Our fingerprints don't fade from the lives we touch.
I feel very strongly about the arts in general. Which personally I think it's weird that although I'm a science student and my way of thinking is pretty rigid, I get swayed easily by any form of display of emotions.
Like Yiruma's River Flows in You and Spring Time. The songs don't bring up any particular images to mind, but the melody itself invokes a lot of feelings that in a combination would move me to tears. Or dance pieces, especially Mia Michaels' choreography, she instills a lot of ideas in her contemporary pieces that I think just getting half of what she envisioned is enough to inspire you.
The thing is, music, dance, sculptures and the like, they are the more abstract forms of art. Some people get it, some people don't. And 2 people can get completely different epiphanies from the same piece of work. But books and films are different. The stories are blatantly placed in your faces. How can people not get it?
For me there's a difference between movies and films. Movies are for entertainment but films are thought-provoking. It leaves its own aftertaste that haunts you long after it's over. And there's so many intricate details to a film, be it the storyline, the characters, the scriptwriting, the cinematography, the acting, the music. It's a good combination of all these that help create a beautiful film. So it irks me to know that people can read books and watch films and not get the story. They don't read between the lines, understand the characters and their complexities, and see through all that superficial displays to appreciate the beauty of all that underlying flaws. Like I said, I feel very strongly about the arts.
I watched Remember Me and loved it. It was a genuinely good film. I read the first draft of the script beforehand, but I feel that the changes to the little details made the storyline tie together more intricately. I think some of the credit should go to how the director shot the entire film that gave a very raw feel to the story. This is the kind of film where I actually didn't mind the hand-held slightly shaky cameras as it created a more realistic feel to the film. He used a lot of zoom-ins and close-ups that allowed the emotions the actors depicted to come off strongly. In a way it was painful since you couldn't look elsewhere, but it helped the story because for most reviews I read people mentioned that they cared for the characters like they've known them. And some credit should also go to the music score, you can't ever go wrong with Marcelo Zarvos.
I like that the story was very human. There's no good guy or bad guy, no particular stand-out scene that sets the story in motion like most stories. We go through life, face some arguments and problems, and we don't necessarily get some big epiphany out of it in that moment. Yet at the end of it, I realized that every little scene that was seemly insignificant is important. This film touched on so many things categorizing it in one genre just doesn't cover it. Its kind of why I love the script, everything is so subtly displayed and the actors did well in pulling that off.
The best thing was the way they paralleled the beginning and ending scenes. As cliche as it may sound, it was the "coming to a full circle" feeling that gave the film that sense of hope that the script was all about. The beginning scene of Ally at the subway witnessing her mother's murder, and at the end of it we see her having closure as she takes her first train ride in the past ten years with a smile. The look Ally's dad had; determined to protect the remaining person he loved as he hugged 11 year old Ally, and the look of resignation as he came back from the event covered in soot, hugging Ally as he realizes that he can only protect someone this much. And Charles who initially had a hard face as they were at the graveyard for Michael's death anniversary, and the look of pain and grief he allowed to surface after Tyler's death at the same graveyard. Even Tyler's mom, who had a pretty minor role, changed from the emotionally weak and dependent woman to someone who was strong enough to let others lean on. With Tyler's death, the pain helped them learn to embrace life in its entity. Life isn't perfect. We can only go through it hoping that we have done at least one thing right by the ones we love, minimize the damages we inflict on others and nurse the wounds that people give us, hoping it will heal someday.
Like Yiruma's River Flows in You and Spring Time. The songs don't bring up any particular images to mind, but the melody itself invokes a lot of feelings that in a combination would move me to tears. Or dance pieces, especially Mia Michaels' choreography, she instills a lot of ideas in her contemporary pieces that I think just getting half of what she envisioned is enough to inspire you.
The thing is, music, dance, sculptures and the like, they are the more abstract forms of art. Some people get it, some people don't. And 2 people can get completely different epiphanies from the same piece of work. But books and films are different. The stories are blatantly placed in your faces. How can people not get it?
For me there's a difference between movies and films. Movies are for entertainment but films are thought-provoking. It leaves its own aftertaste that haunts you long after it's over. And there's so many intricate details to a film, be it the storyline, the characters, the scriptwriting, the cinematography, the acting, the music. It's a good combination of all these that help create a beautiful film. So it irks me to know that people can read books and watch films and not get the story. They don't read between the lines, understand the characters and their complexities, and see through all that superficial displays to appreciate the beauty of all that underlying flaws. Like I said, I feel very strongly about the arts.
I watched Remember Me and loved it. It was a genuinely good film. I read the first draft of the script beforehand, but I feel that the changes to the little details made the storyline tie together more intricately. I think some of the credit should go to how the director shot the entire film that gave a very raw feel to the story. This is the kind of film where I actually didn't mind the hand-held slightly shaky cameras as it created a more realistic feel to the film. He used a lot of zoom-ins and close-ups that allowed the emotions the actors depicted to come off strongly. In a way it was painful since you couldn't look elsewhere, but it helped the story because for most reviews I read people mentioned that they cared for the characters like they've known them. And some credit should also go to the music score, you can't ever go wrong with Marcelo Zarvos.
I like that the story was very human. There's no good guy or bad guy, no particular stand-out scene that sets the story in motion like most stories. We go through life, face some arguments and problems, and we don't necessarily get some big epiphany out of it in that moment. Yet at the end of it, I realized that every little scene that was seemly insignificant is important. This film touched on so many things categorizing it in one genre just doesn't cover it. Its kind of why I love the script, everything is so subtly displayed and the actors did well in pulling that off.
The best thing was the way they paralleled the beginning and ending scenes. As cliche as it may sound, it was the "coming to a full circle" feeling that gave the film that sense of hope that the script was all about. The beginning scene of Ally at the subway witnessing her mother's murder, and at the end of it we see her having closure as she takes her first train ride in the past ten years with a smile. The look Ally's dad had; determined to protect the remaining person he loved as he hugged 11 year old Ally, and the look of resignation as he came back from the event covered in soot, hugging Ally as he realizes that he can only protect someone this much. And Charles who initially had a hard face as they were at the graveyard for Michael's death anniversary, and the look of pain and grief he allowed to surface after Tyler's death at the same graveyard. Even Tyler's mom, who had a pretty minor role, changed from the emotionally weak and dependent woman to someone who was strong enough to let others lean on. With Tyler's death, the pain helped them learn to embrace life in its entity. Life isn't perfect. We can only go through it hoping that we have done at least one thing right by the ones we love, minimize the damages we inflict on others and nurse the wounds that people give us, hoping it will heal someday.