Edward Scissorhands: Close Reading

In this post, I’d like to focus on the scene in Edward Scissorhands where Peg(Dianne West) first decides to drive up to Edward’s house and attempt to sell him the Avon beauty product.  Director/Writer Tim Burton does a fantastic job in showing the contrast between Edward and the rest of the people of the town.  Once Peg first see’s Edward’s house in her rear-view mirror, there is a wide shot view of the houses in the neighborhood.  All the houses, car’s, and clothes of the people in the town are all very similar pastel colors.  As Peg drives up to Edward’s house, his house is black and is perched upon a hill.  The difference of color between Edward’s house and the rest of the town, depicts the difference between Edward’s character and that of the rest of the town.

Once we finally see Edward, he has pale skin and dark black clothes on.  I think that color play’s a huge role in the depiction of Edward’s character.  Not only does Edward’s dark house and clothing make him different from the rest of the town, but it also gives in to Edward’s threatening persona.  I think that Edward’s different characteristics make it difficult for his character to become accepted within the town.  Surprisingly, Edward was accepted rather quick within the town, but it did not take long for his acceptance to take a spiral.  I personally think that director Tim Burton did an excellent job in using color to show the differentiation between Edward’s character and the rest of the town.

The Virgin Suicides – Scene Significance

For being the youngest, Cecilia seems to have felt for things a lot more than the other girls do. For example when she first tries to commit suicide and the doctor asks “What are you doing here hunny? You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets”, and she simply replies with “Obviously doctor, you’ve never been a 13 year old girl.” Living in a strict household, to her live seems to be tough. In the scene where the neighborhood boys are reading through Cecilia’s diary, they learn about how she thinks and what her and sisters lives are like. They discover that Mary has a cap tooth, Cecilia’s obsession with elm trees, and how she thinks Dominic was stupid for jumping out of a window to express his love just for Diana Porter. Which was obviously because she liked him.

During this scene I have posted below, the dream-like vision is of what the boys imagine the girls are like and that’s why it’s so significant.  You can tell this is a dream because of the coloring, the unicorn, and how all of the girls look like they are day dreaming. The boys never get to actually understand the girls, except of what they read in the diary. In the scene, the man narrating says, “we knew that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death” and goes on to say “we knew that they knew everything about us and that we couldn’t fathom them at all.” The only chance when they are about to get to know the girls because they were going to save them and drive away together, they all commit suicide. The only memory the boys have left are of what they thought the girls were like.

Boyz in the Hood : Tips for the Future

In this scene and in a couple others, Furious is trying to explain to Tre about how a lot of people from his childhood got into crime while Furious himself did his best to stay out of it because of responsibilities to Tre and his mother. This scene I felt was particularly important because the same ends thing ends up happening to Doughboy by the end of movie, unfortunately including Ricky as well. The film also begins with the statistic that “one out of every twenty-one Black American males will be murdered in their lifetime-most will die at the hands of another Black male.” This holds true to the end of the movie, where Ricky, his assailants, and eventually Doughboy all are murdered by the time the end-credits are rolling. I think the scene posted and the couple other ones where Furious is giving Tre advice on life is important because it sets up his character as the young man who’s trying separate himself from the criminal aspect of his neighborhood while trying to be responsible.

Boyz N the Hood & “The ‘Innocence of Youth”

As far as placing Boyz N the Hood in this particular subsection of “Innocnce of Youth” , I believe it was perfect. Throughout the whole movie you see violence, and death, and change, and “Boys N the Hood” growing up. But what we don’t always remember is that they’re still young. In the opening scene you can see the gang life already thread into the lives of the characters within the movie, and as the movie goes on, you see that it doesn’t go away. Also, something that also doesn’t go away is that small sense of innocence still seen within the characters, including the “gangsta boy” Doughboy.
In this particular scene, you have the moments leading up to Ricky getting shot, but afterwards is what I’m most focused on. When Doughboys and the rest of the guys come up to the scene of Tre holding Ricky in his arms is a moment in which I believe was a change for Doughboy. If you scroll to watch from 2:59-3:04, you see Doughboy walking up, and if you look close enough, you see that Doughboy drops his gun and then has this completely different body language when he goes to hold Ricky in a more gentle manner than before. This alone is that moment (especially with the significance of dropping the gun), seems to represent perfectly what we discussed in class regardless of who you are or where you live, tragedy happens anywhere.
The dropping of the gun I feel was especially significant because it was a representation of his gangster persona being dropped as well in that moment. Going off of that Doughboy literally drops down slowly to his knees to hold Ricky in his arms, in a way to still protect him. That moment was the innocence behind somebody who seems everything but. However, at 3:34, his facial expression switches completely with a look of revenge in his eyes. Overall, I think this goes hand-in-hand with the class discussion we recently had about the judgment that comes along with the hood. People assume that there’s no compassion, there’s no feeling, but fail to realize that even in the gangsters and thugs, there’s still a sense of innocence; they’re forced to grow up faster than usual, taking away their youth, but that innocence doesn’t just disappear.

