PSY317 weekly movie review

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Cinema Paradiso is a movie that tells the life story of the main character, Salvatore, also known as Toto as his nickname with people who influenced his life greatly. The few people that took a major role and have a strong influence in Toto's life in the movie is Alfredo and the love of his life, Elena. 

Alfredo
Alfredo in the movie took the role of being Toto's mentor, friend and father which influence him in many ways in his life including his career and relationship. In the movie, it started by scenes where Toto was still a young child who had a lot of interest in movies and movie projector which initiate more opportunities for Toto and Alfredo to interact with each other in their life. Since as a young child, Toto demonstrate a very high observational skills to learn where in the movie it can be seen that Toto was able to turn off the movie projector through observing the actions sequence of Alfredo in the process. After the incident in the exam hall in exchange for the exam answers from Toto, Alfredo become Toto's mentor in teaching him how to use the movie projector. As the movie continues, after the accident of the fire in the church which causes Alfredo to lost his eyes which gave the opportunity to Toto to fully become the one in charge of movie projector in the cinema since a very young age. Alfredo then began to take the role of a friend and also a father to Toto which often gives him advice and guidance when Toto is confused with his life affairs such as career and romantic relationship with Elena.  It can be said that the later success in Toto's life as a movie director is mainly because the influence from Alfredo which gave him a lots of advice and guidance in his life. However, one of the sad impact of the Alfredo's actions to guide Toto which stopped him from running away with Elena also cause Toto to lose the love of his life and did not able to find a constant love partner to continue in his life.

Elena
Everyone have the need for intimacy and search for romantic relationship during maturation and development and this was also portrayed in the movie by Salvatore, Toto's romantic love relationship with Elena. Toto begin to have his first romantic relationship experience when he was a grown up, a student in high school when meeting Elena.  Toto's romantic love relationship with Elena certainly took a major role in his life pathway influence the way he views love and his career. Due to Elena's father disapproval of their relationship which causes them to have difficulties to continue their relationship and even thought of running away from the city and the family. However, due to actions of Alfredo in the movie which intentionally hides Elena's message and the truth she came to find Toto resulted in their break up and lost of contacts with each other where they eventually live a life on their own with different pathway where Elena have her own family at the end of the movie while Toto was still single and often have unstable relationships with different women. The loss of Elena, Toto's first true love certainly impact his life where he was no longer able to have a stable and lasting relationship with another women leading him to be single until the end of the movie.

Personal views
One interesting phenomenon I found that is portrayed in the movie is where the censored parts of movie by the church. I personally viewed that the censorship of the film by the church were unnecessary instead they should just restrict the age of the audience going for the movie instead of censoring the parts of movie making the movie incomplete. I believed that these parts of movies that were censored have their own meaning that wanted to be portrayed to the audience but however blocked and censored due to the teachings and thoughts of the church which may have forcefully made all the people to follow especially for who only wanted entertainment from the movies.  I think that censorship in movies are being disrespectful to the movie director and producer which took a lots of efforts in making and completing the movie but was censored due to reasons of inability to accept such scenes because of the teachings of certain religion and cultural views.

PSY317 Weekly Movie Review

Life is Beautiful (1997)

Life is Beautiful (1997) is a movie that depict the story of Guido Orefice, a Jewish young man who went to Italy to start his life. The background of the movie is 1930s in Italy where racism and discrimination towards Jews are certainly not a rare sight. The movie started with Guido, falling in love with Dora and how he set up coincidental incidents to show his interest and gain Dora's affection which eventually he succeed stealing her away from her fiance during engagement party and started their family. After that, the movie proceeds to the birth of their son, Joshua and how was their family life. Although they did not have a very luxury life to enjoy, however they were all happy and satisfied with their life. The movie then continues to proceed where the German Nazis came in and forced them to take the train to the concentration camp. Guido then attempt to keep his son, Joshua alive through protecting him by lies about the actual situation as a complicated game competition. Guido did a good job in protecting his son from the harm without even leaving traumatic experience that could have happened if the truth was revealed. In the end of movie, Joshua eventually able to survived and reunion with his mother, Dora after the American army occupied the camp. Throughout the movie, the main theme I found out was psychological resilience with the sub theme of racism and discrimination.

Psychological Resilience
The ability to adapt to stress and difficulties is known as psychological resilience. In the movie, Guido Orefice portrayed the traits of having high psychological resilience. In the movie, Guido belong the the ethnicity of Jews which faces a lot of racism and discrimination by Italians at that time. However, facing all the racism and discrimination that towards him and his ethnicity, Guido did not get frustrated and angry about their discrimination instead he was able to adapt to the environment and situation through humor and making fun of the racist logic reasoning behind it. For instance,  the talk he given in the elementary school while disguising as the inspector describing the superiority race reasoning of Italians through sarcastic and humor.  Furthermore, Guido also showed his high psychological resilience in the later part of movie when they are sent to Nazi concentration camps. He was able to make fun and humor in the process despite of the harsh situation which can be a traumatic experiences to many people including his son. To reduced the traumatic experiences that his son, Joshua would bear, Guido made up the their situation to his son as a game, a competition which requires to hide and score through appropriate behaviors where the final prize would be a real tank. Throughout the process, Guido did not show any fear and worry in front of his son and succeeded until the camp were occupied by Americans and his son, Joshua was not even aware of their harsh situation and still thought it as a game until he grew up. Guido, showed his high psychological resilience capability in the movie, being able to cope with the harsh situation and stress and go through the crisis while maintaining positive emotionality despite of challenges and difficulties that he is facing which enable him to save the life of his son, Joshua and prevent him from the possible traumatic experiences that would harm him.

Racism and discrimination

Racism and discrimination is showed clearly in the movie where the ideology of a superiority of a race to another race which in the movie, Italians and Jews. There are few scenes that showed the degree of racism and discrimination exists in that particular time where people have the belief that their own race is more superior than the others. In the movie, what's frighten me is when they even put the ideology of superiority of race in the education system since elementary school. Giving talks on how their race are more superior than the others in terms of body and mind which were all racist logic that were not true. Also, in one of the dialogues in the movie, where the headmaster of the elementary school stated the equation of the students have to do which uses mathematical questions that involved the life of people. The headmaster was shocked not because of the nature of the question which was very problematic but due to the difficulty of the question. The conversation continues showing without a regard to the problem of the nature of the question but mathematics logic within it. This conversation shows how people at the particular time view it normally and the racism and discrimination was started since young through education.  Discrimination was also seen a lot in the movies such as certain shops that prohibit the Jews from entering, insult and discrimination through painting on Guido's horse and his bookstore.