An actor looking for work, Ã?ngel, seeks a job with his long lost childhood friend, and lover, Enrique. (Un)fortunately, the uninspired director Enrique currently has no work to give. Hoping to inspire, Ã?ngel offers Enrique a script he'd written. The story in the script is of their shared youth in a Catholic school. It speaks of their blossoming love as well as the sexual abuse suffered together.
Gattaca is the story of a society which has perfected discrimination to a science. No longer is one judged with such arbitrary qualities as race or gender, but one’s abilities. A seemingly utopian ideal, one our society ostensibly works for, where the qualified person always gets the nod. The society in the film ultimately suffers from the same fallacy which has plagued all societies to date however, including our own: that a person’s worth comes from ‘good breeding,’ and completely disregards that intangible element 'human spirit.' While the understanding of the constitution of ‘good breeding’ has been dynamic over culture and time as convenient, relentless is this notion of natural hierarchy. ‘Ethical’ societies, though, such as our own perhaps, seek to make this inequality at least a fair one. The world of Gattaca is no different, but it has things correct; it conjures its caste system from that infallible bastion of our time: science.
Quills is the story of the Marquis de Sade struggling to retain his artistic freedom inside the walls of an insane asylum and the awful consequences of that struggle and that freedom on himself and those around him. The film is directed by Philip Kaufman, best known for his remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1978 and his adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being from 1988.The Screenplay is by Doug Wright and is adapted from his stage play of the same name. Quills was nominated for three Oscars, Geoffrey Rush was nominated for his performance as the Marquis and the film was up for Art Direction and Costume design.
The film deals with how portrayals of sexuality in art can be both useful and damaging, depending on how they are portrayed and depending on their audiences. In the scene I have chosen, the Marquis has decided to alter the originally scheduled play (a la Hamlet) to put on a new play, of his own composition, that lampoons the tyrannical new doctor (played by Michael Caine). The doctor has just taken a wife in an arranged marriage, and it is the general belief of the townspeople that she is much too young for him. A few scenes earlier, the doctor is shown forcing her into her new “nightly duty� as a wife. The Marquis creates an overly sexualized satire that ridicules the doctor’s non-consensual sexual advances. The play, however, creates unforeseen backstage consequences which call the Marquis’ methods into question.
The Door in the Floor, directed by Todd Williams is a story of the dissolution of a marriage a couple of years fallowing the death of their children. The story touches on grief, cooping methods and needs associated with the loss of a loved one through the eyes of a mother, father, and a young child. The story specifically focuses on the mother’s inability to care for her young child and affair she has with a young man that looks eerily like her deceased son. The story is set in current times with the breezy back drop of Easthampton New York .The movie was released in 2004 and is the second film directed and written by Williams. He was nominated for an independent spirit award for best screenplay and won a special recognition award from the national board of reviews in addition to other nominations for the film according to Internet Movie Database.
Marie Antoinette (2006) is a film based upon the book “Marie Antoinette: The Journey� by historian Antonia Fraser. Sofia Coppola both directed the film and adapted Fraser’s biography for the screenplay. Coppola is the third woman (and first American woman) to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing, for her film Lost in Translation (2003). Milena Canonero won the Academy Award for Achievement in Costume Design for Marie Antoinette. The film stars Kirsten Dunst as the Austrian-turned-French princess Antoinette, and Jason Shwartzman as King Louis XVI. Rip Torn, Molly Shannon, Steve Coogan and Marianne Faithful all co-star. The movie was filmed almost entirely in France, around Paris and Versailles, where the real French monarchs lived and breathed over 200 years ago.
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To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar is about three drag queens who travel to Hollywood after two of them tie for a New York City drag queen of the year award. The third drag queen is brought along because she is such a failure of a drag queen (being referred to as a drag “princess� because of her inexperience) and is found by the two winning drag queens, crying on the stairs after the ceremony is over. The three of them hop in an old Cadillac car and drive from New York to Los Angeles. However, on the way they break down in a small town named Snyderville where they are extremely out of place. They are stuck there for the weekend, until a car part comes in, and during that time take the towns people by surprise. The drag queens are also taken by surprise by the townspeople when stand up to a homophobic Sheriff hunting for perverted drag queens. In the end they develop bonds with the townspeople and leave a lasting impression on each other. They say their goodbyes and hop into their fixed car, but not before turning the towns lackluster strawberry social into a red and wild themed party. They make it in time for the Drag Queen of America Pageant, where Julie Newmar crowns; to no surprise, the once failure of a drag queen as the winner; as she has now learned the four lessons of becoming a drag queen in the process of the road trip.
The film was released in 1995 by Universal Pictures and produced by Amblin Entertainment. The director is a woman named Beban Kidron and the film was written by Douglas Beane. The three drag queens are well known actors, Wesley Snipes as “Noxeema Jackson�, Patrick Swayze as “Vida Boheme� and John Leguizamo as “Chi-Chi Rodriguez�. The film was shot in New York and in Nebraska.
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Sofia (seen above), played by Sook-Yin Lee, is a sex therapist who has never had an orgasm. As shown above, her first exposure to the ongoing orgy of Shortbus (the place, not the movie) makes her pretty uncomfortable. It is through her character, then, that we see the most advancement of the themes of sexual liberation and self-acceptance.