“It Hurts Reggie”

In Scott Kalvert’s The Basketball Diaries, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Caroll, renown poet and former heavy drug abuser. In the film, Kalvert depicts the real-life occurences of Jim Carroll heroin use. Towards the end of the movie, a man Jim used to play basketball with, Reggie, try’s to help Jim get off heroin cold turkey. In this scene, we see how Jim’s body and mind react to the withdrawals of one of the most dangerous drugs. I decided to take a look at this scene purely because of DiCaprio’s portrayal of drug withdrawal. He has huge difficulty formulating his sentences, his mouth is foaming and is in immense pain. It was an incredible performance for a young actor in one of his first leading roles. Also in the scene, DiCaprio crawls to Reggie, still foaming at the mouth. This shows exactly how low Jim is in this point of his life. The crawling shows a boy who is being reverted back to a child because he cannot care for himself. This was also an important scene because of how it is shot. While Jim is not high on heroin, the use of distorted camera lenses shows that this is not the normal state Jim is in. For him being sober is being high because it is no longer the norm, and that is why his body is having such difficulty adjusting. The most powerful part of the scene is Reggie’s response to Jim for why he is helping him, “I always pay what I owe.” This clearly means someone helped him when he was in need so he believes he must do the same for Jim. Because of the great camera technique and Leonardo DiCaprio’s ability to drugged up or mentally ill (qualude scene in The Wolf of Wall Street) make this scene one of the best for the film

 

Rushmore: Aesthetically Pleasing

There are various elements of Rushmore (dir. Wes Anderson, 1998) which make it extremely visually and otherwise aesthetically pleasing to the viewer. Here is one sequence of the film that exemplifies this:

Some aspects of the scene to take into consideration are cinematography, editing, set design, and music. The camera throughout the sequence and the entire film has minimal movement, save for one zoom-out here. This has a very calming effect. There is also a slo-mo shot at the beginning of this video with Max and four of his class mates approaching the camera head-on, and the shot then speeds up to the regular pace. This is a very interesting technique which I don’t think I’ve seen used before, and it definitely catches the attention of the viewer. The main character, Max, is also placed in the center of the frame in many of the shots. Some argue that perfectly centering characters is aesthetically displeasing to the audience, but I believe the opposite. Anderson incorporates many over-head/aerial shots into his films as well, with two here showing Max’s hands – once with his school yearbook and once with a magnifying glass. The cutting of each shot happens somewhat quickly, but not too quickly, and creates a very nicely-paced montage.

The set design here, and in all of Wes Anderson films, is beautifully detailed. Throughout this scene, the primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) are extremely emphasized. Red and blue particularly make appearances in almost all of these shots. Max’s navy blue blazer which is part of his uniform is almost always present. Other blue elements include his dark blue calligraphy writing, as well as the night sky in another shot. Red seems to be the color most used; we see it in Max’s yearbook, some of the text, one of Max’s hats, his school’s Lacrosse uniforms, other clothes, the velvet curtains at the end of the scene, and more. Yellow shows up in the bees illustrated on the yearbook, Max’s karate belt, and the airplane. These bright colors off-set a couple shots where the only colors used are black and white – one of the fencing team and one of the “players.” This all helps to keep the eye of the audience. Lastly, the music adds to the interesting aesthetic of the film. The song used in this scene has a very steady beat perfect for accompanying this sort of light-hearted montage.

“Don’t you know this a dead body.”

In the film Boyz N The Hood, John Singleton depicts the life of four boys growing up in South Central Los Angeles. In the beginning of the movie the four boys; Tre, Ricky Doughboy and Chris go out on a walk to see a dead body. Ricky brings the football his father had given to him despite Doughboy warning him not to. I believe this scene is very important because it is where we first get to see how to the boys act. Tre is shown at a young age being responsible and caring by telling the gang of older boys “Man, don’t you know this is a dead body.” Ricky is shown to be timid and shows weakness towards the gang members. This foreshadows his ultimate murder. Doughboy is portrayed as the tough one despite his limitations. Him confronting the much older and stronger gang members shows that he is unafraid and could become the most troubled. While the fourth boy Chris does as he is told clearly showing he well be a follower in his older life. This scene is used purely as a catalyst to showcase what type of kids they will turn out to become

 

I’ll Be A Good Boy

In this post I’d like to discuss the scene in The Basketball Diaries where Jim Carrol (Leonardo DiCaprio) visits his mother after he falls victim to heroine. DiCaprio does a fantastic job illustrating how a heroine addict experiencing withdrawals would carry themselves. Typically a heroine addict that is experiencing withdrawal wouldn’t be able to stand for very long, have watery eyes and a runny nose, and not be very coherent. These are all illustrated in Leonardo’s performance. His character is a young adult, but during this scene he is acting like a child. He asks his mom for money, asks her to hold his hand, tries to sweet talk her initially but soon tries to make her feel terrible when he realizes she wont give him what he wants (just as a child throws a tantrum when they want something and their parent says “no!”).

