Film Analysis by Caitlin DeRosa for CIN 103

NOTE - There was an issue with my Wild at Heart analysis. I was writing the review without access to the internet, and I forgot the female lead's name. I wrote "NAME" everywhere I wanted to refer to her so that I could look it up and insert it later. Turns out when I did insert her name and upload it I missed a few spots. It has been fixed. I apologize, this is what I get for writing film reviews while taking public transport.

At its core, The Truman Show is a horror movie. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but it is far more horrifying than comedic or dramatic. Truman Burbank lives in a fabricated world. Everyone is aware of that but himself. That does not mean this world is fake. It is very much real because they have made it a reality. Actors spend 24 hours a day on the island of Seahaven. He has coworkers, friends, and even a wife. After the secrets of his world have been revealed, Truman attempts to escape Seahaven. After struggling and questioning his entire life, he manages to complete his goal. Some may read The Truman Show as a commentary on reality TV and how it is often fabricated. Or how privacy is something we used to take for granted, but no longer can due to the current technology. Or maybe even as a commentary on commercialism, with characters constantly reading out ads and showing off products. It feels deeper than that. The film features such an intense psychologically disturbing premise, one which cannot be explained by these analyses alone. Many have linked The Truman Show with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave goes something like this. Prisoners are chained in a cave since birth facing a wall. They cannot move or look behind them. All they can see are shadows of things that pass by, illuminated by a fire behind them. They name the shadows and believe that this is reality. They do not know of the outside world or that the shadows are coming from other people or objects. Others can also watch the prisoners, they assume and any noise made comes from the shadows. If a prisoner was let free, he would not believe his new reality at first, but would come to accept it and enjoy it more than the cave. When he would come back into the cave to tell the others, his eyes would not be adjusted to the darkness and the other prisoners would assume the trip to the outside world was harmful. The other prisoners would attack anyone who tried to free them. In this allegory, Plato says that being the freed prisoner is like being a philosopher, while the rest of the world is the other prisoners. The Truman Show is similar to this, but not exactly. Truman is a prisoner, but there is an outside force at play. Truman must not only want to free himself but actually fight to free himself despite what the producers of the show want. If Truman is a prisoner, the actors are the shadows. He believes that they are real. He knows their names and their stories, but only those outside Seahaven know that that the shadows are formed by other (real) people. Sylvia is someone from the outside, who tries to free Truman from his shackles. In the end, Truman is faced with a choice. Stay inside his prison, where everything is controlled and familiar, or explore a new world, regardless of how different it may be. But once he has seen that the shadows are just shadows, that his reality has always been false, there is no way for him to go back. Reality is what we know and believe to be true. Fiction is powerful, because as long as it is believed it becomes reality. Truman’s reality was real and would continue to be real so long as its true nature went undiscovered. Now that he knows, it has been shattered, and there is only one option left: Accept his new reality.

Posted 12/11/2024

Naked Lunch tells a story of secret agents, narcotics, and intelligent insects. What is more important than piecing together the plot is letting the experience of Naked Lunch wash over you. Letting it disturb you. The movie’s visuals are disgusting. Insect typewriters, aliens that squirt out mysterious substances, and so much goop. Sexuality and gender are major themes. Women rip their skin off to become men, and the main character explores same sex relationships (which do not end well for him). The dialogue is long and at times nonsensical. At its core, Naked Lunch is about Bill’s journey of becoming a writer. Bill’s wife uses his insecticide as a drug. Bill comes home to see his wife cheating on him with one of his friends. After accidentally shooting her, his life changes drastically. He falls heavily into drug use and starts to write. He travels to Interzone and starts a different life. The aliens are a direct representation of Bill’s drug use. They are hallucinations which help him come up with the content of his reports. He states in the movie that he cannot write without them. While the drugs are clearly harming him, he would have no career or direction in life without them. It is hard to know what is real or not as the viewer, but occasionally there are glimpses of reality in between the mess. At the end of the movie, Bill has to prove that he is a writer. When a pen is not enough evidence, he decides to shoot his wife again, in the same way he did at the beginning. This proves it. His wife’s death is the catalyst for his career shift and everything else that follows. Killing his wife and the guilt that followed was the only reason he was able to make it to this point. He has made it as an author, but the cost constantly weighs on him.

