The Godfather

This movie is one that is an all-time classic and is now one of my personal favorites. Before this screening I had never watched the movie in its entirety. Upon watch the full film, I have come to appreciate this movie and the way in which it was filmed. This movie is set in 1945 and begins with a time of celebration at a wedding. Vito Corleone (aka Don Corleone, the Godfather) is the head of the Corleone mafia family and is throwing a lavish party for his daughters wedding. His youngest son Michael has just returned from war but wishes to stay separated from his fathers business of crime. Soon after, a drug dealer by the name of Virgil Sollozzo moves into town. Sollozzo wants mafia protection and is willing to pay a percentage of the drug money for the protection. He knows that Don Corleone is the only family head who has all of the politicians "in his pocket" and realizes that he is the only one capable of making the protection work. The Don refuses to offer protection seeing it as dirty work. Sollozzo then has some of his men gun down Corleone in retaliation for his refusal and in order to deal with the Don's sons instead. The Don survives and Michael volunteers to eliminate the drug dealer and his corrupt police partner. This action is his first step towards becoming more and more involved in his fathers business. The attempt on Don Corleones life set in motion a mafia war between the five families. This war inevitably tears apart the Corleone family and makes a vaacum for power.

This movie is a very long movie but it is well done. There is a lot of plot activity to follow throughout the movie but there is also enough action spread throughout to keep the viewer pulled into the story. The way this movie was shot also makes it unique because there and many representative scenes and several lighting techniques that add to the film's atmosphere. Overall I liked the plot of the movie and the sequence of how it was shot and put together. This is one of my new favorite movies.

Analysis of Apocalypse Now (1979)

Apocalypse Now has many different aspects of cinematography that make it a very unique film. The colors, the angles, the depth of field, and the framing were all different from most other movies I have seen. The use of the different hues throughout the film set a certain mood and gave each scene an individual characteristic. The use of music was also very well done in this film. My favorite use was when they helicopters played "The Ride of the Valkyries" as they attacked the Vietcong beach. This music created an emphasis on the domineering attitude of the fleet and more particularly the aggressive and fearless attitude of Colonel Kilgore. This movie takes a dramatic turn towards the end when Willard finally encounters Kurtz. Throughout the first portion of the movie, action and violence seems to dominate the screen while towards the end, the scenes are more drawn out and meaningful. I think this was done so that the audience is given time to think about Willard's moral conflict and to try and understand Kurt's motives.

One of my favorite scenes in this movie is where Willard and Lance are moving through the trenches off the Do Long bridge trying to find a commanding officer. This scene is very chaotic and disruptive. The lighting in this scene fluctuates from light to dark very often as guns are shot, bombs go off, flares are shot. The light will suddenly be very bright and then fade to almost complete blackness. As Lance and Willard navigate their way through the trenches, Lance accidentally steps on a soldier thinking he is dead. This is most likely a combination of the poor lighting and the fact that Lance is tripping on acid. The sounds in this scene also greatly contribute to the feeling of chaos. The loud guitar on the radio, gattling of machine guns, the low rumble of bombs in the distance, screaming voices crying in fear and pain, and frequent loud explosions close by all make this scene seem like a place where no one wants to be. When Willard comes upon the two men firing at the Vietnamese soldiers, he remains in the shadows and is never completely revealed. The viewer is only given glimpses of his profile and of his piercing eyes. Willard soon realizes that the energetic men shooting think that he is the commanding officer. These two men are a total contrast to a group of men seen earlier in the trenches who are simply sitting around as if nothing is happening. When they cannot kill one soldier out by the wire, the men call for "the Roach." The Roach is a character who is very calm and collected even amongst the chaos of the scene. He is first seen in a distant trench sleeping and is soon woken up to take care of the problem at hand. This scene is shot from a slightly different angle from where the shooter is to give the effect that the Roach is only a couple feet away. The Roach then walks over to where the two men originally were, the whole time appearing very stoic. The camera angle here is from a low position looking up towards the Roach, almost giving the effect of Willard looking up at him. The Roach loads his weapon, denies the option of using a flare, and takes aim. While he is aiming, the camera cuts to all the characters around him showing their individual responses to his epic demeanor. The Roach then fires a single shot into the night sky and causes an explosion. Afterwards, the Vietnamese soldier is no longer heard. At this point Willard asks the Roach if he knows who is in charge to which he simply replies, "Yeah" and then returns to his former napping position. This scene shows how the war has affected soldiers differently. I also believe that the lighting represented Willard's emotions and feelings towards Kurtz. Just as the light faded in and out, Willard's sympathetic attitude towards Kurtz's state of mind would come and go.