His mother almost takes the bait too, but keeps her thoughts collected. She locks the chain on the door so she can talk with Jim, but not let him in. She does take his hand too in an effort to comfort him. You can even tell in the actresses performance that she wants to help her son but understands it’s the wrong thing to do. So, instead, she helps him in another way… She decides to call the cops on him. In the end this worked out great for Jim because he was sent to prison, forced to quit heroine and eventually became clean. Then in the end of the film we see that he was narrating the story of his life to a group of people to help raise awareness of heroine addiction and its negative side effects.

If his mother didn’t refuse to give his son money and didn’t call the cops on him, the whole film would have had no resolution which is why this scene is so important. What’s also very cool is that fact that this film was based on a true story which further helps people realize how real heroine is and how dangerous it can be.

 

The Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsuEQP9i3iw

An interesting article (pulled facts from it): http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/it-happened-to-me-i-got-off-heroin-with-suboxone

Father/Son Relationship in Boyz n the Hood

For the movie Boyz n the Hood I analyzed the relationship between Tre and his father. When Tre goes to live with his father, at first their relationship doesn’t have much of a connection. Furious has to provoke Tre to greet him. However, their father-son relationship blooms in every scene later on. Furious understands he needs to be Tre’s father figure, the one to teach him “how to be a man”. A scene in the beginning of the movie I want to point out is when they’re by the bay with Tre skipping stones. Furious tries to get little Tre to understand the world: advising him to not join the military and what sex is. Though Furious is a single father and the neighborhood isn’t the greatest, he cares for his son. This scene demonstrates Furious setting Tre up to have high moral values.
In the middle of the movie, Furious takes Tre and Ricky out to a different neighborhood. Tre and Ricky are hesitant in following Furious up to the sign but they do trust him. He teaches them both about some facts of real life. When he’s teaching the boys, he is also teaching the neighborhood about whats really going on in life for black communities. Furious isn’t only a father figure to Tre but also to Ricky, and in this scene, to complete strangers. His advice and talk is valid to them, giving him credibility and securing his thoughts into the minds of others.
Towards the end of the movie, when Ricky is killed, Furious tries to stop Tre. He doesn’t want him to go down that path. He taught Tre to live a life outside of the ghetto murders. Though revenge is usually sweet, Furious steps in front of the door, challenging Tre to shoot him instead. This scene demonstrates the connection between Furious and Tre amazingly. In a way, Furious mocks Tre stating, “Oh  you bad now huh? You gonna shoot somebody. Well here I am. Shoot me”. He goes on to say that Tre is his responsibility, that its not right to do. As we see, Tre runs out to Doughboy’s car anyway. But Furious’s words got to Tre. He repeats to Doughboy to let him out of the car. This is where we see how Tre and Furious’s relationship really blossom. Though Tre wants to avenge Ricky’s death, he respects his father’s words and does the morally good thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lle4ilOHrXg -early relationship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BadSZDpvq-s -Tre and Ricky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fv8bPOwGk -Furious’s words on revenge

Basketball Diaries: Close Reading

The film, Basketball Diaries, serves both as a lesson to learn from and also one to empathize with for me. Going into the film I had little idea on what to expect from only knowing the tittle and lead actor. I was expecting the movie to be a sports tale with some sort of conflict that was to be overcome, but upon watching even the first few scenes I was already seeing the film going in a different direction, one that was much darker. The conflict that soon became evident in the film is the struggles a group of inner city kids have with drugs and the following downward spiral that their lives go through. It’s a rather dark theme but out of all films portraying youth drug addiction that I have seen thus far this one by far strikes home the most. One of the ways I feel the director accomplished this is the way he portrayed the boys while they are still excelling at basketball and not on drugs, he then shows the process of the downward spiral they go through. You see each wrong decision they make and your constantly hoping that they will get healthy and change their ways, but each time they do not, it makes it that much harder for the audience to view. You see the characters eventually progress all the way to “rock bottom” and I personally genuinely felt sorry for Jim. The scene where Jim is at home begging his mother for money and to let him home really stood out to me as perhaps Jim’s “rock bottom”. You are able to see how negative of an impact the drugs have had on him, he’s almost a completely different person and he definitely is to his mother who cannot even bear to let him in because of what he’s become. Even though he’s in the situation he’s in because of himself, the fact that he has little help in his struggle and his own mother can’t even bear him strikes the audience heavily emotionally and for me this scene really resonates the dark theme of the film within me.

Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsuEQP9i3iw