The God Father-"An Offer You Can't Refuse"

As the famous line goes, this highly acclaimed classic, The Godfather is truly an offer you can't refuse. This movie is about the Corleone family, a family deeply involved with organized crime in the city of New York during the 1940's. Don Vito Corleone is the head of the family and after Don refuses to support Sollozzo, a rival mob member, in his plan to sell drugs on the streets of New York, Sollozzo makes an attempt on Don's life. With Don Vito in the hospital Michael, the youngest son, steps up and takes action to gain vengeance on the family who attempted to kill his father. The irony of it all is Michael is the child who wanted nothing to do with his fathers business out of his three siblings. As the story unfolds we watch Michael transform from a young romantic, fresh out of the military, into a mafia leader resembling his father. Although this movie is quite long and in some parts slow paced, you will feel like you know the Corleone family as if you were a new addition. You gain access to all that goes on behind the doors of their million dollar mansions and all their undercover operations. This film is riveting, addictive, and will leave you wanting more of the Corleone family.

Overall I liked this film mainly for the connections I was able to make with the characters due to the detail the film goes into about their lives and relationships. I felt strongly for Connie, Don Vito's only daughter, whose relationship with her husband takes a turn for the worst only a few months into her marriage. I also feel for Michael. I feel the pressure he is experiencing from his family to be involved in their family business as well as the pressure from society to not be involved. It is this connection that holds your attention throughout the whole film and leaves you wondering what will happen next. Another aspect of the film that I was intrigued by was the way this movie was filmed and the placement of everything on the set. I felt like the placement of props, the placement of people and the lighting made me feel like I was lingering in the shadows, emphasizing the secrecy of all their operations and conversations. I loved feeling like I was not supposed to be hearing what they were saying, it forced me to experience the danger that was lurking around each corner.

Apocalypse Now: Both presentative and textual

Even though many scenes in Apocalypse Now are filmed with deep focus, allowing the audience to feel present as if they are actually in Cambodia amongst the jungles or small little villages, this film keeps it's audience distanced as well. There are many scenes that the director of this film, Francis Ford Coppola, present things for what they are, but he also adds images and music that make the scene textual or hard to relate to. The fact that this movie takes place during Vietnam portrays the tradition of presence in general. War is emotional and occurring all the time, but Coppola wants his audience to focus on the psyche of the soldiers instead and in order to do this he uses textuality.

A scene that displays both traditions is the helicopter attack towards the beginning of the movie. This scene starts off with six soldiers abroad a helicopter that is headed to attack a little Viet Cong village in order clear an entrance onto the Nung River. The beginning of the scene shows a realistic close up of the soldiers boarding the helicopter followed by a zoomed out image of eight or nine helicopters flying towards the camera with a breathtaking sunset behind them. If it were not for the mystical music that accompanies this scene I would say it portrays the tradition of presence, but this music decreases the intensity of the coming attack, thus portraying the tradition of textuality. The next image is more personal and again more realistic showing all the soldier's preparing for the attack. The audience is given a chance to connect emotionally to the soldiers, but just when we begin to feel connected to them, Lieutenant Bill Kilgore turns on Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner and the image becomes textual again. The explosions and sudden destruction of the small village does not match up with the classical music playing in the background, but this contradiction is exactly what Coppola wants his audience to focus on.

I personally had trouble with the textuality that Coppola used within this film, but it does create a deeper meaning to the movie in general. It also challenges the audience to interpret the movie on an analytical basis, so If you are tired of movies that tell you how to think, this will be refreshing.

Apocalypse Now is not for everyone

Apocalypse Now is a powerful film that takes place in the Jungles of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The movie is written from the perspective of Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, who is a soldier sent on a secret mission to assassinate a decorated American soldier Colonel Kurtz who "went off the deep end" and is living in Cambodia with a group of followers who worship him. Willard is sent to Cambodia on a boat with four other soldiers to terminate Kurtz and his whole operation, but before he reaches his top secret location Willard experiences the horror and madness of Vietnam. Similar to most war movies there are explosions and danger around every corner, but a difference in this movie in comparison to others is it's ability to portray the psychological effects of war. Like I mentioned in the title of this entry, this movie is not for everyone and if you are looking for a historical account of Vietnam, you are not going to find it here. In my opinion this movie was hard to relate to. Personally I thrive on connecting with the characters of a film and I had great trouble doing so in this film. I was looking for an emotional attachment to the characters like in We Were Soldiers, but this is not the point of the movie.

A deeper look at The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Right from the beginning of this movie I became Bauby (Jean-do). Within seconds I got the sensation that I was no longer sitting in a classroom, but rather laying in a hospital bed looking through Jean Dominque Bauby's groggy eyes of confusion, staring up at hovering doctors. It is Julian Schnabel's genius framing techniques in this scene that allow me to live vicariously through Jean-do and become this character.

All the shots Julian Schnabels films in this scene are point of view shots coming from Bauby's perspective. As he wakes up out of his coma nothing is in focus, in fact I found myself blinking my own eyes repeatedly as if they were Bauby's eyes. After adjusting his eyes a bit more, Bauby is able to focus on a male nurse who seems to be standing next to a few other female nurses. There is very minimal background in this medium shot and quickly, in a blink of Bauby's eye, a female nurse blocks his view of the male nurse and the camera does a close up of this female staring into Bauby's eyes asking him to open his eyes. It is in the these few seconds that the audience begins to feel claustrophobic and frustrated as the doctors and nurses crowd Bauby's face all asking him the same question, "Can you hear me?". It got to the point where I wanted to turn my head away from these people, but of course I couldn't, I was Bauby and I was paralyzed from head to toe. This framing technique makes you focus on what objects are before you since there is nothing else to look at on the screen or if there is it is out of focus. Like Bauby is 'locked in' to his own body, the audience is 'locked in' to the frames.

Throughout all of this chaos Bauby is still blinking his eyes slowly and when he closes them the frame goes dark; nothing is visible except for an extreme close-up of his inner eye lid. Starting from the first close-up of the female nurse up until everyone leaves Bauby's room, the onscreen space is limited to parts of the doctors and nurses faces; Bauby's face is not on-screen until the middle of the film. With this in mind, It seems plausible that Julian Schnabel is intentionally focusing on facial features to fore shadow the importance Bauby's appearance was before his stroke or even contrasting the flashes of light people were to Bauby as the editor of Elle (see the flash back to Elle magazine photo shoot to see this difference).

This scene begins the audience's breath taking journey through the eyes of Jean Dominque Bauby and the unique framing in this scene create this relationship between Bauby and the audience.