Premise - Ethel and Ernest - Film review

 Ethel and Ernest is a 2016 British Animated film made by Raymond Briggs who is well known for the Snowman, a classic British animation.

Core Premise:

The story of Ethel and Ernest is about Briggs' parents and their relationship from start to finish and their struggle through World War 2. Ethel is from a working class family, although she likes to think she's not, working for a wealthy family as a maid. She spots Ernest cycling past where she works on a daily basis. Each day Ernest, also from a working class family which he embraces, waves to Ethel as he cycles past. On the 5th day he turns up with flowers and this is the spawn of their relationship. The rest of the film follows on from this, following them as they get new jobs, a new house, and a child. The child being the writer of the film Raymond Briggs. A lot of the film shows Briggs' career choices going against what his parents wanted as they got him into a grammar school and wanted him to do something academic, while Briggs' just wanted to study art and become an animator. The film carries on through until the end of their lives with a rather sad ending.


Authors:

Raymond Briggs, from England, is an author, illustrator and cartoonist who is well known in Britain and abroad for his animated films and shorts. His most well known piece of work The Snowman is a Christmas classic in Britain. Briggs' pursued cartooning from an early age as he knew it was what he wanted to do for a career. He studied at Wimbledon School of Art to refine his skills. After serving in the military for 2 years he pursued a career as an illustrator for children's books. He started gaining attention for his works. In 1982 the adaptation of his wordless cartoon called The Snowman was released as an animated Christmas short, despite it not being originally intended as a Christmas film, yet for many who enjoy it it is seen as a hallmark tradition of Christmas in England. Since then he has had various comics and books turned into shorts or films, most notably Fungus the Bogeyman, When the Wind Blows, and Ethel and Ernest.

Production:

The film was produced by a team of animators from Cloth Cat Animation with help from Raymond Briggs. It used a mostly 2D hand drawn animate style with the use of 3D sets and hand drawn textures. This style provides a nostalgic feel and the use of 3D mainly noticeable in war scenes provides a more realistic effect whilst still maintaining the nostalgic feel and hand drawn 2D style even within 3 dimensions.


Reception:

The film premiered on BBC One  and received largely positive reviews. Many people saw the film as evocative of basic human emotions and portrayed a typical working class family in Britain of the time making it relatable to many people from Britain. The animation was seen as very supportive of the story and style of story telling.

Premise - Waltz With Bashir - Film Review

Waltz with Bashir is an Israeli feature-length animated documentary film  released in 2008 and written and directed by Ari Folman. It was one of the first two feature length animated films from Israel.

Core Premise:

This film revolves around Ari Folman, a veteran of the Israeli Defence League in the 1982 Lebanon war, trying to remember the events that happened he had forgotten about or suppressed. This search is triggered when he meets his old friend from that period of time who is having trouble dealing with the events that happened. Folman can't remember the events but has a 'vision' after seeing his old friend. Though this vision isn't clear to him so he begins to search for answers to try and remember his suppressed memories by talking to people who were also veterans of the war and might have been in the same places as him. The memories he found to have suppressed were regarding the Sabra and Shatila massacre, where Israeli forces lit up the camps with flares allowing the Christian Lebanese Phalange Militia to carry out a massacre on Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites. This is quite a controversial part of the war, as although the IDF weren't directly responsible for the massacre they were complacent in its happening and it wasn't really recognised for its atrocities until years after. The film explores Folman's guilt at allowing the gruesome massacre to happen.

Authors:

Walts with Bashir was written and directed by Ari Folman as well as Folman being the main character of the film. It was his first animated film but not his first piece of filmography. His first notable piece of work was his documentary Sha'anan Si, released in 1991. Through his career he has directed live action fiction, documentaries and animations. It can be seen that Waltz with Bashir was Folman's way of addressing his own feelings from the war and exploring how others saw the war and if others had the same guilt that he had over the massacres.

