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.