Dancer in the Dark

     My overall impression of Von Triger's Dancer in the Dark is a confusing mix of emotions. There were aspects of the movie that I liked like Bjork as Selma and the emotional and gripping finale. But the things I didn't like made it hard for the good things to shine through. The struggles of an immigrant were very accurately portrayed in the role of sweet and lovable Selma. She really was a beautiful soul that could see the best in dark situations. Her love of musicals was shown very clearly by a wise choice of songs throughout the movie, albeit with some very weird songs that were hard to understand in the Czech accent. At first, I had no idea where the movie could possibly be going. The first hour and a half seemingly had no point. But as the movie took more of a focus on Selma's relationship with her son Gene through her struggle with the justice system, it began to really grab my emotions and I felt along with the characters. The end scene was probably one of the most moving things I've ever seen in a movie and I highly recommend to anyone to not watch it alone.
     Even though there were all these intense and creatively portrayed aspects, I find it hard to say that I liked the movie. The first thing that bothered me right off the bat were the camera angles and views. Why did it look like a stalker filmed the entire movie? I can't say why it bothered me so much but the whole Indie/Documentary feel just isn't something I enjoyed. A second question I have is why did every one look so creepy, almost like they were scared? I get that Jeff was a decent guy, but it did not come off that was when he was following Selma around and offering her rides everywhere. Even Bill came off a little petrified-looking. The only other question I had is was it really necessary to include the songs in the movie? They were very weird, and I don't think they fit very well with what the director was trying to get across. I could understand Selma's love of sound and music just by the rhythms she hears wherever she goes, and how devastated she was when she had to resign from The Sound of Music, so I don't see the point of making a musical out of a docudrama.

Free Write

      I think for the first essay, I am going to choose to do prompt B. Instead of comparing the role of machines in Hugo and in Modern Times, I think the concept of machines in Dancer in the Dark is a much more interesting and provocative idea. Each movie has its own unique problems with machines and what they cause, although we see it a little more subtly in Dancer than in the machine-filled Hugo. Both movies give us the same message: machines can bright light to the world if in the hands of the good, who can use their imagination to bring out what machines can do. One of the main differences that I see, having just watched Dancer is this: Hugo shows us the dangers of losing imagination in times when its needed most, but Dancer shows the beauty of fantasy and the sadness that comes from too much.
     In Dancer, Selma is this beautiful, bright soul that doesn't let the depression of encroaching blindness ruin her life. She chooses to see the magic in the world, and makes some very good friends a long her journey. Her love for her son is what drives her to desperate measures to regain the money for his vision surgery (a new technology, or machine). In Hugo, its the other way around. It's a son feeling the need to connect with his late  father through the technology they shared together. Both need to use imagination so they don't feel so small, or helpless, in their situations. Hugo chooses to see the bigger picture, that he is a cog in a machine with a job to do, while Selma brightens her life with the thing she enjoys most: musicals. Both messages are brought out clearly in the style the directors chose, but there is most likely more room to explore the connections between the two films.
     

Herding the Cattle

     Much like with Hugo, we can take the opening scene of Chaplin's Modern Times and use it as a loose outline of what the movie may be about. We start off with a clock in the background (again, tying us back to Hugo and an insinuation that time plays a role) with a quote across it's face: ""Modern Times." A story of industry, of individual enterprise - humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness." We are then shown a herd of sheep, seemingly fleeing from something unseen, which slowly transitions to a seen of people crowding out of the subway in a hurry. Much like in Hugo, the images are meant to show symbolism, because one is faded onto another, meaning that the first usually equates to the second. Using this mindset, Chaplin's meaning can be interpreted as a few different things. But coupling the images with the quote, one interpretation stands out to me.
     During the late 1930's, people were searching in all directions for types of technology to make life easier. Just using the content of the first scene, we can infer that Chaplin is comparing humans to animals. Animals like the ones shown are raised for one reason, and that is to be brought to the slaughter house. By overlaying the image of men rushing off the subway, the comparison is hard to miss. Man is "crusading" in the name of progress, but only for progress's sake and their one reason for working like animals is that they think they are working towards happiness. Instead of actual immaterial happiness, man in plundering towards an easy life where machines do all the work where there is no room for human error. Like the sheep, man thinks it is working towards one thing, while the 'shepherds' know the truth and know the disaster that awaits them at the end of the line.

