I don't know what everyone else thinks about the supplemental reading material that has been assigned over the last few weeks, but I personally have found them to be very insightful, especially the Kino Kultura reviews of Beshkempir and The Orator.
For example, with Beshkempir, I thought the film was great and the use of color was really interesting, but I didn't realize what the significance of using color at certain points in the film was. After reading the review, that approach made much more sense to me. In retrospect, it seems like something that I should have been able to pick up on by myself, but anyway... my point is that getting a better understanding of the film through the review made an already fascinating film seem even more powerful.
With The Orator, the film review kind of puts the distinctive style of the movie into perspective by briefly comparing it to the more serious approach of past films representing the same point in history. The author, in doing this, looks at The Orator as a film that is more along the lines of fantasy ("told according to the rules of a fairytale"), which was kind of interesting to think about. I can see how one would come to this conclusion, based on the narrative quality of the film, but I would not have thought of the film as a whole as being "unreal", so the author's explanantion of the events of the film as they relate to the format of a fairytale made me look at the film a little bit more critically than I might have otherwise.
Well, I guess thats all I really have to say about the readings for now. I just thought I would mention them because I have found them to be really helpful in making me think about the films from a different perspective and giving me a better understanding of some of the subtle details that I may not have figured out on my own.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm glad you thought they were helpful--I was really thankful to find some additional writing on these films! It ended up being harder to find reading matter on C/Asian movies than I would have thought. I guess that's my motivation to try to get some more stuff up for those who come after us!
ReplyDeleteI agree, after watching the movie and forming my own opinion, it was really cool to be able to read interviews with the people involved in the process of making the movie. I found it helped me look at the film with a different perspective than the one that I originally watched the film with. Also, it was really interesting to be able to feel like I was getting to know the people that created these films instead of simply watching what they had created, yet knowing very little about them.
ReplyDeleteI think that what you have to say here about these film reviews is really well thought out. I think that in general these reviews are good for us to see exactly how our two text books and the movies can be combined together in order to see how they function to support each other in many different ways. Reviews give us a way of understanding some things about these films that we may not have noticed, or confirm ideas that we had with others. The idea of the reviews is very important to this course, and I like what you had to say about it here with these two films.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember what review it was I read, but it make me re-think the film and what exactly what the director wanted, and what he saw the film as. I think they have been helping in helping us to understand really what these films mean and how they've affected other people out there.
ReplyDelete