Production:

The animation for this is purely based around the voices. Before starting any of the animation all the voices had been recorded for the entire video. It uses a graphic novel style of drawing with 3d elements. Because of this mix of styles the film has often been confused with rotoscoping which is quite understandable. When watching the film the style reminded me of something in between Archer and A Scanner Darkly,  so I originally thought that every few frames had been rotoscoped then animated in between, but it turns out a lot of it was made Adobe Flash, which explains why the film took 4 years to animate. It is unusual for an entire documentary to be animated as it's just rarely done. However it is clear that this style provides a lot for the format of this documentary, being able to cut seamlessly between present day and the war, while showing how he was suppressing his true memories of the war and was essentially in denial. In one scene he arrives at the Beirut Airport and believes it is a fully functioning airport full of tourists, active plane departures and plentiful shops, but then he realises the airport is largely in ruins, all the planes are wrecked and the stores looted. Being able to slip seamlessly between these two is one of the benefits of this animation style.

Reception:

Waltz with Bashir received largely positive reviews, with many critics seeing the film as original and innovative, with many citing the animation style over a documentary format as the reason for its innovation. The film was produced by a fairly small production company on a fairly small budget of $2million, while it managed to gross over $10million worldwide, showing that it was a success for a seemingly low budget animated feature-length film. The animation style invented by Yoni Goodman, of the animation studio responsible,  was widely praised by critics for its effectiveness in this format.

Premise - Mary and Max - Film Review

Mary and Max is an animated feature length comedy film released in 2009, directed and written by Adam Elliot.

Core Premise:
This film follows the story of the unlikely friendship of 2 people from opposite sides of the world. Max is a 44 year old overweight Jewish man from New York, who is lonely due to his lifetime struggle of making bonds with other people, which at the start is unknown why. Mary is a young girl from Australia who lives with her alcoholic mother and father who is constantly working. She gets teased for her birth mark by other kids at school and generally feels alone with no friends. The one thing they both have in commonan  is their obsession with a television show called "The Noblets" where they both see it as a happy alternative which is colourful and everyone has lots of friends in contrast to their own lives where everything seems bleak and lonely. They become pen pals and form a bond over their shared love of chocolate which becomes a recurring theme. They begin telling each other about their lives and become interested in each other, nervously awaiting each letter. Eventually one of Mary's letter causes a large panic attack for Max which stops him from replying for 8 months. When he finally does he explains how he went to see a therapist and was diagnosed with asperger's disorder, and also how his anxiety attacks stopped him from replying. A lot of the story following on from this centres around Max's newly diagnosed mental disorder. Mary is inspired by it and starts to take an interest in mental health with an aim of curing asperger's disorder. She writes her thesis for her degree on Max and it gains traction to the point it is picked up by a publisher. She sends Max the first copy of the book. When he receives it he goes into a fit of rage as he is not happy with his mental issues being displayed to the public. Trying to find the right words to express his anger he eventually gives up and takes the key for the letter M off his typewriter and sends it to Mary in the post. Realising how she has upset Max she destroys all the copies of the books and spirals into an alcohol fueled period of depression where her husband leaves her and she attempts to  take her own life. Right after her suicide attempt she receives a parcel from Max, who has found it in his heart to forgive her, and gifts her his entire possession of Noblets collectibles. This gives Mary new hope and a new energy on life. She decides to travel to New York to see Max, but when she arrives she finds him dead in his apartment. While initially sad she gazes around the room and notices all the letters, drawings and pictures she had sent max over the years. Plastered over all the ceilings and walls, so she knows that she was always in his heart. In his final letter to Mary, Max had stated that she was his best and only friend.

Authors:
Mary and Max is directed and written by Adam Elliot who was also largely responsible for the stop motion animation. Elliot began making animated films in the 1990s at an arts college in Melbourne, Australia. His first film was an animated short he released as an amateur while still studying. Since then he has made 5 more films which were professionally funded. Mary and Max was Elliot's first feature length animation which managed to get some big actors onboard. Aside from this all his other animations have been short films. Over this time Elliot has had great success with his films submitting them to hundreds of film festivals and winning multiple awards. A lot of his stories seem to be related to issues of his own life and come from personal experience leading to a more authentic style of film making where it comes across as genuine.

