually saw the murder take place, as well, but pretended he did not in order to stay out of the situation.  An objective truth is never revealed; the audience remains lost at the end, unsure of which story is true, or if any of the stories are true.  Overall, this film provides the perfect introduction to understanding the power of the narrator, as the film suggests that stories depend wholly on the person telling them.  Thus, it is the narrator who has the ultimate power to determine the truth of the film for the audience.

The 1995 film The Usual Suspects, directed by Bryan Singer, plays brilliantly with this fact—that the narrator has an extraordinary power over the audience.  This film has a non-linear chronology, jumping around in time as the events of a bloody raid on a boat come to light.  This raid was carried out by five criminals, led by a former police officer named Dean Keaton, under the orders of a man named Keyser Söze, a criminal mastermind who is unknown to all.  The facts of the crime, and everything leading up to it, are all revealed to us in the present by one of these five criminals, Verbal Kint, one of the two survivors of the horrific battle.  The story is told to us through flashbacks and voiceover as we once again become fully immersed in the narrative.  It is difficult to describe in words exactly how brilliant the structure of this story is; the audience is constantly thrown back and forth in time, trying to piece together the different parts of the story being told.  After Kint concludes his story, his interrogator shocks him by proposing that Keaton himself was the mysterious Keyser Söze.  Kint is incredulous; he feels betrayed and pleads that Keaton was his friend.  As the story concludes, Kint leaves, and we feel sure it will not be long before he is killed by Söze for the part he played in the story and the information he knows.  Yet, it is moments after he leaves that his interrogator, sitting in his office thinking over the story he just heard, suddenly drops his mug of coffee.  The entire story comes flying across the screen in a matter of seconds through bits and pieces of the facts given by Kint, along with random words written on posters in the interrogation room that popped up in Kint’s story, and finally, a sketch done of Keyser Söze from the last remaining survivor of the boat raid that clearly resembles…Kint himself.  Kint, our narrator, has been lying to us the entire time.  Kint is Keyser Söze.  Singer, in the last couple minutes of the film, completely uproots everything you have come to take for granted throughout the film.  Just like Kurosawa, he asserts the insurmountable power of the narrator.  The entire story, as in almost everything we have seen and heard, has been delivered through Kint.  We somehow forget that Kint is a person with an agenda as we listen to his story.  We believe him to be telling us the objective truth of what happened without a second thought.  In every way, it seems that his story is true.  But each and every narrator has a subjective experience; there is no objective truth, and our forgetting of this crucial fact is catastrophic in the case of this film.

The final film I analyzed was the 2007 film, Atonement, directed by Joe Wright.  This film was based on the 2001 novel of the same name written by Ian McEwan.  This novel is one of the ultimate contemporary novels concerning the use of an unreliable narrator, and I was interested to see how it was dealt with in the film versus in the novel.  The story first follows Briony Tallis, an avid writer, at age 13, as she misinterprets an encounter she witnesses between her sister, Cecilia, and the son of a servant, Robbie Turner.  This misinterpretation spirals out of control as she further and further misconstrues who Robbie is and concludes he must be a sexually crazed criminal, where in reality, he and Cecilia are in love.  When Briony’s cousin Lola is raped, Briony tells the police Robbie committed the crime due to her firm conviction as to who Robbie is.  As she is the only witness, the police arrest Robbie, and he eventually enlists in the war in order to get out of prison.  The story then follows Robbie’s life in the war and finally his reunion with Cecilia.  It is the very end of the story, however, that is truly fascinating.  In the novel, the postscript is entitled “London 1999” and is written in the first person from Briony’s perspective, which is an abrupt change from the third person omniscient narrator to whom we had grown accustomed.  In this postscript, Briony reveals that she is a successful writer and is publishing this story as her final novel, for she is dying.  Thus, this third person omniscient narrator was, in fact, Briony, telling her own story.  But is it the true story?  Briony reveals that, though the characters of Cecilia and Robbie reunite in her story, the two actually both died right before the end of the war.  Thus, the happy ending we received was not true.  It was fiction.  Wright chose to frame this revelation in the film as a TV interview with Briony as she promotes this book.  As we are watching 18-year-old Briony leave Cecilia and Robbie, to whom she attempted to apologize for her wrongdoings, and suddenly the screen goes black.  We hear in a voiceover an older woman’s voice saying: “I’m sorry.  Could we stop for a moment?”  Numerous images of cameras are then shown, showing this woman on them, as we realize that it was this woman who had been telling the story we had been watching, though it seemed like we were watching an objective truth, or a factual telling of past events.  Thus, it is revealed that we were understanding this story through the perspective of an unreliable narrator who is telling a fictionalized version of the events of her past. 

