“I try to learn from both, from features and documentaries. In both cases you have to find a way to make the camera as discreet as possible, and flexible enough to be able to capture the moment when it happens. I know from documentary how to not have a preconceived idea of what the scene could be”. - Michel Gondry
As this quote from French film director Michel Gondry suggests, the ability of a director to create a film that hides the camera and the construction of a film remains difficult. In his 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, Gondry utilizes the full potential of the film medium, to express his own unique visual style. He has a number of films that he has directed such as Human Nature, which was also written by scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman. Both Gondry and Kaufman have worked in collaboration for a number of years, which has earnt them huge acclaim for their successes in creating huge box office hits that were created on minimal budgets. IMBD states that the production budget for the film was 20 million dollars with a further 10 million set aside for the marketing budget. In addition to this, Gondry has cemented his own visual style as a director as “there is always a battle with time, but not usually in terms of beating deadlines” (Dzialo, 2009: 107). This essay will analyze the style of the film, the narrative construction within the film, generic features and key concepts and the idea of personal style through the auteur. It will be argued that
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder often characterized by abnormal social behaviour and failure to recognize what is real. Common symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, auditory hallucinations, reduced social engagement and emotional expression, and inactivity. A person with schizophrenia often hears voices, experiences delusions and hallucinations and may believe thoughts, feelings and actions are controlled or shared by someone else.
At a young age of eight, David Fincher’s passion for cinema grew when he saw the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Born in 1962 Denver, Colorado, David Fincher moved to Ashland, Oregon in his teens, where he graduated from Ashland High School. Much of his time here, he directed plays, designed sets, and managed lighting after school. Until one summer, he and a friend attended the Berkley Film Institute’s summer program, where he hoped to learn film as a true art form but instead learned only the technical production. Either way he was happy to engage is this and as his early film industry career started, he was a production assistant at his local television news station. Years went by as he directed propaganda films then moving on to becoming a well-known music director before his first movie feature debut Aliens 3 in 1992. However, the American director David Fincher didn’t become a modern 21st century visionary until his creation of the film Se7en (1995). The huge success after this film started Fincher’s popularity in the film industry. From there he continued to make ironic movies we know today, such as: Fight Club (1999), Zodiac (2007), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010), Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Have you ever wanted a bad memory erased? Is love erasable? These questions are attacked head on in the wonderfully complex drama Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. After working together on the film Human Nature, director Michael Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman discussed the possibility whether or not they would have their memory erased of a bad relationship should the opportunity present itself (dvdtalk). Out of that discussion a movie idea was formulated, pitched to a studio, and a film was created showing the potential impact of doing so. Through Kaufman’s brilliant and strange storytelling, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes its audience on a journey challenging us to ask: what would we do
All films, regardless of their intended purposes, tend to capture a piece of history and culture within them. Film’s ability to capture images and produce a visual is truly unique, as other methods of storytelling, such as writing a book, fail to truly encapsulate the human experience. Using an aesthetic lens, film directors essentially preserve time, and bring us back to our roots. Through masterful manipulation of the aesthetic properties of film, Milos Forman succeeds in illuminating the historical and cultural significance of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, making it worthy of placement in the National Film Archive.
‘There are…two kinds of film makers: one invents an imaginary reality; the other confronts an existing reality and attempts to understand it, criticise it…and finally, translate it into film’
The auteur theory is an idea or principle, which states that the film is a reflection of a director’s creative personal vision, as if to say the he or she is the primary author (which in French, means “auteur”). This theory first came to be in 1954, by a French film director named Francois Truffaut. The auteur theory’s birth was through the French New Wave, which was a group of new French filmmakers during the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the beginning, the theory received positive and negative responses. And to this day, it will create a heated debate. Many have questioned the theory, because there are usually multiple people involved in the development of a film. Ultimately, a film
Most of the movie is taken in Joel’s mind or his memory removal process. Starting from his nearest memory that they broke up till his last remaining memory of Clementine that they first met at a beach. I think the most possible reason the movie is called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind is referring to the deepest memory (or say, soul) survived and reserved in their both minds that brought them back to the beach and met each other again. This title quotes entirely from Alexander Pope’s poem which know as describing a very contradictory mood from the unattainable love. So does it, the movie shows Joel wants to remove all memory of Clementine while he still loves her, but then during the process he changes mind and want to try his best to keep these memory which is the “spotless mind”. In my mind, the soul theory is the personal identity that the movie most engage. According to the soul theory, to have a same identical, it’s not necessary to have a same memory, but it’s necessary and sufficient to have the same soul. In the movie, though Joel erased his memory, he still has his soul which makes him fall in love with Clementine again, even in theory he can never love her then. On the other hand, this movie seems to intensely against Loke’s memory theory that sharing a memory of an experience is necessary and sufficient to be a same person. And I think the movie also presents its own personal identity that for one person to be identical to the other person, they should have
Auteur theory proposed during the 1950’s and 60’s argues that the director is the most important element in the making of a film. Alfred Hitchcock is an example of a well-known and highly successful director, whose audience appeal can be contributed to by his use of recurring themes and techniques throughout his films, including those such as voyeurism, use of the mother figure, lighting techniques and point of view camera shots. Psycho, Vertigo, Marnie, The Birds, and Strangers on a Train are all popular Hitchcock creations that are easily recognisable due to the inclusion of these elements, rendering the films unique and unmistakeable, with engaging characters, storylines and messages.
