I thought the discussion throughout the film of the topic of luck was a very important element of the film. At the very beginning of the movie there is a shot of a tennis ball; either falling onto the other side of the court or back into the court of the person who is hitting it. lucky if it makes it to the other side and unlucky if it doesn't. This is a parallel to when chris throws the wedding ring into the water. Or at least tries. He is trying to get rid of the evidence he stole from the old lady after killing her. When throws the ring, Chris does not notice, but it bounces off the railing not making it into the water. At this point the audience thinks this is bad luck and he will for sure be found out. Actually it is the total opposite. Out of luck there is another murder and the murderer was found to have that same ring in his pocket. Putting all blame off us Chris.
I agree that luck is the main topic.Chris opens with,"I'd rather be lucky than good" is what the film really revolves around. Chris was a good character at the beginning. He was a tennis star and moved to England with no money in his pocket but luck had it that he found a job and made money. Chris depended on luck. He wasn't good and tended to just float by in life. He cheated on his wife Chloe. He killed his mistress Nola. No one can say he is good, but he was lucky that he never got caught. His secrets were hidden by luck. When Chris plans out his killing of Nola, was Nola just unlucky? What led her to be killed? Chris had total control over taking her life. When the detectives talk about if Nola was just unlucky to be at her apartment at the wrong time, we know that Chris knew that she would be there at that time. It could all lead up to the very beginning with, was Nola just unlucky to have met Chris? Every little thing, Chris got away with. Nobody caught him stealing the shot gun, the neighbor didn't walk into the old woman's apartment, Nola's calls to Chris were never caught, and the ring, which was the most important. The ring could have put Chris away, but it didn't. It goes back to the opening scene with the tennis ball. I think the ring was supposed to mimick the tennis ball.
I agree with everything that taylor said. I guess I never realized how great of a role luck played in the movie. Even another instance of this is at the very end when everyone is over at Chris and Chloe's place looking at their new baby. One of their friends referring to the new baby says, "I don't care if he is great, I just care if he is lucky". After this is said there is a very slow tracking shot over to Chris looking out the window. He looks very distressed but he knows how lucky he is in his situation to of not of gotten caught for anything. Then the movie ends right after that shot.
I think that was an appropriate way to end the film. I liked how the final lines referred straight back to the opening lines. I do want to say though, about Nola, that she did evolve into an obsessive person. Scarlett Johansson (Nola) has really turned into Woody Allens' muse. She has been in three of Woody Allens' films, and I think she really does fit his style of filming. In Vicky Christina Barcelons, Match Point and Scoop, their is the woman, who gets a little too close to a dangerous man, whether he is a muderer or a playboy. Match Point was the first film she appeared in and you can really see how she can fit into his vision, a more contemporary vision.
As Shannon and Taylor said in their previous posts, the film deals a lot with luck, and how it can change a person's life. The main character, Chris, talks a lot about luck through the film. At one point he tells Nola that "it is important to be lucky in anything" and that "hard work is mandatory, but I think everybody is afraid to admit what a big part luck plays". After Chris shoots Nola and dumps her neighbor's jewelry in the river, the ring that was with the other jewelry by pure chance, bounces from the railing to the nearby sidewalk, and is later found by the police. Chris is able to get away with the murder, and the police clear his name from the crime, believing that a drug dealer did it. I thought Chris would for sure be caught for his crime, but as he said in the beginning of the film, "I'd rather be lucky than good"; Chris is able to get off of his crime by luck by the linking of the ring to the drug dealer having it. He isn't necessarily a good or bad character. I think he was just caught in the middle between two women, and had to make a choice as to who he wanted to be with, though I don't agree with how he decided on how to do it in such an awful way.
Woody Allen, as well as the director of the movie, plays the main character, Alvy Singer. He has a very glass half empty, pessimistic attitude towards life. People that have bad attitudes have bad thing happen to them. For instance, Alvy is always saying that he is a bad driver. He never really gives it a good shot though. He is scared and hides from it. One day when he is pulling out of the parking lot he goes forward, hits a garbage can, reverses back, hits a car, and so and so forth Alvy is just running into everything. Another example of bad things following Alvy is when he is holding the jar of cocaine. He sneezes on it and 2000 dollars goes up into the air.