Production:
The film is animated in a claymation style, where clay models are animated using stop motion (taking each frame as a picture. This style allows the characters to be molded easily and can quite easily change. This style also lends quite a lot to the effect of the film. While it is a comedy it is still quite dark at points, with multiple deaths throughout the film. The silliness of the animation makes these dark moments more humorous and managed to achieve quite a unique effect I think would be hard to achieve with live action footage or 2D drawn animation.

Reception:
Mary and Max first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. From here on it received 2 awards from other film festivals, one of which was for best animated feature film, before it was released to the mainstream in cinemas. While it was never a large success at the box office and didn't garner large amounts of attention, it still received a mostly positive reception from critics and audiences, receiving an astoundingly high score of 95% on the review site Rotten Tomatoes. It was generally seen as being well animated and well written. With many people citing Elliot's dry wit that carries on throughout the film, as well as the 'film noir' style which aided the story in conveying a continuous tone.

Film Review - Adaptation - The Hobbit

The Hobbit film trilogy is often seen as one of the most irritating film adaptations of a book. Seen as a commercial grab for money where three long films were created from one short book, knowing that the large fanbase of Lord of the Rings would willingly go to see it. In this sense it was a success as it made a lot of money at the box office. Yet it still irritated the many hardcore fans of the original book version and Lord of the Rings trilogy. There were many countless changes that it would be impossible to cover all of them so I will discuss some of the worse changes.

The main character Bilbo Baggins is very different from his version in the book. Where in the film he is seen as adventurous, courageous and willing to fight and participate. However in the book his character contrasts this quite a lot as he is not an action hero. He is a thief for Gandalf and not a warrior. While the characteristics of certain characters changing can be annoying it's not quite as annoying as the vast amount of characters that were added either because they were popular from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or they just needed extra characters to stretch the story into three films. For example the main Orc, Azog the Defiler,  hunting Bilbo and the dwarves, was never in the book. He is simply an extra character that is there to provide another story arc from the main one, as the main one doesn't have enough content to warrant this much screen time. This is not the only extra story arc that has been added in to fill out the film. Romances between characters that were never written about appear. Legolas, who is a character from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, appears in the Hobbit series. This is likely because he was one of the more popular and idolised characters from the LOTR. Another character that didn't appear in the book is Radagast the Brown, another wizard to again fill more meaningless content in the film. Although I have only given a few examples there are countless more to display how far this derives from the original source. While all these characters are being added, an important character from the book, Tom Bombadil, does not appear at all throughout this trilogy.

It seems like this film series was unable to capture the reality of the book. Where the book was quite childlike and story driven, the majority of the film adaptation was endless fight scenes twisted in with meaningless story arcs that have no effect on the outcome of the story. At a point it gets ridiculous when nearing the end 5 armies battle each other. It completely loses grip of the story and becomes all about the high budget cgi fight scenes. Despite this it still made a killing at the box office likely due to the many hardcore fans of the book and LOTR film series.

Film Review - Documentary/Mockumentary - HyperNormalisation

HyperNormalisation is an expository documentary made by Adam Curtis for the BBC in 2016. It is an almost 3 hour long, low budget documentary that uses archived clips, eery sounding music and occasional narration to present a dystopian view of society. In this documentary Curtis presents controversial views surrounding the governments and conflicts of the West and Middle-East. He also discusses hyper reality or in a form he calls "HyperNormalisation". In which he is convinced that the majority of society is living ina  fake world run by corporations and kept stable by the politicians in the world. Throughout this documentary he looks to make an argument against and expose the scandals of politicians and how they came to trick people into a false view of reality. Throughout the film he discusses interesting subjects regarding powerful world leaders and influential people, such as Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. I found the section on Putin the most interesting as it is possibly the most clear case of a nation's leader tricking the population into a false sense of reality. Where Putin is largely corrupt and this is no secret, there is no uprising due to people working under Putin funding various political movements, even those that are opposed to Putin. Because when so many opposing voices are heard, to the average person it is hard to know which is true. This leaves the person in a state of confusion so they just choose to ignore it and accept the reality with which they are presented.