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Pan's Labyrinth was directed by Guillermo del Toro and released in theaters in late 2006. It tells the story of a young Ofelia who discovers a labyrinth near her new home in Navarra, Spain, where she and her mother moved to live with her stepfather, Captain Vidal, in 1944, according to moviefone.com. The film won 3 Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Makeup, and also won the Webby and People's Choice awards for Best Movie and Best Film, according to the film's website, http://www.panslabyrinth.com/
In the film, I believe Ofelia (along with the other women characters) are constantly controlled by patriarchy, which is defined as a a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it, according to www.encyclopedia.com. I believe this is emphasized through the shots themselves and the inclusion of the male gaze, which in this case is Kaplan's in-text gaze (as she describes it in her article "Part II: Feminist Theoretical Models") where the men characters gaze at the women characters, thus making the women the objects of the male gaze.
The scene I chose to analyze is the arrival of Ofelia and her mother (Carmen) to their new home in Navarra.
This first shot is of Captain Vidal's hand holding a watch. This immediately gives him control over time and the world in which patriarchy rules. The watch is also a reference to the story of a Captain who crushed his watch when he died so his son would know exactly when his heroic father was killed (a story reinforcing patriarchy). Vidal's hand is clad in a black leather glove, symbolizing his high class and his dark intentions.
The 2005 film Pride & Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright, is based on Jane Austen’s popular novel of the same title. The classic tale of love and social classes unfolds in eighteenth century England. The five Bennett sisters have all been raised with one purpose in life: finding a wealthy husband. When one of the older Bennett sisters, Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) meets the handsome and wealthy bachelor Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen), she believes he is the last man on earth she could ever marry. But as their lives become intertwined in an unexpected journey, Elizabeth finds herself captivated by the very person she swore to loathe for all eternity.Ke
I believe that Pride & Prejudice is mainly based on the idea of the gaze. As theorized by Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema�; the gaze is the power and pleasure of looking and being looked at.
“Moulin Rouge,� released in 2001 and directed by Baz Luhrmann, is a modern-day musical about love. The film follows a young English poet, Christian (Ewan McGregor), who comes to Paris, France in 1899 to take part in the Bohemian revolution. Like other Bohemians, Christian believes in freedom, truth, beauty, and above all else, love. Christian visits the Moulin Rouge in an attempt to pitch a play to the club’s owner Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) but instead finds the club’s star courtesan, Satine (Nicole Kidman). Christian instantly falls in love with Satine and starts a dangerous love affair with her. However, Satine is also coveted by the club’s main investor; the Duke (Richard Roxburgh). As the opening of Christian’s play draws nearer, the Duke becomes a greater presence in the Moulin Rouge, causing strain for the two lovers as they try to hide their affair. In the end, the audience sees the darker side of the Parisian nightlife and how it has no room for love.
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V for Vendetta is the story of a dystopia taking place in near future England under the rule of a conservative dictatorship that controls its people through lies and fear until an anarchist revolutionary comes along named V and through his efforts uncovers a horrible truth about the past of the country and leads the people in a revolt. V for Vendetta was directed James McTeigue (The Matrix, Star Wars Episode II) and starred Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving. It is based on the graphic novel series of the same name written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. The DP on the film was Adrian Biddle (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, The Mummy Returns).
Because of the film’s attempt to stay with the graphic novel design, camera angles and the color palette play a huge role in the framing of the scenes. However, unlike most movies based on graphic novels, the protagonist is a woman. Because of this, the gaze, though sometimes male, is predominantly female, especially in this scene that is being analyzed.
This scene is pivotal because it shows the viewer, for the first time in the film, what life was like before the reclamation and how it affected the people during the “transition� to the current government. The scene shows main character Evey Hammond after being caught by the authorities getting tortured for information on V, the revolutionary. It is inter-cut with her reading the autobiography of the woman in the cell next to hers, a lesbian actress who has been imprisoned because of her sexual preference which in this fascist government is illegal.
The Hours, released in 2002, was directed by Stephen Daldry—who also directed Billy Elliot—and is based on the novel by Michael Cunningham. David Hare wrote the screenplay, Seamus McGarvey was the director of photography—and was also the DP for the film Atonement—and Philip Glass wrote the music for the film. The Hours won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Drama, and Nicole Kidman won a golden globe and an Academy Award for Best Performance by An Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. The film follows three women in three different decades: Virginia Wolf (played by Nicole Kidman) writing her novel “Mrs. Dalloway� in 1923, Laura Brown (played by Julianne Moore) as a 1951 pregnant housewife, and Clarissa Vaughan (played by Meryl Streep) as a modern woman in 2001 planning a party for her homosexual friend Richard (played by Ed Harris) who is dying of AIDS. All three women are connected by Virginia Wolf’s book “Mrs. Dalloway�—Wolf’s tumultuous emotions and dark thoughts influence her writing of her protagonist, Laura is reading “Mrs. Dalloway� and relates to the protagonist, and Clarissa—nicknamed “Mrs. Dalloway� by Richard—represses her dissatisfaction with her life. All three women fight depression and struggle to find meaning in their lives.