Requiem For A Dream (2000)

Introduction:

This movie, Requiem For A Dream is a 2000 film which written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. Darren Aronofsky is a director is the director who made the hallucinatory “Pi” (1998) with a tiny budget, about a paranoid genius who seems on the brink of discovering the key to – well, God or the stock market, or whatever else his tormentors imagine. And now, he with the greatest budget to brings a new urgency to the drug movie (“Requiem For A Dream) by trying to reproduce, through his subjective camera, how his characters feel, or want to feel, or fear to feel. This Movie was actually adapted from 1987 novel "Last Exit to Brooklyn" by celebrated author Hubert Selby Jr. This movie is about how the characters or human being can easily love and feel loved, and how happiness can be easily found and tragically lost in just a blink of an eye. So, let’s start a small discussion about this movie! 

Synopsis:

This movie was concerned about the four people who trapped by their own addictions. Harry and his friend, Tyrone are poor heroin addicts living in Coney Land, New York. While Harry’s girlfriend, Marion is a fellow addict who trying to escape herself from her wealthy father and she like to design clothes. In fact, Harry’s dream is to score a pound of smack so that he could make enough money to open a clothing boutique shop with Marion but so far he and Tyrone can barely scrape by supporting their own habits. Meanwhile, Harry’s mother named Sara spends her days to watch Television. She gets a junk phone call where she has been told that she got the chance to appear on her favorite game show. After the call, she tried lot way to lose weight to fit her red dress and end up Sara has her own drug habit of her own that is spiraling out of control.

Discussion:

The theory of intertextuality was used in this movie. As what the above said from my introduction, this movie was actually adapted from “Last Exit to Brooklyn” which is a 1987 novel by celebrated author Hubert Selby Jr. From the beginning of this movie, Harry locked his mother in the closet and stole away his mother’s TV set. Those sequences of shots were actually Hubert Selby’s favorite line in his own novel that became the world’s bleakest movie. Basically Darren Aronofsky refers to the story line of Hubert Selby’s novel to make or produce his own movie which is this Requiem For A Dream movie. 

For the past, the movie genres has shapes the generic form of the film like the comedy show must involve those content, character, lighting and so on. It has already became a kind of movie form in which the comedy movie need to include all those content only it counted as comedy movie. For now, Darren Aronofsky tends to mix the criteria from different genres (hybrid genres). In fact, this movie is a psychological movie but Darren Aronofsky used to mix the horror criteria in this psychological movie for the purpose of attracting the audiences. Those sequences of shots were showing what the addiction of the characters is and some horror sequences were added in to. For example, Sara with psychological problem imagines the refrigerator was moving forward her, the sound effect, the blinking light bulb (lighting) and so on. Furthermore, there were some other genres in this movie like action, romantic love and sexuality.      

Beside this, this movie also used the Kuleshov effect and Soviet Montage Theory. The Kuleshov effect is a film editing effect and it’s a mental phenomenon by which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than a single shot in isolation. In this movie, the film editor, Jay Robinowitz combined those random frames which have been chosen to bring out some meaning to the audiences. All the single shot or frame were combined into sequences of shots such as the pupil size become bigger, the lighter, the human cells, the pills or drugs. When these frame/ shot combined into sequential of shots, it brings out the meaning of drug assumption to the audiences. Even the process where Harry and Tyrone sell drug and earn money also used this filming editing and theory too.    

Own Thinking:

From the beginning of this movie, it gave me an expected that the Harry’s mother, Sara is a kind mother and end up will have a happy ending but in fact this movie is totally different from my initial expectation. It is not boring but is interesting and would shock or surprised us even though it is different from my initial expectation. For instance, I thought Sara is a kind mother and guess she will have a happy ending but end up she was suffered in the psychological problem. It’s a very big change between the segment of shots for the beginning and the ending part. 