Another point to touch on is that is movie does not really have a plot. It is all over the place. It flashes back a lot to Alvy's relationships with women earlier on in the dating process. It also jumps around alot with Alvy going back and forth to his girlfriend, Annie Hall and other women he sees.
Alvie is totally a downer, but that's what gives him charm. I love this quote; "There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," and it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women." I think this sums up Alvy's personality. Alvy is not that attractive, but he only goes after atractive women. Why would pretty women go after him? His charm. He's a fast talker and is really all over the place and I think that the styling of the film resembles Avly's persona. Alvy also likes to play that he is smarter then everyone else. No one really calls him out on it because he does talk so fast and people don't have a quick rebutle. I thought it was kind of funny that there was a lot of tennis played in this film just like in Match Point. I think a lot of Alvys "half glass emtpy" ideas is just his crude look at the world perspective, with comic relief. Ironically enough, he also plays a comedian in the film.
Along with everything Taylor said about Alvy's personality, you could say that Alvy is insecure too. The world is never going to be the way people want it to. You have to be happy despite your circumstances. Alvy's favorite topic is death, which is depressing. If he changed his attitude he might find that he would be happier and look at situations differently. After Annie and Alvy break up Alvy flys out to Los Angeles from New York to see her. They meet at a restaurant and the lunch goes horrible. Alvy can't seem to adjust to the new circumstances without being intimidated or flustered. He complained the whole time about how he hates Los Angeles. He does not like change and was trying to convince Annie to come back to New York with him.
Right, it's like Alvy wants Annie to act the way he wants her to. In an indirect way, Alvy controls her. I mean, I feel like the relationship was out of convenience. Annie was able to move on quickly, and Alvy was able to date other women. I think why they missed each other is because they are so used to each others company. But overall their relationship was really fun to watch and really witty. They were a lot of things you could quote.
Within the first few minutes of watching this film, I could tell that the main character Alvie, (played by Woody Allen) is the kind of person, who if everything doesn't go according to an exact plan, it's not going to work out. He is very neurotic and negative about almost everything that happens to him. For example, when he and Annie are going to the movie, and Annie is late, and they've missed the first two minutes of it, Alvie gets upset and says that they can't go anymore because they've already missed some of the movie and therefore it isn't worth seeing anymore. I think that Alvy is just really insecure with himself. I don't think he has much self confidence either about his life. Another example of him unsure of himself is when he is waiting for Annie and two guys come up to him asking if he is the comedian that's on TV, he is very hostile towards them, and is noticeably uncomfortable with the way they are all over him. I also noticed the way that Alvy criticizes almost everything that Annie does, but I think it is just because he is afraid of losing her and their relationship because he himself can't stand rejection at all.
First off I'd just like to mention how the film was narrated. Woody Allen, having a weird and unique personality would be the type to add this element into a film. Vicky and Christina throughout the movie were the two that were being narrated on their thoughts and actions etc. I also noticed that there was an almost yellow tint to the film. Maybe to show the heat of Barcelona? I wasn't sure what that effect was suppose to be. Also there was a lot of non-diegetic fast spanish speaking music that would pop up all the time throughout the film.
The personalities of Vicky and Christina were so different. Vicky liked organization and structure and had a lot of common sense. Christina liked going with the flow and trying new things. She liked going out on a limb. She was very laid back. While the two were out to eat in Barcelona a man came up to their table, Juan Antonio, and offered to take them on a jet to Oviedo for sight-seeing. drinking wine, and sex. This idea is absurd and ridiculous for not evening meeting juan before. Of course, Christina jumps at the idea while Vicky tries to talk her out of it.
Yes I think the film successfully show the contrasts between Vicky and Cristina. I've noticed that Allen likes two show two totally opposite women in his films. Nola and Chloe and Annie and his various girlfriends. I also agree that the tint of the film overall makes the total feel of the film different. Also the fast speaking spanish and the foreign place. I think that his films really through you into the character. The scenes are often cut short and the dialogue is completly silent, but then after an akward pause in the film it will switch to an extreme long shot with non-diagetic music. I noticed the dialogue part when Juan comes over to the table. Right off the back we also notice what kind of person he is.