While I could talk about the interesting concepts presented in this documentary for hours, the way in which it is presented is just as impressive. The entire film is only clips that Curtis has gathered. These clips come  from a range of sources including old news clips, youtube clips showing the modern day reality, gruesome footage from war torn areas, and a mix-match of all sorts of clips that only help to give this dystopian feel. It is easy to see the world in a different way after watching this film, as the version of reality presented in this film is very dark and gruesome in nature. While we can choose to ignore this dystopian version of reality and happily reside in the more happy reality we know, you still can't help seeing how it can be true. The clips used succesfully present the world as if it is a confusing and a dystopian mess. Throughout Curtis uses music from various artists including Burial, which also add to this dystopian, eery effect that this documentary achieves. On top of this he narrates throughout most of the film, often giving arguments or observing arguments, and stating explanations for these arguments.

Overall this is one of my favourite documentaries as it is a real eye-opener and is really effective in shaping your perspective of the world and what reality might be. It covers a lot of content and is a lot to take in in one sitting but it is definitely well worth it. You might be left questioning your own reality or having an existential crisis.

Film Review - B Movie - Sharknado

Sharknado is a sci-fi horror film with comedic elements. It was a film made for television directed by Anthony C. Ferrante.

The premise for this film is that a freak cyclone has dragged sharks out of the sea and is dropping them over the city of Los Angeles. Such a ridiculous premise would never garner a large budget  that you see many Hollywood films getting, which is why this movie can be considered as a 'B Movie' with a budget of only $2 million. None of the actors are too famous but provide an interesting and diverse cast with contrasting characteristics. This film (at least for me) never had any real immersion due to the low quality cgi and the ridiculousness of the premise. But it was still entertaining nonetheless. Often coming off as cheesy, this film has all the characteristics of a typical B movie, where acting and special effects are suboptimal by the standard of the time period in which it is released. Throughout the film there are obviously fake sharks floating around the city and the actors trying their best to remain serious have to confront them as they present obstacles.

 However this is where some of the comedy comes from. Where it appears the actors are trying to remain serious it is impossible not to crack a smile at points in the film. This is a film that has taken a full on approach to the fact that it is low budget and silly at its core, and acknowledges that. In this sense it is very meta compared to earlier B Movies, which attempted to be serious films but failed. The directors clearly made this with the knowledge that they simply don't have the money to make this plotline immersive. In a way the comedy derives from this fact of an otherwise serious but poorly made hour and a half of ridiculousness. 

In summary these are what I see as the 5 redeeming qualities of this film:

1. The contrast of serious acting with the poorly made and animated sharks creates a lot of humour as it makes it hard to take their acting serious.
2. Overly dramatic points in this film only emphasise the ridiculousness of the whole plot but somehow works to it's advantage, with at one point a woman giving a heartfelt sob story about why she hates sharks so much, which in the end comes off as insincere.
3. The rapid progression of the story again helps to show off the ridiculousness in the film. For a relatively short film, a lot happens in it. Constant action is upon the characters as they have to fight off sharks in increasingly ridiculous ways.
4. The actors while coming off as cheesy all actually help to that effect of the film. I would not say the acting is terrible as it is a hard film to act serious in. But it seems like a fitting cast of characters was placed in this film.
5. The over the top action scenes are definitely the best bit of the film. When sharks come flying out of the sky and bite a man's arm off, or when another man is shooting sharks in the sky and they fall down. It even progresses to a point where a man uses a chopper to fly into the sky and send missles into the shark infested cyclone. But the crown jewel is when the main character Fin (one of the cheesy puns from this film), jumps head first into a shark, that has come flying out from the sky, with a chainsaw in hand. The other characters think he is dead but then the chainsaw rips through the shark from the inside and Fin is revealed to be alive.