Train vs. Automaton

     In the dream sequence of Hugo, we are introduced to the idea of people falling onto the train tracks. In his dreams, though, we witness Hugo's nightmare of himself stranded on the train tracks after finding his fathers key. I've come to believe that this was Scorsese's way of showing us that Hugo had to unknowingly sacrifice his father in order to slow down a world (the train) that was moving too fast, leaving some of it's greatest treasures behind. Towards the end of the movie, we again see another body on the train tracks, but this time it is the automaton, thrown there on accident by Hugo and the Station Inspector. After Hugo throws himself after the automaton onto the tracks, we see the desperation this one little boy has to find a reason behind the terrible events in his life, and to save something that shouldn't be up to him to save.
      One of the questions I still have after watching and analyzing this movie extensively, is: why throw the automaton on the train tracks? To Hugo, the automaton symbolizes his father, and the last project they shared together before the museum fire. To Papa Georges, the automaton is everything he once cherished in life. It's the last 'living' piece of his past that he thought was gone forever. By throwing the automaton in front of a train, the two worlds collide. Hugo realizes in this moment, that the automaton is so much more than just a connection to his father. It's Papa Georges world, Hugo's fathers world, that needs to be saved in order to save his own world. Hugo knows that if this automaton is lost, so are his hopes of fixing Papa Georges, and saving the world that he missed out on being a part of. When the automaton is lying on the tracks, it symbolizes the balance Hugo's world hangs in, between plowing over the past and destroying it completely, or slowing down and remembering everything that was once good in a world without war.

The Key to the Nightmare

     When watching Hugo for the first time, I was originally very confused by the entire nightmare sequence. To me, I thought that it didn't thematically fit in with the rest of movie, and seemed kind of out of context. Stylistically, it went along with the rest of the movie, but it left me with more questions than answers, even at the end of the film.  But by breaking it down scene by scene, the parts begin to make more sense, independent of the whole. By focusing on just the scene with the key and the train, we can piece together how it fits into the movie and try to find how it strings together some of the themes and motifs of the film.
      "Cabret et Fils, Horlogers" is what's written on the key that Hugo notices amongst the pebbles on the train tracks. This literally translates to "Cabret and Sons, Clock Makers." We also notice that the key this is engraved on is a match to the key that Isabelle had for the automaton. Many different conclusions can be drawn from just analyzing this one segment, but coupled together with the graphic and accurate portrayal of the 1895 Paris train crash, one theory stands out to me most of all. Throughout the whole movie, Hugo's job is to keep the clocks accurate so as to keep the train schedule functioning properly. Trains are meant to be constant, a safe and efficient way to get from point A to point B. The train station represents a stable place kept together by time, so in turn, the people that keep the clocks running on time. When the train crashes because of Hugo, it shows that they can destroy everything in a matter of seconds, just by one little infraction that messes up the time schedule. It shows the importance of Hugo's fathers' job, and also of what Hugo does for the station.    
     As the train tears through the lobby of the station, I infer that as Hugo slacks, the sanctity and uniformity of the station is gone. Time and order are not maintained, therefore chaos ensues. This theory to me is overall negative. But speaking in terms of the boundaries we discussed in class, it can be interpreted as a good thing. This train destroys all sense of normalcy, breaking the 'walls' that separate these people that work together every day. It broke the hurt that connected Hugo to his father and allowed him to be able to accept a new family, in the train station that he had called home.

Paintings on The Early Cinema

      In the early to mid 1900's, going to the cinema had still been a fairly new experience. Although the paintings Movies, Five Cents by John Sloan and New York Movie by Edward Hopper were painted more than thirty years apart, and visually have very little in common, they each portray something unique about early cinema. Before visual analysis, you would think that the general concept of the paintings couldn't be more different.
      In Sloan's painting we are given a scene that focuses solely on the people and the movie they are watching. We are actually looking in at them as they all watch this new movie.The "muddy" color scheme gives us that dark movie theatre feeling, and we notice that the brightest thing in the room is (as it should be) the movie screen. In 1907, when Sloan painted this, cinema wasn't more than fifteen years old, so in this painting we see people dressed in nice hats and fancy suits, making it a sort of formal occasion. We notice this in the couple on the right hand side that look like they are coming in a little late. A crowd of shadowed people all blur together as they watch a couple kiss on screen, with rapt attention. All except the woman in the center of the audience. She is seemingly turned directly toward the artist, making her smiling face the focus of the painting. I think that this makes her the most important aspect of the work too because her face is showing the wonder and the awe that coupled early cinema. In this pre-World War painting, the magic is still there. In Hopper's painting, we get a few of the same things, but in a completely different way.
       In 1939, when Edward Hopper painted New York Movie, we are in a post-World War, post-Depression state of mind. Differing from Sloan's right off the bat, Hopper chose to focus just outside of the theatre. In the center of the painting is (anticlimactically) a wall. It provides separation to the two world we are provided as different focal points. On the left, we see the darkened movie theatre, but only one movie-goer. On the right, we are given a brighter setting, and shown a female usher leaning against the wall, deep in thought. Not only do the two sides contrast each other, but they might also contrast the mood of the people portrayed on the side. After noticing the contrast, I find that the focus of the painting, is the woman deep in thought. Much like the lady in the first painting, she embodies the mood of the time period.
     After comparing and contrasting the paintings with each other, it took me a while to decipher what the painters were maybe saying about films. And that's when the idea of time periods popped into my head. The woman in Sloan's painting looks as if to not have a care in the world, and is completely mystified by the new things around her. The woman in Hopper's painting has too many worries it seems, and is missing all the magic that's in the world. The painters both captured the essences of what people thought about movies in their time. They show the loss of the feelings towards movies and movie makers in just two peoples expressions.