I did not notice that but Taylor, you're right saying Woody Allen like to show opposite women in his films. Just like in Match Point with the characters of Chloe and Nora. I also agree that from the instant Juan walks up to the table and starts talking, the audience already has a feeling of what he is like. He is very up front and does not beat around the bush with things. He comes out and says why he wants to take the women to Oviedo and declares he is very attracted to both of them.
Juan I think starts to change Vicky’s personality and how she looks at things. Vicky is very uptight with her thinking but after she falls in love with Juan she starts to second-guess her relationship with her fiancé and how conservative he is.
Yes I see what you're saying about Vicky. Towards the end of the film Vicky and Juan are looking at a painting and out of no where comes Maria with a gun firing it off. Before this, Vicky was saying how she couldn't possibly have an affair with Juan and just go back to her fiance normally.Vicky had changed herself for Juan, but in this moment of chaos, it became clear to Vicky that she really shouldn't get further involved with Juan. When Vicky returns back home and the last peice of dialoge Vicky shares is, "It was a passing thing and now it's over". I think that really sums up the whole feel of the movie. It happened but nothing significant changed from their lives except knowing what they don't want in life. Vicky gets married and continues her life, while Christina is still searching for what she wants, and she knows that she does not want anything like Juan again.
I agree with what Shannon said about Allen showing the two women being different from each other. In the opening scene he shows them in the taxi, and cuts the screen so that they are shown on two different sides as two different people. I also feel like Vicky and Christina view love differently. Christina made a film about why love is undefined, and Vicky had a fiance at the beginning of the film. Also Vicky states that Christina had a lot more courage than she ever had. Something I didn't like about the film, however, was the use of diegetic narration. It made feel almost as if the narrator was reading from a book the events that were happening, and I found it very annoying. I'm happy that the film didn't end with Vicky and Christina having dramatically different lives, because that would have been too unrealistic. Vicky goes back to the States with her husband, and Christina goes on with her life just as she had at the beginning of the film. I'm glad that both women didn't stay with Juan, though they had both had flings with him. I didn't really like Juan's character-he seemed unstable and unreliable in terms of being in a relationship.
I also think that an important theme that Woody Allen uses in this film, and also with Match Point, is that people are not always easily changed just because certain events happen to them. For example, with Vicky and Christina, they both had a fling with Juan. Vicky is very uptight and conservative with her views and opinions. When she slept with Juan, I almost thought that she would change her personality a little bit to be more spontaneous and liberated because of her affair with him. In the end, however, she stays with her husband and doesn't really become a dfferent person, as Christina also stays the same as she was in the beginning. I like that Allen doesn't make the endings of his films too unrealistic, because there are a lot of films out there that end with the characters totally changing their ways in such a way that would probably never happen in real life.
This is my seventh year teaching film, and ninth overall. I got my B.A. in journalism in 1998 from the University of Minnesota, then worked as a sports writer at The Star Tribune for awhile. I eventually went back to the U for my master's degree in English education, and started teaching in 2001.
I live in Minneapolis with Susan (wife, works at General Mills), Jack (son, born in August '08), and Gunnar (dog, a PBGV -- look it up).
16 comments:
I thought the discussion throughout the film of the topic of luck was a very important element of the film. At the very beginning of the movie there is a shot of a tennis ball; either falling onto the other side of the court or back into the court of the person who is hitting it. lucky if it makes it to the other side and unlucky if it doesn't. This is a parallel to when chris throws the wedding ring into the water. Or at least tries. He is trying to get rid of the evidence he stole from the old lady after killing her. When throws the ring, Chris does not notice, but it bounces off the railing not making it into the water. At this point the audience thinks this is bad luck and he will for sure be found out. Actually it is the total opposite. Out of luck there is another murder and the murderer was found to have that same ring in his pocket. Putting all blame off us Chris.