Film Review - Structures - The Matrix

 The Matrix is a sci-fi film released in 1999 directed by the Wachowski Brothers. This film seems to align more with the three-act structure and not the five-act structure.

Act 1

The film begins with Neo leading a seemingly ordinary life, unknowingly inside of the Matrix. The Matrix is a virtual reality created by robots where most of the humans left on earth now reside. This first act of the film exposes the real world and the falsehood of the reality he thought was real originally. The first incidents to be incited are when Neo starts to notice things are a bit unusual, as he starts noticing more and more glitches in the Matrix. Eventually Neo comes across Morpheus who presents him with the choice of the red pill or the blue pill. The blue pill causes him to remain in the false reality, and the red pill will awaken him to his true surroundings. This is the point in the film where everything changes as Neo has to make this difficult decision. Morpheus believes that Neo is the chosen one and the only person capable of saving humanity. So when Neo decides to take the red pill is when the adventure begins. The character's world is shaken up and reality is no longer real.

Act 2

Act 2 begins from the moment Neo takes the red pill and has a sudden awakening to the real world. From here on Neo begins to learn about the matrix and how humans are farmed for energy by robots. Morpheus as the mentor in this story teaches Neo how to fight in the matrix and tries to teach him how to understand the matrix, for if he can fully understand it, as the chosen one he will be able to control the matrix and warp it for himself. Through learning this you can see Neo's confusion, and as the audience we also share this experience of confusion as it is a hard concept to wrap your head around. Neo is given martial arts training through the press of the button and programming it into him, so that when he enters the matrix he automatically knows how to fight. He goes on to learn that if he dies in the Matrix, he will die in the real world. While Neo is learning all of this we learn that Cypher (another human in the real world) is conspiring with Agent Smith to undermine the others. This is the first sign that Cypher will end up double-crossing the rest of the humans. After all of his training, Neo eventually goes to meet 'The Oracle'. From here on the story starts to move rapidly as more is revealed and the characters are put into danger when they enter the matrix. And when they escape the matrix into the real world they have to deal with Cypher who is trying to betray them. The point when Cypher murders some of the crew and attempts to murder the rest can be seen as the second plot point where stories develop from.

Act 3

The point when Neo tries to save Morpheus who is stuck in the matrix can be seen as the beginning of the third act. Tensions begin to increase as there is only more action. Intense chase and fight scenes follow, but as the others manage to get out of the matrix, Agent Smith destroys the phone box that Neo was about to use to escape. This leads to an intense fight scene in a subway station beteen Neo and Agent Smith. While all of this is going on in the matrix, the robots known as sentinels are threatening to destroy Morpheus' ship. The only way to stop the robots is with an electromagnetic pulse blast that would destroy all technology, but this would also kill Neo who is still stuck in the matrix, so they have to do their best to hold off from the sentinels while Neo tries to escape. Eventually Neo comes to believe that he is in fact the chosen one, and takes control of the matrix. This twist in the story allows Neo to triumph over Agent Smith which once seemed an impossible task.

Film Review - Archetypes - Big Hero 6

Big Hero 6 is an animated film by Disney, released in 2014.

Hero:

The main character in this film is called Hiro, and quite obviously he is the hero. He is highly intelligent and ambitious. A rebel and a nerd he is perfect for this hero role.

The Sidekick:

Baymax is a robot created by Hiro's brother Tadashi. Although it is not known at the start, after Tadashi's death Baymax becomes the sidekick to Hiro, always looking out for him. Hiro sees him as something created by his now dead brother so he enjoys having him around and he helps him out when Hiro gets into some sticky situations. Later on in the film Tadashi's friends from university help Hiro out, so they can all be seen as his sidekicks as they are all supporting him.

The Maiden:

As this is a kid's film there is no clear maiden or women of desire. You could consider one of Tadashi's friends from university as the maiden but this is not clearly displayed.

The Mentor:

Hiro's older brother Tadashi can be seen as his mentor. He encourages Hiro to apply to university and wants to see him succeed. He gives his intelligent but sometimes naive brother advice so he can do the best possible.