All three of these films intelligently display the immense power of the narrator to truly determine what is real and what is not in a film.  What is more, in my opinion, films are able to even further convince an audience due to the connection between the camera and the story.  We see before our eyes the story that our narrator is telling us.  Thus, that old saying “you have to see it to believe it” comes into full play; we are seeing a story play out right in front of us in a fully believable way.  Yet each of these three films argues that, particularly in the world of film, seeing is not always believing.  Just because we are seeing something doesn’t mean it is the objective truth.  Stories you hear are always coming from somebody else’s subjective perspective.  Thus, it seems that there is no objective truth in the world.

However, these films seem to differ in their ultimate understanding of this fact of the impossibility of objective truth.  The Usual Suspects ends by instilling absolute shock in the viewer; you are left speechless, wondering how you could have possibly been so deceived throughout the film.  You are thus left with a very skeptical outlook on life: absolutely nobody can be trusted, for truly anybody can be deceiving you.  Rashomon seems like it might have a similarly bleak ending, but the final scene takes a surprising optimistic turn.  The priest says, close to the conclusion of the film, “maybe goodness is just make-believe.”  The conflicting stories have him upset and baffled, much like us as viewers, the witnesses are lying and there is no telling what the truth actually is.  He states: “If men don’t trust each other, this earth might as well be hell.”  Yet, upon the discovery of a crying, abandoned infant, the woodcutter decides to take the child and raise him or her with his family.  After seeing this incredible act of humanity and kindness, his bleak outlook on life shifts, and the priest says to the woodcutter: “Thanks to you, I think I can keep my faith in man.”  Thus, Kurosawa’s film suggests that mankind can still be good despite the inescapable culture of lies it has created.  Then, in Atonement, at the very conclusion, Briony Tallis explains why she lied in her novel: “But what sense of hope or satisfaction could the reader derive from an ending like that [in which Robbie and Cecilia both die and are never reunited]?  So in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life.  I’d like to think this isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness.  I gave them their happiness.”  Thus, lies are not all inherently evil, or done in order to confuse or hurt others.  Briony was an unreliable narrator for the sole purpose of achieving this final act of kindness that became impossible to accomplish in reality. 

So, perhaps there is no such thing as objective truth.  Perhaps we are being constantly deceived by unknown subjective experiences pretending to be utterly real.  But this may not mean that “this earth might as well be hell,” as the priest in Rashomon says.  It seems that there is still goodness to be found in mankind despite the untrustworthy nature of storytelling; furthermore, there is even a sort of kindness or beauty in deception itself.

True or False? Reality and Illusion in Metafiction and Metacinema (Tori)

In the short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" from the compilation Labyrinths by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, we come face to face with the meta.  Here, the meta, or metafiction in this case, is a type of self-conscious writing, or writing fiction about the act of writing fiction itself.  As an English major, I constantly find myself writing "meta" in the margins of the novels I'm annotating; it is far from a rarity in writing, and also in film.

"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" tells the story of a world called Tlön, invented by a secret society, complete with invented countries, invented inhabitants, and even an invented language.  The first-person narrator of this story, possibly Borges himself, though it is never revealed, stumbles across a mention of Uqbar, a place in Tlön, in an encyclopedia and finally, after laborious exploration and inquiry, uncovers the history of this world, fully unaware of its inherent falsity.  It might sound ridiculous, but how could he know if this world were real or not?  The most unsettling part of this story is that there is no basis to which the narrator could know of this world's falsity; it seems to be a real world.  As the story progresses, the line between imagination and reality is inextricably blurred; the fantastic world intrudes upon the real world, and there is no going back.  The story ends: "If our forecasts are not in error, a hundred years from now someone will discover the hundred volumes of the Second Encyclopedia of Tlön.  Then English and French and mere Spanish will disappear from the globe.  The world will be Tlön."

