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It was a real privilege to interact with someone so accomplished. Her life feels like such a complete story, and her art feels genuinely expressive of who she is. I think she inspired all of us, no matter where we are going in life, not to compromise, and to self-realize, no matter how hard and painful it can be.
Damn that’s cool AF that you photograph with a real camera. I agree with your sentiment against cellphone-photography, as while the accessibility it provides is great, at the same time it makes the physical camera feel redundant when it really is not. Cameras, in addition to increasing the quality, also add intention to your photographs, which is an important component of art. Michael’s photographs were not overdramatic in lighting or contrast, but each was framed very intentionally. His framing was what made his pictures beautiful, and it gave them real, rather than artificial, lighting and contrast, as well as great encapsulations of movement.
@Eric Yeah I’d agree, those two characters’ performances stood about the most, and they were also the most direct versus some of the characters, as they are both very outwardly expressive of their emotion. This kind of tells us about the characters, as they oppose Sarah, who does not outwardly express emotion but instead the actor does it subtly, because of the fact that she is trying to seem strong for her kids. On the other hand, Johnny feels a great burden in addition to having been defeated by his son’s death, and so he freely expresses his anger and frustration, and his feeling that life is unfair, without caring about his appearance, and this is expressive of a somewhat archetypical idea of an overworking father with a temper. Finally, Mateo is so outwardly angry and screams his lungs out because he knows he is going to die, but doesn’t know what life means, and in his search for the meaning of life, a main part of that being his art, he is angered immensely, as our whole purpose on earth is to find meaning. Then, when he gets close with the family and finds great meaning in that, he is satisfied with his life and accepts his impending death, and so stops really screaming, except for when he expresses his intense love for all life.
@Leondra I really liked your point about the tunnel scene, as while I did relate to it while watching, I didn’t really think about it consciously and didn’t think about it from the perspective that everyone who has come to New York knows the experience. It’s one of those shared experiences that also feels extremely personal, and it brings you back to the time in which it occurred. This is a good concept in regards to the nature of the whole movie itself: the experience of the family coming to New York is both very personal for them, but also one that many people have gone through over the course of times.
I hope it’s ok if I diverge slightly from the prompt, but I want to discuss two characters whom I found to be connected in such a way that it would be incomplete to talk about only one of them. Frankie and Mateo, while the former only shows up physically once, and the latter is on death’s door for a good amount of time, are the two most influential characters in In America.
In this sense they are both secondary or auxiliary characters. They are largely defined by their illness and its impact on the family, as the movie is from their perspective. Frankie’s was in the past, and now they are dealing with his death, each in different ways. It ravaged John, and he is unrecognizable, his wife needs to have the baby because she feels like she can’t let the same thing happen again, and Christie is forced to be strong, for the whole family, but most of all for her little sister. At the end, Christie realizes that she can’t remember Frankie by his illness.
Mateo is a beacon of mottled light for the family, but he soon begins to feel like a tragic déjà vu. However, this is not the case, and instead in his death Mateo helps them deal with Frankie’s, and as they get their closure with him, they get theirs with Frankie, as they wave goodbye to both of them up on the moon.
This final goodbye is only possible through the other main influence of the characters, which is their magic. Immediately as Christie narrates, she mentions the three wishes that Frankie gave her, and she uses them sequentially throughout the movie. Mateo also teaches them magic, when he talks about speaking to ghosts or when he instills confidence in Sarah that the baby will bring good luck. John is angered by this as while all the other characters have the ability to believe, he has been made completely un-superstitious by Frankie’s death. Then, on the precipice of calamity, John asks him for a miracle, and everything falls into place. Most significantly, as he lies dying, he chants and transmits his own life into the baby.
The magic of these two characters is extremely important to the movie, but it also raises the question of its own truthfulness. Are these acts of magic real or imagined? They may be just a coping mechanism to deal and counter with the harshness of reality with some imagination. In fact, this is their function for Christie, as they give her a feeling of control, and this is also the function of their goodbye to the moon. On the other hand, the real effect of magic does not necessitate that they are really imagined, and as the movie frames them, often magic is more plausible than plain coincidence.
But it doesn’t matter. As Sarah says, none of this is real, not even what is in our heads is real, the most real thing to us. To a certain extent you can choose what you think, or what you believe, as is the case with magic. And we see that when characters believe, things are magical, whether or not magic is the cause of their nature. The movie ends on a fitting note from this respect, as Christie acknowledges that we, the audience, are the true reality, and she is to us as Frankie (or Mateo) is to her. Thus, as they made her believe in magic, maybe we should believe in magic from her, as if we believe it becomes real.
I like your more unconventional analysis of Corrigan, as many of us have not really acknowledged the bad side of him. He’s a romantic figure, a tortured soul who drowns his sorrows in those of others, but he’s also just that – romantic. Maybe in reality he should have simply stopped torturing himself and given up on his pursuit, and maybe he could have taken up a more productive pursuit or approached it from an angle where he could have made a more tangible difference. However, like you say, he couldn’t, because he’s an addict, and his addiction not only ends up costing his life, but also another, and it hurts other people around him.
Great analysis on Corrigan, you follow his development as a character very well. Corrigan is truly that rare breed of person, a giver. Your title is funny, but I think it also really gets at that point, as he’s not religious in the sense that many Christians are; he doesn’t do good because he wants to go to heaven or because he’s afraid of eternal damnation. He rather connects with the Christ aspect of lifting others up with no regard for one’s self. Like Christ in the Bible, he not only helps others, but he also takes on their pain for himself.
I like how rather than just analyzing the film, you questioned it. I think the responsibility of films, an important idea, is something that is often overlooked, and I’m glad you challenge the movie in its portrayal of black characters and its possible enforcement of stereotypes. This is something that often comes to mind for me when media romanticizes smoking, as I think I think they have a big influence on young people who want to emulate the movies and shows they look up to and start smoking. Back to your criticism though, I agree and disagree with it. One the one hand, I think that if you categorize the characters by race, the black characters commit most of the crimes and generally partake in less moral activities and are portrayed as such. On the other hand, I think the film does a good job in giving complexity to these black characters — Auggie talks about how he more-so sympathized for the kid who stole the dirty magazines, as he is just a poor kid who grew up in the projects with little hope of getting out. And while Rashid and Cyrus do some questionable things, they are both complex to the point where different aspects of their character and circumstances influence their actions much more than race, and I didn’t think about their race when the scenes unfolded. However, again, maybe this still enforces stereotypes subconsciously, so it’s very complicated.
I really like this and very much agree, as lying was the first thing I came out of the film thinking about. You did a good job talking about the diversity in lying within the film, as this is something I did not particularly think about. I think the lying that takes place in the film connects with its setting of New York, as the culture of the city is one in which you will often need to lie in order to get what you want. This is because of the attitude New Yorkers have which Rashid touches upon in the diner when he is wary of Paul’s offer, and says that New Yorkers wouldn’t do something like offer a place to sleep – they are instead very closed off.