The Mother:

The mother figure in this film is Hiro's auntie and guardian 'Aunt Cass'. She is caring for Hiro throughout the film and is often worried about him.

The Child:

The child in this film is one of the sidekicks, Fred. While he is older than the main character Hiro, he is still childish and immature often joking about and acting silly.

The Shadow/Villain:

Professor Robert Callaghan is the villain in this film. He starts off being a seemingly nice professor at the unviersity Hiro's brother attends, but it is soon discovered that he started the fire at the university which killed Tadashi so he could steal Hiro's nanobots and use them for his own good.

The Trickster:

Once again Hiro's friend and sidekick Fred can be seen as the trickster as he is often messing around and making jokes. However at times Baymax  is often the trickster as he is often doing strange things but this is out of innocence.

Film Review - The Hero's Journey - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

 

The first installment in the 8 film long series about Harry Potter, is a great example of 'The Hero's Journey' in action, although it doesn't adhere to every step of  Joseph Campbell's version of 'The Hero's Journey' that we learned about in the lecture. There are varying takes on 'The Hero's Journey' with people citing different steps throughout. And most are correct when applied to certain films.

Departure

Ordinary world:

 

Harry is looked after by his auntie and uncle, often being mistreated, but otherwise was a seemingly normal life. While miserable he accepts his fate as that is all he knows. The change to the ordinary world begins when Harry first discovers his magical powers. This creates a rupture in his real life as his auntie hates magic due to being jealous of her sister who had magical powers. 

Call to Adventure:

After discovering his magical abilities he starts receiving letters from Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. This is definitely the first call to adventure in the film as it signals the beginning of a long journey. He doesn't yet know the contents of the letter but is overly curious as he never receives any letters.

Refusal of the Call:

Harry's family, insistent on him not attending Hogwarts school, keep destroying the letters that come through the mail. More and more letters keep coming every time Harry's auntie and uncle destroy them. It gets to the point where the house is being flooded with letters for Harry and their last resort is to move away to a house on a secluded island.

Supernatural Aid:

As Harry is celebrating his eleventh birthday on his own, a knock is heard on the door. It is not opened and suddenly it gets knocked down a mysterious and seemingly threatening giant squeezes through the doorway. The giant, Hagrid, goes on to reveal that Harry is a Wizard. He then takes Harry with him to go get prepared for Hogwarts. Involving aid with money and items he might need for school.

Crossing the First Threshold:

The first cross from his ordinary world to the magical world, is when Hagrid takes Harry shopping in Diagon Alley. He witnesses all kinds of crazy things being constantly amazed as it is so different to the world he has gotten used to.

Belly of The Whale:

This can either be seen as the moment when Harry goes to board the Hogwart's express train, or when he exits it and arrives at Hogwarts school. I think when he arrives at the school is better in this situation as he has finally arrived at the place he will spend the rest of the film. The large and intimidating structure of the school with large hallways make Harry seem so small in comparison.

Initiation

The Road of the trials:

 The first trial on this road of trials for Harry is when he confronts the sorting hat. The sorting hat is responsible for which house he ends up in, whether he ends up with people he dislikes (Malfoy) or the people he likes (Ron and Hermione). This is the prerequisite to Harry's adventures and starts him off. From here on he begins facing the many trials that are presented to him in his classes and around Hogwarts.

Meeting with the Temptress:

It seems like this step is absent from this film, which makes sense as the main character is eleven years old so it doesn't seem very fitting for there to be some sort of temptress. However a temptation in another form is present. When Harry is wearing the sorting hat it suggests he will succeed in Slytherin, but Harry knowing the bad reputation of Slytherin wills for the hat to place him in Gryffindor

Atonement with the Father:

Dumbledore is the obvious father figure in this story, but this step doesn't fit into place in this film. Instead the 'atonement with the father' is at the end of the film when Harry wakes up in a hospital bed after fighting Voldemort and Dumbledore is by his side.

