Our Town (with some Beast connections)

The stage director is an outsider, yet very involved in the inner workings of how the community and characters are portrayed. He specifically separates himself while he is the narrator, but also pops in and out of other roles when they need to be filled. He reminds me a lot of Melies in this way. He stands back and lays everything out for the audience, and other times he can't help but jump in to enhance the story. Basically, the stage director is equivalent to a movie director's role. He determines what gets emphasized and when, who should come in next, and where they should go. He manipulates time too! Between the first and second acts three years go by. Between the second and third acts nine years go by. He picks certain days to show the audience, dictates time jumps from year to year and even determines how long characters live for. Additionally, he shares a special connection with the audience. In more than one instance, talks to them in a very informal, colloquial manner more like he's telling a memory, rather than a historical account of a town.

On a separate note (or maybe not so separate), Emily has a similar experience to Hushpuppy in Act 3. She enters “the afterlife” and finds a maternal figure in Mrs. Gibbs, her mother-in-law, similar to Hushpuppy’s encounter with her mother in Elysian Fields. Emily continues talking to her but Mrs. Gibbs shushes her, not in a stern way but more of a comforting, let-it-go way. At one point Emily says, “Oh, Mother Gibbs, I never realized before how troubled and how…how in the dark live persons are…From morning till night, that’s all they are- troubled” (97). I think this may be connected to the Bathtub and how it has so many holidays compared to the one or two that “normal society” has. Emily also gets the idea in her mind that she can go back to the world of the living and relive days, happy days. Is this what Hushpuppy realized after she was cuddled by her mother? That she can go back and make things better? Choose to live a better life? Emily keeps saying she’ll choose a happy day to relive; Hushpuppy went back and chose to help her father, and make her world happier. She went back to correct her error, to attain absolution for her sin, the sin of hitting her father in the heart and knocking him down. She went back to nurse him and comfort him, to try and make things right. And only then was he able to fully “rest”, by dying and no longer having to suffer in his sickness.

Making of Beasts

Benh Zeitlin said he went down to the very fringes of the south to discover, and eventually recreate, the environment that would become the Bathtub. I thought it was interesting and ingenious to live among the dwellers of the swamp to get the closest, most organic vibe from the community. He and his crew became part of the community they were going to portray. I think that is the only way to make sure that one's film accurately depicts the tensions and temperament of the area. The film has a documentary feel because of its organic and home-grown feel. I puts the viewers right smack dab in the middle of the south, just as the crew was. Living modestly, even working out of an abandoned gas station, was Zeitlin's way of paying homage to the Bathtubbian mentality. "This immersive, grass-roots approach to filmmaking blurred the lines between Mr. Zeitlin’s invented world and the place that inspired it", said Rachel Arons. I completely agree with this assessment, and applaud his unstilted and casual way of going about film. It shows a true dedication to his source material and his work's objective.

"Beasts" NYT review

"They (young heroes) also remind us of the metaphysical arrogance of childhood. Because the self and the world are perceived, by an awakening mind, as opposites... it seems to follow that they must be equal. I, too, am a cosmos" says A.O. Scott in his review of the film. As a girl living in a man's world and in nature, Hushpuppy is forced to learn survival techniques so that she can be self-reliant. This movie really emphasizes this theme of living on one's own, being self-reliant and yet caring towards nature. Hushpuppy herself criticizes the "other people" who live on the other side of the levee, shopping in their grocery stores. As her father and the rest of the Bathtub society are teaching her, she is only a part of a bigger world. This proves her being "arrogant", but I would argue that "naïve" is a more fitting word to start out with. She starts as a naïve youth, trying to understand nature by listening to animals' heartbeats, observing the codes they speak in. Her father does not give her the attention that traditional parents do. It is only once Hushpuppy is forced to live on her own, completely without her father, that she develops an arrogance towards her position in the world. Then the arrogance fades to understanding as she learns to "beast it", now that her father has fully demonstrated his role and his love towards Hushpuppy. It is only then that she finds her place in the Bathtub, now knowing that she does not need a mother or any other bolster to take care of herself as a piece of the worldwide community.

developing/ expanding thoughts for Prompt C

Hugo inside the clock at the end of the first scene is a metaphor for what will happen as the move progresses. Machines will take on a human element and be hailed as helpers for mankind. Because machines will take on a human inner form (be able to emote, help people), they are comparable to early film. Early film was concerned with the viewers’ connection to the content. Showing an image up on a screen was not enough. Showing an image and getting a reaction, pulling something out of the viewer, was the aim. Framing, as a technique used in both old and new film, is meant to draw a viewer’s attention to something of particular meaning, or what the filmmaker may deem important to the viewer’s experience. The focus on experience was early film’s main goal; as long as viewers felt something during the movie, or came out of the theatre with something new, it was worth it.

As John Sloan’s painting suggests, early film was an action/reaction relationship with moviegoers. The woman looking back at the painting’s viewer is like the movie looking back at the audience. Film puts something out there, but expects a reciprocated return of emotion from the audience. Melies intention of showing a man’s face in the moon was a way of getting a reaction from the audience, and he certainly did. He showed an image that had never been seen before. As Hugo’s father put it, it was like dreaming in the middle of the day. It opened up possibilities and ideas undiscovered to people in their own day-to-day lives. Early film was giving people a way to dream, to create, and to enjoy that they could not do on their own, or could not as easily be shared. It began an exchange of dreams: show one image of a dream and it gets other people dreaming.