This story is a fantastic example of metafiction.  It concerns the process of creation, but it truly becomes meta when one considers how this story is actually about itself as a story.  Borges is inventing this entire story, yet there is truth within this imaginary tale concerning how humans interact with reality and with illusion.  In my opinion, the meta is one of the most powerful tools an author can use in his or her writing.  It is impossible to read something meta and not think of its myriad implications within the text and also in regard to your own life.  The meta demands self-reflection, and thus you can learn a lot about yourself and about the world around you through your engagement with it.

I read this story by Borges a few weeks ago in an English class and found it fascinating, and I have been thinking about the meta ever since.  Thus when it came time to watch another film for this blog post, my mind immediately jumped to meta films.  Though there are countless films that interact with the subject, there is one that is widely believed to be the ultimate in "metacinema," as it is called, and after watching it, I found many echoes of the stimulating ideas suggested in Borges' story as well as new ideas about the nature of filmmaking in regard to reality and illusion.  It is safe to say that the 1963 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini entitled 8 1/2 is both one of the strangest and one of the most thought-provoking films I have ever seen.

The story follows film director Guido Anselmi, played by Marcello Mastroianni, who is dissatisfied with the big new science fiction film he is in the process of directing, while simultaneously dealing with a complicated personal life due to his cheating on his wife, Luisa, with another woman, Carla. He is consistently bombarded by his production team, as well as a film critic, with ideas and questions about the film.  Yet, the appeal of this film is not in the specifics about the plot but in both the structure and dialogue that prompt this film to be considered one of the great pieces of metacinema.

The film opens with a man sitting in his car.  He is trying to drive across a bridge, but traffic has come to a standstill.  At first, everything seems normal, but then we notice a man in a neighboring car is staring directly at this first man.  Then, another man looks right at him, and then a woman does the same.  We are next given a wide-angle shot of a bus full of people with their arms dangling out the windows, facing right at this first driver, and everybody in the standstill traffic jam stares at him.  This is a terrifying image; these people are all frozen and look almost like wax figures.  They do nothing except stare.  The scene just gets more strange from here.  First, the man fiddles with his car windows and doors and starts to panic.  It seems as if he is stuck.  Yet, we then see him climbing out of the roof of his car, and then he begins sailing through the air, his coat blowing behind him in the wind like a cape.  He is flying.  The camera then tilts down to the ground; we are now on a beach, and a different man is holding a rope.  It looks as if he is flying a kite, but we soon realize that at the top of this rope is the flying man, who is then pulled down to the ground.  Right before he hits the ground, we cut to a shot of a man in bed with his arm outstretched.  It was all a dream.

Odd scenes such as this one occur throughout 8 1/2.  At first, just as in the opening scene, the line between reality and illusion is pretty clear.  The scene starts off normally, but it then becomes so fantastic that it must be an illusion.  Guido next imagines himself interacting with his parents, both of whom we learn are dead, and then he imagines a scene outdoors with a beautiful woman.  He also has multiple flashbacks to his childhood.  These scenes are all relatively easy to follow; it might not be understood at the very beginning that they aren't really happening, but the audience can catch on relatively quickly.

Yet, as the film progresses, this line between reality and illusion begins to blur more and more until we get to the final scene, in which truth and fiction are completely indistinguishable; it seems to be both real and an illusion at the same time.  The final scene features every character in the film, including Guido's deceased parents, his childhood self, and the beautiful woman we initially thought was only a part of Guido's imagination, as they perform together in a sort of circus act.  As Guido states at the end of the film, "Everything is true."  We can no longer figure out what is imaginary.  The world has become Tlön.

