Film Reviews.

The White Ribbon.

 

The white ribbon is a film set between 1913-1914 in a religious village in Germany; it is directed by Michael Haneke, an Austrian film director. It was made in 2009 and since then had gained great media coverage and has been an award winning film. Overall the film was very disturbing as it included themes of mistreatment of children, greed, power and death. The credits at the beginning of the film were foreboding and sinister, they were very slow which seemed painful to watch. This put myself and others in a nervous disposition; I believe the overall effect of the few starting minutes was the director foreshadowing the events that follow. All the characters were realistic and very believable even the youngest of the characters, a big contrast to the films and television we are exposed to today. A possible drama practioner reference would be the work of Stanislavsky. Within the first 20 minutes of this film you could recognize there was a clear a hierarchy and a large difference between the sexes and the way they were treated. For example, whenever the children were outside playing, the boys were always allowed to run ahead, the girls had to walk in a certain way in a line, behind the boys, the girls never played the way children today would throughout the whole of the film. Throughout this film there were long pauses of silence, this distilled the moment and created tension between the action.

OH! What a lovely war.

In1969, David Attenborough directed oh what a lovely war. It was originally a theatre production, you can tell it was due to the way Attenborough directed it. It is directed in the style of a stage play, the sets particularly scream out his quality. The film focuses on the contrast of life at home and on the front during the war for British people. The biggest theme in the film is symbolism. The rug in the grand room represents the world and all the countries at war. Emotions, actions and the history of the war all represented by symbolism in this film.

All quiet on the western front.

In the 1930’s all quiet on the western front was directed by Lewis milestone. This film is set in the trenches during world war one and shows different stories from either side. It shows the true horrors of war and what it did to the men at the front, this film showed this quality stronger than the other films we had watched. The reason for this could possibly be because the time that it was made was shortly after the First World War; this would mean that the atmosphere and the memories of the war would be fresh in the minds of the soldiers and people at home.

Jules ET Jim.

In 1962 this film was directed by François Truffaut. The film is set in Paris during the outbreak of World War 1. The film focuses on the love triangle of two best friends called Jules and Jim and a woman called Catherine. This was less about the war and more about the effect that the war would have on relationships; due to this the film was useful for references to costume and props rather than historical references.

My boy Jack.

My boy jack is David Haig’s 2007 made film about the famous writer and speaker Rudyard Kipling’s son. The story focuses on Jack and his difficulty getting into the army and his battles through the war and also how his family at home is coping with him not being there. This film displays the most current style of costume, set and props and way of directing, in other words, this film is very ‘Hollywood’. This is useful as we can see what film makers of today would expect to be made in terms of props set and costume for the film.