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Blue Jasmine (2013)
Absolute Allen
On Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine
I've seen several Woody Allen films, and I've enjoyed them all. But here, he brilliantly tells a very believable story of a woman who is obviously in major distress, and attempts to come out of it. His story here doesn't crash and burn as I thought it might have, but instead the story was consistent with its main character's personality. All though she came and lived with her sister, it very well could have been a story of siblings or friendship, but instead it became something much different...something more creative.
Woody Allen masterfully created a character that was flawed, but yet this character also we could feel for. Her husband had multiple affairs on her and told her that he was in love with someone else. That was something that we could inevitably have emotion for and maybe even so personal connections. As in his brilliant masterpiece Annie Hall, Allen makes a regular bunch of people come together to make a wonderful rich story. Cate Blanchett's character, Jasmine, comes from marrying rich, but her husband is found as a crook. Then she ends up living with her sister and trying to find a job and so forth. Sounds like a typical life story of someone who comes out of a marriage. But what happens here is that Wood Allen creates a character that is special, someone different from most people. She has a hard time adjusting to the new world she is in. Most people would be able to adjust. Not only this, but she starts influencing her sister as well, creating a whole new atmosphere around her. We see what she was like before the film began.
The framework worked well, as it was simple just as the story. Nothing too major with the camera, except fantastic photographic images that are still in my mind now. I must say, symmetrical images in films that give such wonderful color contrast is truly a piece of art. Just as in all of Wes Anderson's work, Woody Allen creates some great flat shots, where we see color and perfect alignments with objects in the scene. When Jasmine is in the bathtub, we see flowers on either side, not perfectly symmetrical but to the extent where we get the point (also makes it more realistic), and when we walk into her and Hal's living room for the first time; a wonderful shade of dark green brought out by a beautiful brown. The colors match the scenes and make a wonderful artwork to look at.
Overall this film was a great edition to the Woody Allen library and makes me want to go and re-watch Midnight in Paris to see if I notice anything I hadn't noticed before. I thought the film had complex characters set into a believable storyline and it created a fine story to want to sit down and watch.
Raging Bull (1980)
Scorsese Shines
Scorsese brilliantly crafted this stunning film. From the opening titles to the very last scene where Robert De Niro restates Marlon Brando's famous line from the 1954 Best Picture winning epic, On the Waterfront. When that line is said, the entire movie rushed back into my mind, as if Scorsese wrapped it all up in a bundle and handed it to me. The line was not only fitting for the movie, but for the scene itself. The last scene sets up how Jake LaMotta might just go somewhere, as he clearly does for a movie was made on him. The saying of this quote had me in tears, as it really put an emphasis on a waste of a man's life.
I also loved how it was shot in black and white. As in Schindler's List, the usage of this feature really dramatized the effects used and the entirety of the sadness depicted from Scorsese's masterful interpretation and the events that were happening. As I have always said, in black-and-white movies, there are some things that can be seen that cannot be seen in color films. The acting seems to soak in more, and the intentions of the director and writer are more intense. Possibly, it's because we see in "black-and-white", and this brings us to another reality that only we can see.
Scorsese's shots are very clean, and use his typical dynamics. When LaMotta is losing to Sugar Robinson about half way through the movie, LaMotta sits down, and Scorsese, as if moving the camera himself with his hands, zooms up to LaMotta from the other side of the boxing ring. It's beautifully perfect and holds a clean and steady shot that lasts in my memory.
The writing for the film was exceptional, and it was really well crafted. The dialogue was believable and was not as heavy as let's say, Woody Allen's 1977 romantic comedy, Annie Hall. The film held to itself, speaking only for itself, and there has yet to be another movie like it to date, except for as I stated earlier, Schindler's List.
Robert De Niro's acting was superb in this film in his role as Jake LaMotta. Not only did he master the enormous weight gain he needed for the part, but he also mastered the intensity of the role. In the scene where LaMotta is thrown in jail, the character starts talking bad to the officers, then to himself. He then gets up off of the bench he was sitting on and continually punches the stone wall, not only with his fists but with his head too. He then sits down again with his face half lighted. De Niro's amazing emotion conquest in this scene exerts the power an actor can have over a character.