Spirited Away (Year 2001)

This animation movie, Spirited Away is a 2001 Japanese anime fantasy film which written and directed by the best animation director, Hayao Miyazaki. I have bought a DVD that contain 10 animation movies which directed by him and Spirited Away was included. I have watched for several times since I was a kid. I like this movie so much because of the interesting story line and also the nice graphic produced. Hayao Miyazaki used an unique way to reflect or bring out the situation of reality society and also the harmony atmosphere. I guess this is one of the reason that make he became a best and famous animation director. So basically I will discuss about this movies, Spirited Away with my own thinking and also opinions through this post. 

Synopsis:
A 10 years old young little girl, Chihiro and her parents tripped at a amusement park which seems like been abandoned by others. After her parents turned into a giant pig, she met a mysterious guy with the name of Haku, who explain to Chihiro that the park is actually a spirits area. So Chihiro must work at the spirits area in order to free herself and her parents from that spirits area.

My own feeling: Scenes that I liked
The scene I like is where the Haku was trying his best to give help to Chihiro even though he knew that Chihiro is a human that different from him. From the beginning, he started to protect Chihiro from being caught by those spirits and also asked Chihiro to get job from the Kamaji who is old man with six arms, operate at the boiler room of ABURAYA. All the help he gave to Chihiro in this movie and when at the end of this movies, Chihiro and Haku finally recognize each other is quite attracted me. To me, those scenes really shows a lot of love and also romantic feeling. Beside this, I also like the scene where the Yubaba's twin, Zeniba has turned the son and bird of Yubaba to a small rat and also a mini size bird. As we knew that the Yubaba's baby was threaten Chihiro that he will cry if Chihiro do not want to play with him. At that time, he trying to hurt Chihiro's hand and threaten her few times. But afterward when he changed to a small rat, he started get close with Chihiro and Chihiro has protected him all the way and end up the baby was protected Chihiro from his evil mother, Yubaba. It really make me feel touched and I realized a justification that treated someone good do not need any reason and also the kind rewarded when Chihiro still protect the baby no matter how bad was the baby treated her before. 

My opinion:
For me, that is actually having few hidden messages in this animation movie. The hidden messages as the following below:- 

This scene shows that how Chihiro and those spirits helped River God to pull out the wood stick that stuck at body of River God. As we can see, when the moment they pull out the wood stick, there are a lot of trashes such as bicycle and so on. The director, Hayao Miyazaki was trying to use this scene to tell or interact with those audiences about the issue of the water pollution in the world. He try to bring out a message to let the audiences realize about this issue and start to do something to prevent from the water pollution.

This scene is the scene where this spirits refused to give Chihiro the red bath token but he do gave it to other spirits. This scene make me felt that the action of this frog spirits is because of Chihiro is a human and he refused to treat people who is different from him like he is a spirits but Chihiro is a human. In our reality world, this kind of behavior still exists in the mind of human. People tend not to care about those people who are been labeled as out group. 

From the beginning, Chihiro thought that No Face is a guest of the bath house but in fact, there is non of a spirits care about the No Face. No Face was happy that only Chihiro will bother him. Afterward, No Face gave Chihiro things such as the gold and the red bath token just want to let Chihiro know that he like Chihiro. Beside this, he also ate a spirit who scolded Chihiro. Therefore from all these clues, we can conclude that No Face is literally trying to please Chihiro happy or trying to buy Chihiro.

This scene is where the Yubaba take off the name of Chihiro and make it as Sen from the contract between Chihiro and Yubaba. This contract is actually like a bondage contract. Yubaba take off the name of Chihiro and also take off her freedom too. I have watched few of ancient movies, normally the prostitute women in ancient movie will have a contract with their boss and actually they are no more freedom when the moment they sign the contract. Same goes to this Spirited Away movie, Chihiro also do not have any freedom when she sign the contract that prepared by Yubaba. 

This scene is when No Face can produce a lot of gold and he gave it to those spirits. At the beginning, there is no even one of spirits care about No Face but when they realized No Face can produced a lot gold, they tend to flatter him. As the photo shown, people who working at the bath house are falling over them to serve No Face with foods since No Face have a plenty of gold. Hayao Miyazaiki use this way to tell the audiences that people in reality world are very greedy in order to fulfill their desire until can change their personality and behavior.