Overall, this movie was excellent. However, I felt that the ending scene could have been done differently. As far as filming goes I though it was great, but I did not feel a real moral conflict in the story. I felt that Kurtz was wrong and needed to be stopped. No dilemma. I did, however, like the message presented that war changes people and can dig deep into their minds and reveal a darkness that civilization would never accept. I appreciated the fact that Kurtz knew it was time for him to die. One line that I particularly liked was when Willard said that even the jungle, the only thing Kurtz listened to anymore, wanted him dead.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

This movie is set at the apex of the Vietnam War. Captain Benjamin Willard is taken from a state of drunken misery and is assigned to kill one of the U.S. Army's own, Colonel Walter Kurtz. Willard's commanding officers inform him that Kurtz has gone renegade as well as completely insane and needs to be stopped. To reach Kurtz, Willard must travel up the Nung River through "hairy" territories. Along the way he learns more about Kurtz and his motives, meets new and unusual people, and has several near death encounters. Eventually, he reaches Kurtz and his savage army and is taken prisoner. After learning the reasons behind Kurtz actions and encountering many of the same experiences that drove Kurtz to "madness," Willard must decide whether or not to complete his mission.
This movie is very well shot and filmed. The acting is nothing less than superb and pulls the viewer into the movie. There were several scenes, however, that seemed to be too drawn out, making one wonder if they would ever end. Other aspects of this movie that bothered me were some historical inaccuracies, but I believe that they may have been added to make Vietnam seem like an entirely different world. Overall, this film was very well put together. I would recommend watching this movie only if you have enough time to kill.

Analysis of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a film that is shot unlike any other movie that I have watched. The first half an hour or so of the movie made me feel trapped and confined in Jean-Do's body unable to get a good grasp of the surroundings. The camera going in and out of focus and the shots cutting quickly from one to another as if a long blink had happened also made it difficult to concentrate on one specific area. The depth of field was constantly shifting which actually made my eyes strain. This point of view really pulled me into the movie and helped me understand what the main character was going through. In this movie there was also a lot of offscreen space, meaning space that could not be scene by the main character from his point of view but still existed or was implied outside the film frame. This too made me want to move my head and shift my position in my seat so that I might see the world around the character.

There were also several representations scenes in this movie. The most prominent ones were the diving suit, the butterfly, and the iceburgs. To me, the diving suit represented the feeling of being trapped. Jean-Do was trapped in his now paralyzed body as he was trapped underwater in the diving suit without a diving bell for him to ring which would singnal someone to pull him out. Just as he had no diving bell in the vision, he had no diving bell in real life for someone to pull out of his paralysis. This leads to the scene of the butterfly. I believe that the butterfly represented the nurse who helped Jean-Do to communicate. She gave Jean-Do the wings he needed to escape his trapped world through his imagination and through communicating through his one good eye. The final representative scene of the icebergs falling into the ocean represented Jean-Do's world crashing down around him. He had lost the will to live and felt as if he had nothing. By the end of the movie, however, he sees life differently and learns to appreciate what he has. He comes to terms with his condition and makes the best of it by writing a book about his life and experiences. The closing scene with the icebergs in reverse motion showed how at the end of his life he had put everything that he could back together in his mind and felt accomplished.

There were several other scenes that that I especially liked. The first was where Jean-Do is alone on a dock surrounded by the high tide. This represented how lonely he was and how he was isolated from everyone else. Another scene is when someone is talking, such as the nurse, Jean-Do's mind wanders and he explains how he is really feeling while you can still hear the person in reality talking in the background. This monalogue shows how frustrating and time consuming it is for him to communicate and how his thoughts have shifted from before the stroke. The last scene that stuck out to me was the shots of Jean-Do driving through Paris. These shot immediatly follow a scene from Jean-Do's post stroke, confined point of view. They completely contrast the previous shot by being extremely angled, panning left to right, and sometimes even upside-down. This shows how differently he used to observe life and how we can sometimes can take the gift of mobility for granted. Overall, this movie was creatively shot and filmed and gave me a unique viewing experience.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

The film The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is a french film that came out in 2007. It is based on a true story and adapted from the book written by Jean-Dominique Bauby. This film chronicles the life of an editor-in-chief of a magazine who suffers a massive stroke and falls into a coma only to awake three weeks later paralyzed from head to toe with the exception of his left eye. The movie shows his present life and how he must adapt to his "locked-in syndrome" while also reflecting on his past. He soon realizes that his only escape from his paralyzed state is in his imagination. While in this condition he decides to write a book about his experiences, his trials, and his regrets. This is only made possible by a nurse reading a French alphabet (in order of frequency) and Jean-Do blinking when he heard the letter he wished to use.

This film is shot in several different angles and with multiple effects to make the viewer experience exactly what Jean-Do is going through. The story jumps around from present to past several times throughout the movie and can sometimes be confusing. There is also a good amount of representation throughout the film that describes the state of Jean-Do's mind.

Overall, I thought that the movie was interesting and well told, however, reading subtitles for two hours can get old real fast unless you can understand fluent French. The story itself is inspirational and really pulls at the heart strings. The different camera shots were unique and made the film unlike others that I have seen. I would recommend watching this movie only if you like French, need to appreciate your life a bit more, or can read well and concentrate on the actors at the same time.