Posted 11/28/2024

Pontypool is a refreshing step away from traditional “zombie” movies. Instead of relying on well-established tropes of a viral infection spread by physical means, Pontypool takes a different approach. People are infected by certain words in the English language, specifically terms of endearment, rhetorical conversations, or anything along those lines. Grant Mazzy is a radio host who riles up his viewers with questionable theories and unconfirmed news stories. After a “riot” breaks out in Pontypool, the radio show attempts to cover the story as it unfolds. After meeting the doctor present at the start of the outbreak, they realize the true nature of this disease, and Mazzy realizes he may have played a role in the spread, broadcasting English to the entirety of Pontypool. While broadcasting is likely to harm or infect the population of Pontypool, it can also help them learn more about the disease and how to cure it. The entire film is a commentary on the rapid spread of information through language, specifically on the news. Grant Mazzy, along with reporters from the BBC and presumably the rest of the world, air stories with a focus on entertaining rather than providing concrete facts. The BBC reporter baselessly implies that terrorists are responsible, while Mazzy disagrees. At Mazzy’s station, it is revealed that the “Sunshine Chopper” is not actually a chopper that reports the weather, but rather a truck that plays helicopter sound effects. There is an emphasis on dishonesty in the news. When this happens in real life, misinformation is often believed by the audience, leaving them vulnerable and at the will of whatever their favorite news source chooses to air. This information is then spread further by word of mouth until it becomes accepted as fact. The disease in Pontypool is a representation of this phenomenon. The infected words are described as terms of endearment or rhetoric. Basically all “fluff” that should not be included in a factual radio broadcast. By broadcasting the way Mazzy does, he is likely to have infected a large portion of the population. Throughout the story, more and more people become infected. Grant Mazzy eventually realizes that the only way to “cure” the disease is to replace the meaning of infected words, as they have to be both heard and understood. After successfully curing Sydney, he broadcasts a mess of redefined words, but it is too late. The disease has already spread, and the radio station is bombed, killing them both. Or at least, that is what it seems. In the post-credit scene, Sydney and Grant are seen wearing costumes and speaking strangely with different names. It is a confusing ending, which fits perfectly with the “cure” of the disease. The only way to not contract the disease is to speak in a carefully direct manner or not speak at all. The only cure for the disease is to make words lose all meaning. Is ending the movie with a seemingly random contradictory scene “curing” the audience? Or are viewers supposed to connect this scene to the rest of the film as a true ending where Sydney and Grant learn to communicate without contracting the disease?

Posted 11/13/2024

Wild at Heart is one of two movies released in the 1990s starring Nicolas Cage, where, upon getting released from prison, he meets his child for the first time and gives them a stuffed animal. It’s strange that it happened in both Wild at Heart and Con Air, and most likely unintentional. What is undeniably intentional is Wild at Heart’s parallels to The Wizard of Oz. The entire film can be seen as a tribute, as The Wizard of Oz is David Lynch’s favorite movie. Wild at Heart exists in a strange middle ground. It is comedic and surreal, while also representing violent and serious topics. Instead of ending up as a mixture of these two themes, it fluctuates constantly. The tone is always changing. In one moment, Lula is reliving her trauma from sexual assault, and another Sailor is belting out Elvis Presley and defending his right to wear snakeskin. Each character is a flat caricature, devoid of any additional character traits. Lula is a traumatized pregnant woman who just wants to love Sailor. Sailor is a man who resorts to violence to defend the ones he loves. He is so stupid that you can’t help but feel bad when he gets into trouble. He shows himself to be emotionally mature by allowing Lula to step away from their relationship after his imprisonment, which makes him even more likeable. Lula's mother is an evil woman whose only goal is to kill Sailor. Most other characters fall into the “evil, trying to kill/harm sailor” category as well. These flat representations lend themselves well to the surrealist nature of the film. The result of these choices is a film that is too weird for most but not weird enough for others. It maintains a level of semi-normalcy until the end, when Sailor meets Glinda. He frolics away to reunite with Lula and sing her a song. It’s playful; it’s over the top; it’s campy. This scene makes it clear that Nicolas Cage was the perfect pick for Sailor. His over-the-top acting perfectly melds with the comedic/surrealist parts of the film. Unfortunately, the women in the film do get cast aside. There are 3 female characters, but Lula is the most disappointing. Instead of exploring the complex character and struggles of a traumatized rape survivor and how this affects her, she is repeatedly shown being objectified with little to no elaboration on the subject.

Posted 10/30/2024

Ham on Rye begins as a typical coming-of-age story and then takes a surrealist turn. The first part of the film features snippets of life in this world. There is an event at Monty’s deli. All the teens make the long trek to the deli, with a slightly eerie and concerning feeling enveloping them. There are no main characters, instead a collective youth. The “conflicts” never seem to go anywhere or resolve. The film lackadaisically floats around this world, showing all angles. Girls gossiping about the life ahead of them, a boy having a panic attack, and a fight between two characters. It feels dreamlike. This all leads up to the aforementioned event. The “event” at the deli is strange and perfectly captures teenage awkwardness. The teens flirt, choose a partner, dance, kiss, and then eventually phase out of existence after leaving Monty’s. For the rest of the film, they are unreachable. The focus shifts from the event to those who were left behind. A girl who left Monty’s early, the boy who had a panic attack, and adults who did not make it at their Monty’s “event.” When they arrive home, they are met with immense disappointment from their families. Each of these characters are doomed to live unfulfilled lives. They have parties, ride around town, and sit in empty parking lots. There is a scene where the characters ride hoverboards through the empty parking lot, which is both hilarious and slightly saddening. Life continues on for these people, with no way to reach the same end as those who succeeded at Monty’s. Ham on Rye is an uncanny, bleak depiction of the transition to young adulthood. Characters have a single chance to live a meaningful life. If they are not up for the competitive nature of the event, they will never succeed.

