El Secreto de Sus Ojos
"El tipo puede cambiar de todo; de cara, de casa, de familia, de novia, de religion, de dios! Pero hay una cosa que no puede cambiar.. No puede cambiar de pasión!"
Political Ideologies Response Paper
Movie Report (dandirik papers vol. 8899876)
Title: It’s A Free World…
Writer: Paul Laverty
Director: Ken Loach
(...) THE CIRCLE ONLY HAS ONE SIDE*
In the movie It’s A Free World…, the writer Paul Laverty and the director who’s famous for his political films, Ken Loach, tell us about the vicious cycle of capitalism through some characters. The movie is basically about the world order we are practicing today and presents us the story of a once-worker-now-boss woman and a group of immigrant workers coming to England to – simply – keep on living. The title itself, actually, gives us an idea about what we should be expecting. We are living in a free world, as it’s been said for a matter of time; but are all the people actually allowed to be free?
The people who hold the means of production, who are employers, from any background or any level (no matter how wealthy they are), who are living at the cost of other people’s lives are the targetted in the movie. Their way of living is questioned and criticized.
The main character, Angie, is an employee working for an employment agency in which she is surrounded mostly by men, and she is portrayed as she would not really get to the point where she wants to be in her career - as a woman. One day she gets mobbed by one of her bosses. She reactions instead of keeping quiet and she gets fired the next day. At this point, we see her as a rightful worker who demands justice and we applaud her reaction. But things change in the next scenes where she decides to open up an agency with a friend and starts exploiting immigrant workers for her own profit. She does exactly the same as what she had seen in her previous job. We realize that nothing changes; nothing but the roles and the characters.
Ken Loach wants to make sure that his message is transmitted: it is only a free world for the ones who can be free. The sentence coming out of Angie’s mouth to her friend Rose says it all when Rose asks her to pay the workers their money: “If you really want to pay them, you can pay them out of your own pocket; it’s a free world!”
Yes, it was a free world but to those workers, freedom only meant a day with food and little money to look after the ones they are responsible to. They did not ask for more or less. We could get the idea from one of the scenes, actually, where Angie’s son was taken away from home by the immigrant worker for a couple of minutes. Those people who captured Jamie never hurt him and never told him anything that might frighten him. They were just concerned about equity and justice. And the only addressee was Angie, no other person or nothing else. I think this was a good detail.
On the other hand, in spite of how crucial Angie seems, Loach secretly tells that no matter how rightful and sensitive you might be, the system forces you to exploit others once you get the chance. Angie has got her own reasons for doing that and maybe Rose do not have that kind of reasons but that does not mean that she will not have one day. Thus, we can say that the director knows not everything is just black or white and he wants us to realize that fact too. It is just the system which took root and stays there strongly with just one solid color.
If we stopped to think like a social scientist and think more like a liberalist (and as a matter of fact, like a neo-liberalist), we might further this last argument. Maybe the movie does not efficiently tell us about the patterns that drive all these people to be this way. And maybe Social Darwinism is right in a way and instead of complaining we should all be pursuing our own ways 'out'. Or maybe it is just a corrupted form of the system we are faced today and that the modern/contemporary social liberalism has nothing to do with it.
Still, there is this cycle and no doubt we are a part of it.
"Sophie was back in the game! Pure, raw, explosive pleasure! Better than drugs, better than smack! Better than a dope-coke-crack-fix-shit-shoot-sniff-ganja-marijuana-blotter-acid-ecstasy! Better than sex, head, 69, orgies, masturbation, tantrism, Kama Sutra or Thai doggy-style! Better than banana milkshakes! Better than George Lucas's trilogy, the muppets and 2001! Better than Emma Peel, Marilyn, Lara Croft and Cindy Crawford's beauty mark! Better than the B-side to Abbey Road, Jimmy Hendrix and the first man on the moon! Space Mountain, Santa Claus, Bill Gates' fortune, the Dalai Lama, Lazarus raised from the dead! Schwarzenegger's testosterone shots, Pam Anderson's lips! Woodstock, raves... Better than Sade, Rimbaud, Morrison and Castaneda! Better than freedom, better than life!"
May 2008, Bus. Comm. Response Paper
Movie Report
“Being There” is the story of a clueless man, Chance the gardener, who has spent all his life in isolation in the house of a wealthy man – the man who raised him since he was a little kid. When this man dies, Chance is forced to get out of the house. Having got educated only by television (if you can call it an ‘education’), this simpleton is faced with the life ‘outside’ – with no awareness at all. After getting struck by a limousine, he finds himself in the mansion of a rich and sick businessman, Ben, and his wife, Eve.
The wealthy couple confuse him with someone he has never been, Chauncey Gardiner. His virtuous look, his good-looking suits, and his blank stares along with his speeches on gardening make the people around him think that he’s a man of many talents. After becoming close friends with Ben, Chance gets to know Bobby, the President of United States. When asked about the economical difficulties US is dealing with, Chance impresses Bobby with his ‘spring and blossom’ talks and he is once again misunderstood. The conversation they have influences the President’s next speech and he starts getting invitations for showing up on live TV shows.
All these cross purposes lead to a point that is unrecallable. Even Eve, Ben’s wife, gets romantically involved with Chance. As a man whose only interest is TV, Chance doesn’t (actually, he can’t) give Eve what she wants, she takes it herself. Practically, he doesn’t give anyone what they want, but eventually everybody gets what they want from him. Because, he is just there.
*
In my humble opinion, the movie is about perception and the patterns in our minds. We love to categorize people, this is for sure. Also, we like to think inside the box, as it’s the easiest thing to do. I mean, there are some certain templates in our minds (we inherited them from our ‘instructors’, whoever they are) which we use to decide if a person is wise or not (or some other characteristic, you name it). In the movie, Chance seems suitable for the model of a wise man with all of his tailored clothes and his professional talks on gardening. Any strangeness in the conversations wouldn’t bother those who became friends with Chance, as he looks way too good for a stupid man. So all of his words are taken as metaphors.
Another reason for the series of misunderstanding is the need of being approved. With a person like Chance, there’s nothing to feel uncomfortable; because he would never judge you. Anything you do or say is approved by Chance without questioning. And you think that he did it just because he is a well-mannered person and whatever you do or say is just good to be approved.
*
Overall, the movie gives this message: Life is a state of mind. Originally said by Jack Warden (the man who plays Benjamin Rand in the movie), this sentence has all the meaning to explain what the movie is about. Everything is happening in the hedge of our perception, nowhere beyond. Nothing ever crosses over the circle of our minds. Even we can’t get out of this circle. And we live our lives the way we give meaning to things inside this circle.
People around Chance are the living examples of this aphorism. But Chance is out of this theme. Because he doesn’t use his mind at all. He doesn’t get anywhere – he is just there. (“Getting there is half the fun, being there is all of it.” – movie’s tagline)
*
As one of the audience, I play my part deciding whether Chance was walking on the water or it was just a small mound under his feet. I’m also trying to find out some things that Kosinski (the writer) or the others (director and his staff) were telling through the symbols (like the masonic one, the all seeing eye, which appeard on Ben’s grave, towards the end of the movie) or some other aphorisms. Wait, I’m getting there…
I.F.
Kayıtlar
“Being There” is the story of a clueless man, Chance the gardener, who has spent all his life in isolation in the house of a wealthy man – the man who raised him since he was a little kid. When this man dies, Chance is forced to get out of the house. Having got educated only by television (if you can call it an ‘education’), this simpleton is faced with the life ‘outside’ – with no awareness at all. After getting struck by a limousine, he finds himself in the mansion of a rich and sick businessman, Ben, and his wife, Eve.
