Bunny
I began viewing the clip Bunny with a critical eye and uninterested attitude. It seemed as though we were just going to be watching an odd collection of movie clips that had zero relationship and even less meaning. While watching the clip, I was interested in why the Bunny was important and what the moth was trying to accomplish. The film did not have any words, only facial expressions and sounds to create the desired feeling. I was filled with empathy for the Bunny, who was old and annoyed by the obnoxious moth. The Bunny, as the protagonist was tired and alone, with almost no meaning in life other than making what she was about to bake. I was also, thrown off as to why she climbed into the oven and how the moth had suddenly turned angelic. But the message was full of mysterium and tremendum in actuality. The mystery of it all, was how the oven, a symbol of transformation by using fire as a means of refinement, was the mode of the Bunny’s way to heaven. She was tired of living but fearful of what was to come. In her sleep was drawn in by the loud noise and bright light contained within the oven. As she climbs toward the oven, fear holds her back but curiosity and desire draw her in. She is full of awe and amazement as she enters into the oven. She is at her final destination, away from the physical limitations of her aged body were gone and she was floating free. As the clip ended, I was confused and wondering what it was that the Bunny had experienced and the director’s choice for using only imagery and no words to convey the transformation from life to what appeared to be death.
Northfork
Although this film may be thought provoking seen in full, the snippets shown in class had little to no talking and I feel as though the imagery was not enough to go off of. The emotion evoked by the film was one of confusion and even extreme sadness. The people are on the move, with even houses and churches on stilts, cars packed down from belongings to family members and even a coffin of a dead mother. The first scene shown was of the pastor speaking from a pulpit with a huge window or open space behind him, revealing incredibly beautiful mountains that are so close and yet the people in the building are separated from the nature. Another scene depicted three cars driving on dirt roads with no marks of civilization in three different directions. The layering and montages of the boy running with a suitcase in the opposite direction of the buffalo’s slow meander in the fields made me question what it was the boy was running from and why was he clashing with nature to do so. I feel as though this depicts how nature is being pushed and people are trying to shape it into what they want and yet, it slowly trudges on. The cars, the houses on stilts, the dam that broke all represent the imminent changes technology was having on the peaceful and yet ominous law of nature. The last clip we viewed was of a coffin strapped to the top of a car headed towards a mountain with heavy clouds resting on it. This caused me to question why even in death we cannot rest, and have to be constantly moved along against what is natural.
Paris, Texas
The opening scene of a man in a suit walking through a desert with harsh nature behind him and the strong strumming of a guitar filling the airwaves caused curiosity and a dubious attitude to what the film was about. The man, Travis, seemed dazed, haggard and was unbalanced with the setting of nature. As the film progresses, I observed how Travis is walking and walking and walking and following telephone lines, roads, train tracks and watching cars with binoculars. Travis is looking for something, but when Walt asks, communication fails Travis. He has no idea how to express what it is that is drawing him to continue walking, looking and pursuing. The shot in which he is crossing the huge interstate on the overpass, he walks for a long time, with no breaks and sees all of these cars where they are whizzing by and do not want any other cars to get in their way, slow them down or get near them. Human touch is denied by the very idea of technology. And Travis, always a little set apart is walking and passes a crazy man yelling doomsday over the cars. Travis is able to relate with the man’s frustration and denies what is seemingly the way life has become so separate, and touches the man on the shoulder before walking on. When he finds his wife in the nontraditional brothel where they cannot touch, but only communicate through a phone and one-sided mirror, I was filled with sadness and frustration with how all-consuming technology has become. The shots in this scene shows how even with the phone and seeing his wife could not get him to talk, but when he turned his light on and she turned her lights off, Travis reflection was caught on her face. In spite of the overwhelming stipulations of the technology-filled world, they were able to connect on a human level. Our world has created so many barriers to really connecting and this film shows it at its most basic level.
The Wall
Upsetting. Unnerving. Confusing. Anger. All of these emotions were thrown at me as I watched this film. I was so taken back by how trippy the film was and it was hard to get past that the entire time. The sensual flowers representing something beautiful and pure turned into demonic and dangerous killers. The children turned into faceless beings without an identity and then were turned into meat. A hammer was hammering people, bringing them under its own order. The wall itself was a barrier made up of consumer goods, such as cars, techonology, monetary wealth which all hem us in and hinder our freedoms. An overarching theme present in the film is the struggle to maintain one’s individuality without conforming to society’s demands and pressures. Everything started out normal and then was transformed into something wicked and destructive. A prevailing message was that anything that starts out good can become the thing in which we become entangled and trapped. It was a very negative and bitter movie with lots of social tensions, a sinister atmosphere full of disturbing images and messages.
Cabeza de Vaca
The battle Spanish inquisition was a very sad time where a “civilized” culture tries to save a “lost/savage” culture and yet as I watched the film I began to see that the word civilization was losing its meaning. The Spanish soldier with the cross is captured by the Indians and is angry at first to be prisoner to savages. The scene in which the man tries to escape and the incantation of the Shaman with a lizard tethered to a stick was shocking is very telling. The desperation in the man’s voice when he sees he cannot escape is so saddening but he finds comfort in a childhood poem and in his faith. He clings to this and even experiences supernatural things during his captivity. When he was enduring the ecstatic experience of healing the eye, the camera changes from being objective to becoming what the man sees- or subjective view. We see from his point of view and he is looking upwards and full of ecstasy and are supposed to be able to feel his wonderment as well. The natives were seen as barbaric, but as we see the main character freed from captivity and asked to take more slaves and then I began to question the sacred and the profane. I believe that de Vaca began to understand sacred time but he was in a world of the profane.
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