Posted 10/17/2024

The Lobster is a dystopian comedy/drama that explores the possibilities of the near future. Single people are taken to a hotel, where they attempt to find love in 45 days. If they do not, they are turned into an animal and forced to live that way for the rest of their lives. Those who do find a partner are able to have children and integrate into normal society. In The Lobster, society is binary. There are multiple options, but never any in-betweens. At the hotel, visitors can be homosexual or heterosexual, but not bisexual due to previous issues. People can be a size 44 or 45 shoe, but not 44 and a half. Visitors can choose to find a marriage partner in 45 days or run away and be a loner forever. Attraction is very surface-level, and all couples must have a defining trait in common. After not having any luck at the hotel, David, the protagonist, decides to lie about himself to find a partner. He finds a woman who does not experience much emotion and changes himself to fit that description. Soon after getting together, she starts to suspect something is wrong. To test this, she wakes David up and lets him know she killed his brother, the dog David has brought with him to the hotel. When he enters the bathroom, he sees his brother’s body on the floor and begins to cry. After being chased down by his partner after she learned his secret, he tranquilizes her and turns her into an animal that “no one wants to be.” After escaping the hotel, David becomes a loner and meets a shortsighted woman, much like himself, who he believes is his match. The issue now is that loners cannot be in romantic relationships. After a slowly progressing romance, they are found out, and his partner is blinded as punishment. In hopes of being with her forever, the film ends with David attempting to blind himself in a restaurant. The Lobster is tragic yet hilarious. Even after David has found the woman he wants to spend his life with, he cannot look past the rules he was taught. If she is no longer shortsighted, then they are not a match. David would rather blind himself than consider the fact that she is the same woman as before and they could still be together. They could have easily come up with a lie for their shared characteristic, much like David’s friend who faked nosebleeds to get with his partner. The Lobster is left open ended. It is never shown if David went through with blinding himself or what animal he turned the woman into. This feels like a fitting ending, given that the story is more about the world than the specific characters. Viewers are left analyzing every possible way the story could go, letting them explore the setting further than if they were told what happened.

Posted 10/2/2024

Titaine, or titanium in English, is a film about sexuality, transformation, and women’s treatment in society. After a car crash in her childhood, Alexia has a titanium plate implanted in her skull. Titane follows an adult Alexia as she commits a series of murders, has sex with a car, and impersonates a lost child. The storyline is absurd and surrealist yet maintains a good balance of shock value body horror and meaningful commentary. Since her accident, Alexia is shown to have a sexual infatuation with cars. She works as a motor show showgirl, being sexualized by the men attending. Forming fetishes out of trauma is a common and recorded phenomenon, but Titane takes it a step further by making it a reality. In the most controversial scene in the movie, Alexia is impregnated by a car after killing a man in the parking lot behind her workplace. The metaphorical meaning of the car is heavily debated. In some sense, the car represents stereotypical masculinity. At work, Alexia is displayed alongside the cars. They are a pair. Alexia the feminine, the car masculine, and both are objects displayed for the enjoyment of others. In the literal sense, the car is her trauma. The car has hurt her, yet she still returns. After she experiences emotional distress, she seeks out the car for comfort. After learning she is pregnant and murdering a house full of people with her hair stick, she ends up at the airport. She sees her face plastered around the airport and realizes she is officially a criminal on the run. In a desperate attempt to escape after seeing missing children's posters, she undergoes a transformation in the airport bathroom. Alexia cuts her hair off, binds her chest and pregnant stomach, and breaks her nose on the side of the sink. She then poses as Adrien, a child who went missing 10 years ago. Adrien’s father takes her in, under the impression she is his son. Titane deconstructs gender like no other film. Alexia starts the film as a feminine sexually desired woman. She enjoys her work but cannot form genuine connections with men, as they only see her as a commodity. Her transformation in the airport bathroom is a key moment—where she becomes free from the male gaze at the expense of her looks, comfort, and health. She is reluctant at first but starts to live life as Adrien. Alexia’s original plan was to kill Adrien’s father and escape, but he keeps her locked in the room. After giving up and letting her go, Alexia gets on the bus to leave. There, she witnesses a young woman being sexually harassed by a group of men. Realizing the life she would have to return to, Alexia gets off the bus, shaves the rest of her head, and fully embraces being Adrien. She continues to live this way until she cannot hide her pregnancy. Adrien’s father is accepting of Alexia, feeling he has formed a bond with her regardless of the fact that she is not his son. After being found out as a woman, Alexia starts to revert to her previous ways. She dances at a rave with the firehouse workers. Instead of being desired, like at her job, she is met with disgust since she is presenting as a man. She romantically pursues Adrien’s dad, who rejects her. After being rejected, Alexia goes into labor and dies during childbirth. Adrien’s dad is left with her baby, who has both a titanium skull and spine. Alexia has transferred her trauma to her child. Titane plays with the concept of identity and the binary. Is her baby a human or a car? Is Alexia a man or a woman? Why does the answer have to be one of those two options?

Posted 9/19/2024