The dialogue in this film presents some confusing and incredible ideas about the nature of truth and falsity in relation to film.  The words "true," "real," "honest," "lie," "clear," and "understand" come up countless times in the dialogue.  The film asserts itself as a piece of metacinema very early on, when the film critic gives Guido feedback on his science fiction film idea, proposing "One wonders what the authors are trying to say.  Are they trying to make us think?  Do they want to scare us?" which are exactly the thoughts we, the audience, are having at that moment in time about 8 1/2.  Moments like this occur throughout the film, as the characters express exactly what we're thinking, thus blurring the line between the world of the film we're watching and our own world.

A key moment in the film occurs when Guido's film and his personal life are shown to be irrevocably connected.  As he attempts to find an actress to play the role of his wife, Luisa, in his science fiction film, the real Luisa storms out of the theater.  Guido follows her, imploring "Did something you saw offend you?  It's just a movie" to which Luisa replies, "Another fiction, another lie.  You put all of us in it, the way it suits you."  These lines are very loaded.  Guido tries to comfort Luisa by assuring her it's just a movie, but it is clearly not just a movie; the movie is their relationship.  Guido puts everybody in his life into the movie; he has cast the people of his world in this film.  Therefore, he functions as a director of the film, but he also functions as a director of his real life.

This film, like metafiction, raises many self-implicating questions.  Throughout the film, we are trying to understand what is going on.  We are making snap judgments about each scene: is this scene real?  Is this another illusion?  Is this real or fake?  But, as reality and illusion become more and more inextricable, we come to realize that these questions are useless.  As with Tlön, the real world and the imaginary world come to a merging point.  Like Guido at the end of the film, we have a realization: "I'm no longer afraid of telling the truth about what I don't know, what I'm looking for, what I haven't found."  We finally have to accept ambiguity, something Guido is forced to avoid by those around him who constantly ask him for clarity.

Fellini provides us mainly with questions rather than answers in 8 1/2, but one thing he does assert is the profound importance and power of the unknown.  Why is it so hard for us to come to terms with ambiguity? Why is it so hard to admit and accept that we don't know?  Why do we care so much about coming to a conclusion about what is real and what isn't when Fellini beautifully shows that illusions can actually be just as real as reality?  Acclaimed author Tim O'Brien writes in his novel The Things They Carried, "I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth."  Films are all about story-truth.  Though they are directed and calculated and technically illusions, 8 1/2 proves that the world of cinema, perhaps even more so than the real world, can, in fact, provide us with truth.

New York, New York (Tori)

In my opinion, New York City is truly incomparable.  I lived there until I was eleven years old, and although I now proudly call Boston home and am a big admirer of Baltimore, my current city, there is something about New York City that I can't shake.  I am definitely not the only one who feels this way.  New York City has long been an object of artistic fascination.  Artists, writers, musicians, actors, and, most definitely, filmmakers have consistently used New York City as their muse.

After watching Annie Hall for the first time last year, I came away electrified by the way Woody Allen was able to represent New York City on the screen.  So much more than just a location, the city becomes a character itself; it comes alive through the camera and deepens our understanding of the film's other characters, as well.  In short, I loved it, and it got me thinking: how do different films engage with New York City?  How do different directors depict New York in their films?  Are there similarities in their depictions?  Differences?  How do depictions of New York City change through time?

I started my New York City film journey with the 1949 film version of the 1944 Broadway musical On the Town.  Initially based on a Jerome Robbins ballet, with music by the renowned Leonard Bernstein, the musical made a big name for itself and is still widely performed today.  The film, which features the iconic Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, and directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen, clearly depicts New York City as a utopia.  The story follows three sailors, Gabey, Ozzie, and Chip, who have only 24 hours in New York City before they must head back to sea.  They each look for, and ultimately find, love in the bustling city, and after their escapades conclude, they head back to sea, while three new sailors, fresh off the ship, embrace the city just as the original three characters did, suggesting a cycle of fulfilled hopes and dreams.  The opening of the film stuck with me most.  With the euphoric "New York, New York" backing them, the three sailors visit all of the famous New York City landmarks: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Central Park, etc.  New York City truly glistens in front of them; it holds the promise of love and grand adventure.  To the three sailors, and to us viewers, New York City is quite simply "a wonderful town."