The essay film, as contextualized in this course by Agnès Varda and Ross McElwee, has been defined by many traits, perhaps most notable in the physical presence of said directors in their films; at times on screen, at times in voiceovers, sometimes a combination of thereof. Over the span of several class meetings, this particular trait (the film maker’s presence a la Varda and McElwee) and its implications became the epicenter of most discussions, as well as the assumed baseline by which other directors would be critiqued. In this paper, the argument advanced is that by the standard(s) that emerged from the class’ discussions and evaluations of the aforementioned directors, Errol Morris—specifically in his films The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War—technically is not an essayistic film maker. However, this stance also states that Morris is a film-essayist by other means, in that Morris simply implements Laura Rascaroli’s thoughts on reflectivity and subjectivity in a form dissimilar to Varda and McElwee.
Auteur Theory is based on three premises, the first being technique, the second being personal style, and the third being interior meaning. Furthermore, there is no specific order in which these three aspects must be presented or weighted with regard to a film. An Auteur must give films a distinctive quality thus exerting a personal creative vision and interjecting it into the his or her films.
Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski were a couple in love. Everything changed when Clementine woke up one day and just decided to have Joel erased from her memory. He was “boring” and she wasn’t happy and wanted to move on. Joel then decided he wanted to also remove Clementine from his memory. This was all possible due to Lacuna Inc. who asked those wishing to remove a particular person from their memories to remove anything from their homes that could possibly be associated with that person. They sit the patient down, map out where memories are located that are associated with each object. Then, the company sends a couple of their scientists/psychologists to the home at night after they’ve fallen asleep. They then track down any remaining memories as they appear while asleep
Billy Wilder’s work today remains masterful and memorable. From his skilled screenwriting to his directing, Wilder holds a key position in cinema history. Wilder’s stylistic and thematic elements are recognizable and give off a complex reflection of his American and European cultural influences. I think that Billy Wilder should be considered an “auteur” even if he is not already considered one, for his personal film style and the mere fact that his cynical vision allowed him to create many admirable films across a number of genre boundaries throughout his career. However, film critics tend to disagree and believe that Wilder was too cynical, while also complaining about the lack of
An individual detailed analysis on the style, editing techniques Mise-en-scene and cinematography in the film "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind".
David Bordwell wrote his article ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film’ in an effort to convey the main idea that “art cinema” can be considered as a distinct mode of film practice, through its definite historical existence alongside other cinematic modes, set of formal conventions, and implicit viewing procedures. Rather than searching for the source of the art, or what drives the art in film, Bordwell compares art cinema to the classical narrative cinema, and highlights the differences in narrative structure. Bordwell makes the assumption that it defined itself against the classical narrative mode; especially with the way it deals with space, time, and the cause and effect link of events.
The evaluation of a film assigns some form of value to a film and the experience you encountered while watching the film. Evaluation can imply the criteria and standards that you can argue about to place value on a film. Thus, giving people a reason to question a film to develop reasons, make such standards are met and to understand the film. These standards can stem from the classical evaluation and pluralistic-category method which has given viewers a blueprint of how you should properly evaluate a film. There are certain ways that you can go about judging a films effectiveness. For instance, the classical evaluation method imposes the use of cinematicity within three concepts that all films should have. Like medium specificity, cinematicity allows film to distinguish itself from theatre with the use of close-ups, camera movement, etc.; thus, creates a universal structure for critics to judge a film. This is based on the creative style of the director and how much the viewers admire the way the has stuck with its cinematicity. However, the pluralistic-category does not base its evaluation on style and opinion. In all, these types of evaluations are used in different ways which will be further explained throughout this essay.