The Royal Tenenbaum Reflection

After watching the film The Royal Tenenbaums the week we did not have class on November 16^th, the subject that kept crossing my mind was the three children. This was actually my second time watching the movie; I watched it two years ago in another English class during my first year of college at Northern Kentucky University. Being that I don’t have too specific of memories from watching it the first time, and I don’t remember my reactions or thoughts about the film, I watched the movie this time with basically clean slate; although, obviously certain parts and details became familiar as the film went on.  When I completed the movie this time, I was the most interested in the separate characters and personalities of each of the three Tenenbaum children: Chas, Margot, and Richie.

The first son of Royal and Etheline Tenenbaum that is introduced is Chas Tenenbaum, played by actor Ben Stiller. His character was the sophisticated one; he was both very mature and intelligent at a young age. He created a job for himself in some type of finances as an early teenager, and eventually had so much money to himself that it became an issue with his father. His issues came into play when we found out that he was in a tragic car accident with his two sons, his wife, and their dog; everyone but his wife survived, and from there on out he was overprotective of his boys and kept them on a strict agenda.

 The second child that is introduced is Margot Tenenbaum, played by actress Gwenyth Paltrow. She was adopted at age two by Royal and Etheline, and from the beginning she was always considered “the adopted one,” Royal even introduced her to strangers as his adopted daughter. Margot was also very smart at a young age, writing and producing plays in her early years of high school. She grew up to marry an older man, although it was questionable whether she was happy and loved him. It was basically clear that she was a very unhappy woman, spending the majority of her time locked in her bathroom smoking cigarettes in the bathtub.

Richie Tenenbaum was the third child to be introduced of the Tenenbaum’s. He was pretty adventurous as a younger child, and he grew up to be a successful, professional tennis player. He spent quite a significant time with Margot when they were children, running away together and hiding out in public parks and venues, and it became clear that he was, indeed, in love with her when he choked at one of his important tennis matches the day after Margot was married and she was in the stands with her new husband.

I feel that the diverse personalities of the three Tenenbaum children are what make the movie so interesting and entertaining. Although these three characters aren’t the complete center of the film, or even the exact topic of the plot, I feel they add a great deal of depth and diversity to the film, making it that much more enjoyable and relatable to the common viewers.

Reflection on Hunger

                The film Hunger was by far the most mind-disturbing movie I think that I have possibly ever seen. It is an Irish/ United Kingdom film directed by performance video artist/ director Steven McQueen in 2008. While the plot, alone, of Hunger was disturbing enough to affect probably any type of person that would ever see it, there are several other aspects of the film that enhanced its effects and made the film more drastic. The film was created in with a tripartite structure, meaning that it is divided into three parts. Speaking for myself, the dramatic themes and elements of each of these parts are what made the movie the so disturbing as I watched.

                The first part of the film, which was approximately forty minutes, definitely set the serious, and perhaps even unsettling, tone of the film. The beginning scene was loud bangs, which was one of the only sounds heard throughout the entire part of the film.  Once the loud banging ended and the first few minutes of the movie were underway, the silence was evident; there is a powerful lack of dialogue within the first forty minutes, which more than anything aurally assaults the viewers’ senses. Sound is literally only heard a few times in this part of Hunger, which I find mesmerizing that Steven McQueen was able to so successfully pull this off with only telling the story with only great imagery. However, I believe it is the substantial silence that mainly aids to the intensity of the story coming through along with the powerful images in this part of the film.

                Roughly the next twenty-eight or so minutes make up the next part of the tripartite structure of Hunger, and about the first twenty of those minutes were once scene, with only two characters. I found this part of the film to be the most difficult to follow, I feel mainly because it was such a strong opposite of what we are used to seeing in typical Hollywood films, where the scenes of the movies are comprised of takes lasting sometimes only a few seconds. Aside from this part of the film being a single scene, it was also a little difficult to become adjusted to following the Irish dialect of Bobby and the priest as they are talking to, and even challenging, one another.

                The final part of the movie was the most visually and possibly overall disturbing. This is when Bobby’s hunger strike was displayed. The visually assaulting imagery came into play once he had gone so long without food that his ribs and other protrusions out of his body became visible, including his eyeballs at times. He also eventually began to suffer from hallucinations, mostly of himself has a younger boy around the age of twelve running through the woods. I feel the imagery became the most important in this part of the film, because without being able to see the effects of the hunger strike on Bobby’s body, it would not have produced the same effect for the viewers.

                The tripartite structure of Hunger is what I feel was the success of the effectiveness of the film. I think since each of the factors of each part were focused on individually, they were more dramatic for the viewers  of the films, and ultimately brought through the horror of the reality of the time period and the hunger strikes that were taking place.

Reflection on Shortbus

Last week in our International Film Studies class, we watched a film by the title of Shortbus, which was directed by John Cameron Mitchell in 2006. The film was interesting to say the least, and without a doubt unlike any other type of film I had ever seen before. Although it was hard for me to realize during the initial viewing of the film, I really came to enjoy the fact about how deeply the film was focusing on the feelings of the characters. Other than that opinion, I was more intrigued by the making of the film, especially the long process and the non-traditional actors that were cast.

                The first scenes of Shortbus, and several scenes thereafter throughout the film, are sexually explicit scenes; it was evident from the beginning that the film would not be handling sexual scenes the same way as a “typical Hollywood film.” Because of this, in the beginning I started to believe that maybe the only thing Shortbus was about, and the only thing it was going to focus on at all, was the sex;  and there undoubtedly was not much to make me believe otherwise at several points in the film. However, a turning point struck for me when Sophia, the highly sexual couple’s counselor in the movie, admitted to Severitt that she was pre-orgasmic and decided to face her “issues” head on and try to denote the real problem. It was when Sophia made this admittance, and throughout the rest of the film as other characters faced their troubles as well, that I began to switch opinions and ultimately realized that perhaps Shortbus was actually more about the feelings rather than “just the sex.”

                Although it was mentioned before we began viewing the film in class, I didn’t realize until after watching Shortbus the extent of work the director, John Cameron Mitchell, and the rest of the crew underwent to prepare to begin filming. As discussed in the extras of the film’s DVD, the initial process began in 2003, meaning they worked for 3 years before the film was released in 2006. They also didn’t write the story or put together the actual plot until the cast was set, which I found very interesting being that a typical film would be the reversed process, the story and the characters in it usual comes before the actors are cast.

                Going along with the unusual making and creative style of Shortbus, I was also very intrigued by the fact that the film’s cast was compiled of non-professional actors. While many of them were various types of performance artists, or other personas in pop culture, their acting resumes weren’t very hefty. I think it was a bold move, and it ultimately worked out very well because even if I hadn’t been told prior to watching the film I don’t think it was a great detail that I would have picked up on. As mentioned earlier, once the untraditional cast for Shortbus was cast, it was then that the cast and crew got together and put the storyline into place.

                While the film may not be something that I will go back and view often in the years to come, it will for sure be something that I will be able to compare other films to in the future. I am happy to have had the opportunity to study a film of this type and with such details because I feel that it has broadened my opinions when it comes to the intensity of feelings within movies.