AQonWF

I was talking to someone about the ending of the film and she mentioned that Paul's face should have been shown. I thought that the ending was perfect the way it was, and that showing his face would be too common and would steer away from the message.
Paul is reaching out towards a butterfly, a sign of life and beauty. Tension rises when the sniper sees him and the camera toggles between Paul and the sniper, creating a suspense where we can predict what will happen but hope that it won't. Having Paul's hand express death with its lifeless drop added to the idea that death does not have a face. In the war, the director showed faces only to illustrate how ridiculous they can look sometimes (the frenchman in the ditch). In this case, Paul's face in unnecesary in the scene. In most of the cases, his hands were doing all the work, they were the ones killing, and his mind was often elsewhere. After he returned from the ditch, he was so heartbroken about killing someone innocent and the rest of the soldiers told him that it would become second nature and it wouldn't be as personal anymore. All of this adds to the theme of dehumanization in the film. Now that his hands have become lifeless, they have allowed someone else to live. But, this is not the positive message expressed in the film. Rather, while his hands were reaching out for hope, it was all destroyed by someone who did not even know him, or want to kill him consciously.
I thought the last scene was so beautiful in its power and message. It was in so many dimensions simple but complex.
Also, the leit motif of the windows and doors. I was unsure of their exact meaning, but I think there can be many. Throughout the movie, the characters were entering and exiting. Windows and doors were ways to open up and close a scene. I looked at in in this sense: why would someone introduce an image where the scene can be seen through a square/rectangle/window/door? I thought that this was perhaps to show the contrast between the safe environment and the dangerous one. There is a scene where we see men running through rain, but we see this through a quiet room. Then, one of the soldiers comes into the room, and disturbs the peace. These doors and windows always contain the scene in some way, they bring it into a range. They encapsulate it as well as reveal it and open it. It is in some ways implying a spectator.
I'm not sure about them....

American Psycho 2

So I never saw American Psycho, but I decided to watch part 2 of it. Mistake #1.
Besides for the fact that the movie was ridiculously predictable, the acting wasn't even that great. There was not much of artistic vision, and it wasn't even entertaining. It was a very typical movie, but I kind of liked how the narration was really seperate from the actions in the film. She spoke very matter-of-fact like her actions were justified, when they really weren't. But perhaps this was to stress that she's a psycho.
I don't have much of a good opinion on it, so I guess I won't attack it.

I've been taking a sculpture class at Cooper and I've learned more in that one class than in the large portion of my early high school "career." When you try to create art you learn so much more about it then simply studying or looking at it. So during the film class, a lot of things mentioned were so similar to the way we analyze art (paintings/scupture/drawing); composition and such. Film is a form of art, I just never heard it analyzed like that in our school.