I agree that luck is the main topic.Chris opens with,"I'd rather be lucky than good" is what the film really revolves around. Chris was a good character at the beginning. He was a tennis star and moved to England with no money in his pocket but luck had it that he found a job and made money. Chris depended on luck. He wasn't good and tended to just float by in life. He cheated on his wife Chloe. He killed his mistress Nola. No one can say he is good, but he was lucky that he never got caught. His secrets were hidden by luck. When Chris plans out his killing of Nola, was Nola just unlucky? What led her to be killed? Chris had total control over taking her life. When the detectives talk about if Nola was just unlucky to be at her apartment at the wrong time, we know that Chris knew that she would be there at that time. It could all lead up to the very beginning with, was Nola just unlucky to have met Chris? Every little thing, Chris got away with. Nobody caught him stealing the shot gun, the neighbor didn't walk into the old woman's apartment, Nola's calls to Chris were never caught, and the ring, which was the most important. The ring could have put Chris away, but it didn't. It goes back to the opening scene with the tennis ball. I think the ring was supposed to mimick the tennis ball.
I agree with everything that taylor said. I guess I never realized how great of a role luck played in the movie. Even another instance of this is at the very end when everyone is over at Chris and Chloe's place looking at their new baby. One of their friends referring to the new baby says, "I don't care if he is great, I just care if he is lucky". After this is said there is a very slow tracking shot over to Chris looking out the window. He looks very distressed but he knows how lucky he is in his situation to of not of gotten caught for anything. Then the movie ends right after that shot.
I think that was an appropriate way to end the film. I liked how the final lines referred straight back to the opening lines. I do want to say though, about Nola, that she did evolve into an obsessive person. Scarlett Johansson (Nola) has really turned into Woody Allens' muse. She has been in three of Woody Allens' films, and I think she really does fit his style of filming. In Vicky Christina Barcelons, Match Point and Scoop, their is the woman, who gets a little too close to a dangerous man, whether he is a muderer or a playboy. Match Point was the first film she appeared in and you can really see how she can fit into his vision, a more contemporary vision.
As Shannon and Taylor said in their previous posts, the film deals a lot with luck, and how it can change a person's life. The main character, Chris, talks a lot about luck through the film. At one point he tells Nola that "it is important to be lucky in anything" and that "hard work is mandatory, but I think everybody is afraid to admit what a big part luck plays". After Chris shoots Nola and dumps her neighbor's jewelry in the river, the ring that was with the other jewelry by pure chance, bounces from the railing to the nearby sidewalk, and is later found by the police. Chris is able to get away with the murder, and the police clear his name from the crime, believing that a drug dealer did it. I thought Chris would for sure be caught for his crime, but as he said in the beginning of the film, "I'd rather be lucky than good"; Chris is able to get off of his crime by luck by the linking of the ring to the drug dealer having it. He isn't necessarily a good or bad character. I think he was just caught in the middle between two women, and had to make a choice as to who he wanted to be with, though I don't agree with how he decided on how to do it in such an awful way.
Annie Hall
Woody Allen, as well as the director of the movie, plays the main character, Alvy Singer. He has a very glass half empty, pessimistic attitude towards life. People that have bad attitudes have bad thing happen to them. For instance, Alvy is always saying that he is a bad driver. He never really gives it a good shot though. He is scared and hides from it. One day when he is pulling out of the parking lot he goes forward, hits a garbage can, reverses back, hits a car, and so and so forth Alvy is just running into everything. Another example of bad things following Alvy is when he is holding the jar of cocaine. He sneezes on it and 2000 dollars goes up into the air.
Another point to touch on is that is movie does not really have a plot. It is all over the place. It flashes back a lot to Alvy's relationships with women earlier on in the dating process. It also jumps around alot with Alvy going back and forth to his girlfriend, Annie Hall and other women he sees.
Alvie is totally a downer, but that's what gives him charm. I love this quote; "There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," and it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women." I think this sums up Alvy's personality. Alvy is not that attractive, but he only goes after atractive women. Why would pretty women go after him? His charm. He's a fast talker and is really all over the place and I think that the styling of the film resembles Avly's persona. Alvy also likes to play that he is smarter then everyone else. No one really calls him out on it because he does talk so fast and people don't have a quick rebutle. I thought it was kind of funny that there was a lot of tennis played in this film just like in Match Point. I think a lot of Alvys "half glass emtpy" ideas is just his crude look at the world perspective, with comic relief. Ironically enough, he also plays a comedian in the film.