The Ultimate Boon:

This is when Harry goes with Ron and Hermione through the secret trap door where the three headed dog is. They go on to face a series of trials and challenges ultimately leading them to Professor Quirrel, who is Voldemort. Voldemort tries to kill Harry, but Harry's touch burns Voldemort and causes him to turn to dust.

The crossing of the return threshold:

Harry wakes up in a hospital bed after his encounter with Voldemort and is reassured by Dumbledore that everything is okay. He reunites with Ron and Hermione and the world seems to be in order once again.

Film Review - Comedy - Peep Show

Peep show is a 9 series long, British situational comedy show. The show gives dry, deadpan deliveries that can often be quite morbid and self deprecating. The show follows the lives of two flatmates, Mark and Jeremy, through the drama of relationships, work and homelife. Throughout the show the two main character's stream of consciousness can be heard. This form of comedy can be likened to the works of standup comedian Eddie Izzard. They depict a real aspect of life in that we don't always say what we're thinking, and that we're just trying to be nice. This is quite humorous as it's not something that's often acknowledged and at moments it can be all too relatable. You often see through the eyes of whichever character is speaking to give their full  perspective and inner thoughts. This is where a large amount of the comedy in this show comes from.

Overall this is one of my favourite comedies as it is scarily relatable at points. When we experience a social interaction through Mark's eyes and you hear his inner train of thought showing the awkwardness that most of us experience at some point in our lives. The counteracting characters work quite well as both can be seen as self interested and not always looking out for each other despite supposedly being best mates. Issues with women and money are often the main conflicts that arise between the two and often lead to some obscure outcomes as they are seen as two middle aged awkward individuals with silly characteristics that end them in these situations.

Black Narcissus Film Review

                                                                [Fig 1. Film Poster]
Black Narcissus is a religious drama film released in 1947 which was created by the duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It's a psychological drama which was different and groundbreaking for its time with the use of matt paintings and exploring themes that had never been previously explored in films. The story centres around a convent of nuns who have moved to a valley in the Himalayas and the emotional tension and lust within the convent which causes issues.

                                                               [Fig 2. Film Still]
The story begins in the nuns' original convent where we are faced with a lot of religious imagery such as the cross shaped table. This is relevant later on as when they move to the palace in the himalayas it is decorated much differently much to the distaste of the nun in charge Sister Clodagh, in the first half of the film there is much that is changed about the palace replacing tapestries that they seem unfit and statues to different deities other than christ. This contrast between the two worlds and the will of the nun's to change them is a big part of this film as it is the nun's who live a strict christian life travelling to an isolated village where people go by tradition rather than religion. The nun's constantly question things, such as the old wise man who sits in the same spot all the time yet they want to remove him from the spot. The male progatonist in the story is a British agent known only as Mr Dean who works in the valley where the nuns have been sent. Mr Dean is the focus of the problem of lust for the nuns with one nun (sister Ruth) having such lust for him that she quits the convent to try to be with Mr Dean and this is inevitably where the story takes a sharp downfall into chaos.

                                               [Fig 3. Film Still (Sister Ruth's Rage)]
The whole film is full of contrasts and conflicts even within the convent. You can see this by the different roles of the nuns even though they are supposedly equal you can see that Sister Ruth is treated bashfully and looked down upon by the other nuns. There is also the distinct contrast between men and women which are rarely seen in today's films, with a stereotypical strong man looking after the sisters being honest with his intentions and the luns who try to restrain their lust for him only showing him disdain. Yet another large contrast is between the locals of the Himalayan valley and the arriving convent who are working to change things about the locals and instill upon them a new religion, finding their way of life bizarre and non-sensical in some cases, such as Sister Clodagh's efforts to remove the holy man from his constant place of sitting.

                                [Fig 4. Film Still (the localy holy man in his tranquil spot)]




                                                                  REFERENCE
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039192/
[2]https://scribehardonfilm.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/blacknarcissusnuns.jpg
[3]http://offscreen.com/view/holiness_in_black_narcissus
[4]https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1517-black-narcissus-empire-of-the-senses