Self Evaluation

In order to develop new skills in analyze and understand films, it was assigned the creation and maintaining of this blog. Some of the skills developed are the understanding of film techniques and its purposes, like mise-en-scene, cinematography, music, acting, etc. For me all this techniques and the way we can analyzes them is new and I consider that with this course I learned very much.
The postings in this blog have to fulfill the requirements of the course in terms of completeness, time, and quality.
About completeness, this blog have all the postings required plus a bonus posting. The bonus posting was about the movie Gangs of New York by Martin Scorsese.
The main part of the blog postings and responses were completed by the date assigned. Some others were not possible to be completed at time because reasons of time or because it was difficult to watch the movie by the time required.
This blog was made with the goal of make postings that have analyses and comments that efficiently contribute with the discussion of the movies. In order to make that possible, the analyses posted in the blog were made considering the quality of them, because they are part of the open discussion of analyses between our classmates. For some postings, moreover than watch the movie, it was needed some references like the class book to improve the quality of the postings by having a good knowledge of the topics discussed.

Gangs of New York

Gangs of New York (2002) is a movie by Martin Scorsese that like Mean Streets, Goodfellas and Casino, is focused in the battle of the man in the search of power. However this movie looks very different from the others mentioned in terms of time, what also change others aspects like the mise-en-scene, music, acting and others. The perception of this movie is also different from the others mafia/ gangsters movies by Scorsese because it is developed in the story of a revenge. In this movie, there is not a main story of a group of gangster that rises in terms of success, became rich and famous and then fall up to get nothing. There is a story of a boy that lost his father and after a childhood full of suffering wants to avenge his father death. In this movie Martin Scorsese presents the main ideas presented in other movies, but with a different inspiration.

Q Tarantino

Something that I have learned with the course of Topics in Film, is that an auteur puts its own and unique stamp in his work, making it different from the other’s, although it may be about same genre or same topics. Quentin Tarantino makes his works mainly focused in gangster, crimes, and violence, how the underworld works from his perspective. Tarantino likes to use music, costumes, and all kind of mise-en-scene to give to his movies a “retro” style. This is a characteristic of his work. This helps to portray a vision of gangster/mafia more informal than the one presents in Scorsese works. It may be also because the mafia presented in Tarantino work is inspired in a more “down street” mafia, with a lot less glamour. Another thing that makes different Tarantino movies is the humor he integrates in the dialogues. Although the scene can be about a torture, a murder, or about crude violence, the way he integrates humor in the movie, make the scenes ones possibly funnies instead of cruel or crudes. I think that Tarantino works have their own style and the way he presents topics in the movies make them more interesting.

Reservoir Dogs by Q Tarantino

In the first movie of Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs (1992), we can see the elements that in further productions will become his marks. One of these elements is the violent crime and the graphic violence scenes. Tarantino have many productions in which we can see his unique style of portrays violence. Although the movie Reservoir Dogs is kind of simple in terms of space and location, because almost the entire movie was filmed in the same place, it has a lot of scenes in which violence is present. Violence is represented in many ways, since a gun shot up to cruel and crude torture. However the special style of Tarantino, sometimes fill with kind of humor these scenes in order to make them more digestible and enjoyable to the viewer, and in the best of the situations, make these scenes funny.

Scorsese's Ideology

I think that M. Scorsese presents in the movies Mean Street, Casino and Goodfellas what he thinks about mafia style of life. In this movie is very clear that the purpose of Scorsese is to give to the audience a portray of the gangster "world". In all these three movies we can see first the benefits and glamour that being part of the mafia gives. Then he presents us how this world works when things go bad. There is no friends, no loyalty,no benefits and no glamour. There is a lot of violence, crimes and no compassion for anybody. I think that Scorsese make the viewer very clear the statement that although in first place it looks very nice and very easy, at the end it have a lot of consequences.

Goodfellas...

The movie of Martin Scorsese, Goodfellas is a great example of the crime/mafia genre. In this movie we can see the formation, development and end of a mafia gangster, Henry Hill, and all the transformation (physical and psychological) he suffers meanwhile. This movie is amazing because we can almost see the entire life of this man who since he was a kid wished to become a member of the mafia. In this movie, as the genre description says, we can see a mafia gang that operates outside the law (specifically bribing the police, etc), stealing and murdering. I think that Scorsese in this movie achieved a deeper representation of the mafia world than in Mean Streets. In this movie, Goodfellas, Scorsese presents the good and the bad of being a gangster, the benefits, but also all the sacrifices and all the anti moral acts that a man have to do to form part of it. I like this movie because in a beginning he presents it as the easy way to get the best, good cars, a lot of money, respect, and a high position in society. Then he presents the moral disintegration of his main character, product of that same “easy” style of life. I think that Scorsese let very clear the meaning that although maybe it looks like very easy and glamorous at the beginning, at the end crime, mafia, violence, steal, etc, let nothing to the people.

Meaning in Taxi Driver

In the movie Taxi Driver we can find more than one meaning through the movie. I think that one of them is criticism to war. The character of Travis, played by Robert De Niro, is a Vietnam War veteran. He also is a lonely and depressed man who fear the scorn from the society and suffers of chronic insomnia. I think about the criticism of war because we know about this life style of Travis after his experience in war, and it is a trashy, sad, and poor style of life.
Other meanings of this movie are about racism, violence, prostitution and society moral decay. The character of Travis began to feel worry about all this forgotten side of society, and he began to take action in order “to make a difference”. With this character and his part of the movie we can see a clear meaning about all this society problems, problems that, as we can also see in the movie, politicians says to be looking for solutions but at the end they are just looking for votes. So trough Travis, Scorsese let a clear meaning about this.