Woody Allen is known for his obsession with New York City.  While Annie Hall provides a good example of this captivation, his 1979 film Manhattan is considered his ultimate ode to his beloved town.  Manhattan follows 42-year-old Isaac, played by Allen, and his romantic relationships with, first, the 17-year-old Tracy, and subsequently Mary, the woman with whom his best friend was having an affair.  Just like in Annie Hall, New York City is displayed prominently in the background of the story.  As in On the Town, the opening montage provides a perfect starting point for analysis.  Set to George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," this montage does contrast with the jubilant movie musical's opening montage.  Each shot is undeniably breathtaking, but the shots almost contradict themselves, in a way.  There are some more delicate shots, such as streets at night in the snow and a couple on a balcony with the city lights behind them, but then there are also some more formidable, powerful shots of infrastructure, namely skyscrapers and bridges.  Allen's voiceover complies with this pattern.  Isaac attempts to write the first chapter of a book about his relationship with the city, but struggles to find the description that feels right.  "Beautiful women," "street-smart guys," "decay of contemporary culture," "drugs, loud music," "garbage," "tough and romantic" ...nothing is satisfactory.  Finally, he concludes with, "New York was his town and it always would be."  No longer simply the shining beacon of promise and utopia New York provides for the three sailors, New York is more difficult to describe in Allen's view, and he resorts to claiming ownership of it without further explanation.  The ending sequence does a perfect job of illustrating this feeling, as well.  As Isaac and Tracy part ways, we are given an image of the New York City skyline that, along with the score, feels triumphant and beautiful, but ominous and ambivalent at the same time.  In this way, New York City mirrors Woody Allen's character and his situation.  Isaac's future is strikingly ambiguous at the end of the film, just like our feelings about New York City.

Through the comparison of On the Town and Manhattan, we see a change in the portrayal of New York City.  No longer just a place of promise, achieved goals, and happy endings, Woody Allen suggests complication and contradiction in New York.  To end my exploration of New York City films, I looked to an extremely difficult period in New York's history: post 9/11.  I was only four years old on September 1, 2001, and thus I have minimal recollection of the event's occurrence and its immediate aftermath.  However, after taking an English course last year entitled "Novels After 9/11," I now know more about the huge outpouring of art that occurred in response to the tragedy as artists attempted to make sense of what happened and help those around the world make sense of it, as well.  For my post 9/11 film, I looked to Kenneth Lonergan's 2011 film Margaret, which, though it was released a significant amount of time after the tragedy, thematically captures the feeling of living in a post 9/11 New York society.  The story begins by introducing us to Lisa, a high school girl living a normal, uninterrupted life in New York City, until she accidentally distracts a bus driver, resulting in the death of a pedestrian.  The story follows Lisa's attempt to figure out how to live with this disaster.  There don't seem to be a lot of answers in this film; what stands out are the complexities of a world and how those complexities are attempted to be dealt with.  This is exactly what life in New York City is after 9/11: having to suddenly figure out how to live in an altered world.  The ending sequence illustrates this idea well.  The film ends in an iconic New York performance space: Lincoln Center.  This choice of venue suggests a connection between New York City and art.  After Lisa enters the space, we are given fragmented shots of different people in the audience, all united through the performance they are about to watch.  This choice is poignant in that it suggests a responsibility art forms have to unite a population and provide an outlet for suffering and grief after a tragedy.  Lisa and her mother, despite their strained relationship, unite at the end of the scene in support of each other as they attempt to deal with the complicated world they both inhabit.  In this way, Margaret actually functions as that support.  Margaret provides us with an image of somehow learning to live with disaster, no matter how difficult that may be.

The change New York undergoes through these three films raises many questions.  Is it possible to return to the view of New York City as a utopia?  Will New York films ever again conclude with perfectly happy endings?  In these three films, we see a loss of innocence and romanticism about the city.  It's almost as if New York comes of age through these three films; it grows up and is exposed to more and more complexities and ambiguities surrounding the future.  If there is one thing that remains perfectly clear, it is that New York City remains an object of fascination for different filmmakers throughout the years.  That is something I don't think will ever change.