Along with everything Taylor said about Alvy's personality, you could say that Alvy is insecure too. The world is never going to be the way people want it to. You have to be happy despite your circumstances. Alvy's favorite topic is death, which is depressing. If he changed his attitude he might find that he would be happier and look at situations differently. After Annie and Alvy break up Alvy flys out to Los Angeles from New York to see her. They meet at a restaurant and the lunch goes horrible. Alvy can't seem to adjust to the new circumstances without being intimidated or flustered. He complained the whole time about how he hates Los Angeles. He does not like change and was trying to convince Annie to come back to New York with him.
Right, it's like Alvy wants Annie to act the way he wants her to. In an indirect way, Alvy controls her. I mean, I feel like the relationship was out of convenience. Annie was able to move on quickly, and Alvy was able to date other women. I think why they missed each other is because they are so used to each others company. But overall their relationship was really fun to watch and really witty. They were a lot of things you could quote.
Within the first few minutes of watching this film, I could tell that the main character Alvie, (played by Woody Allen) is the kind of person, who if everything doesn't go according to an exact plan, it's not going to work out. He is very neurotic and negative about almost everything that happens to him. For example, when he and Annie are going to the movie, and Annie is late, and they've missed the first two minutes of it, Alvie gets upset and says that they can't go anymore because they've already missed some of the movie and therefore it isn't worth seeing anymore. I think that Alvy is just really insecure with himself. I don't think he has much self confidence either about his life. Another example of him unsure of himself is when he is waiting for Annie and two guys come up to him asking if he is the comedian that's on TV, he is very hostile towards them, and is noticeably uncomfortable with the way they are all over him. I also noticed the way that Alvy criticizes almost everything that Annie does, but I think it is just because he is afraid of losing her and their relationship because he himself can't stand rejection at all.
Vicky Christina Barcelona:
First off I'd just like to mention how the film was narrated. Woody Allen, having a weird and unique personality would be the type to add this element into a film. Vicky and Christina throughout the movie were the two that were being narrated on their thoughts and actions etc. I also noticed that there was an almost yellow tint to the film. Maybe to show the heat of Barcelona? I wasn't sure what that effect was suppose to be. Also there was a lot of non-diegetic fast spanish speaking music that would pop up all the time throughout the film.
The personalities of Vicky and Christina were so different. Vicky liked organization and structure and had a lot of common sense. Christina liked going with the flow and trying new things. She liked going out on a limb. She was very laid back. While the two were out to eat in Barcelona a man came up to their table, Juan Antonio, and offered to take them on a jet to Oviedo for sight-seeing. drinking wine, and sex. This idea is absurd and ridiculous for not evening meeting juan before. Of course, Christina jumps at the idea while Vicky tries to talk her out of it.
Yes I think the film successfully show the contrasts between Vicky and Cristina. I've noticed that Allen likes two show two totally opposite women in his films. Nola and Chloe and Annie and his various girlfriends. I also agree that the tint of the film overall makes the total feel of the film different. Also the fast speaking spanish and the foreign place. I think that his films really through you into the character. The scenes are often cut short and the dialogue is completly silent, but then after an akward pause in the film it will switch to an extreme long shot with non-diagetic music. I noticed the dialogue part when Juan comes over to the table. Right off the back we also notice what kind of person he is.
I did not notice that but Taylor, you're right saying Woody Allen like to show opposite women in his films. Just like in Match Point with the characters of Chloe and Nora. I also agree that from the instant Juan walks up to the table and starts talking, the audience already has a feeling of what he is like. He is very up front and does not beat around the bush with things. He comes out and says why he wants to take the women to Oviedo and declares he is very attracted to both of them.
Juan I think starts to change Vicky’s personality and how she looks at things. Vicky is very uptight with her thinking but after she falls in love with Juan she starts to second-guess her relationship with her fiancé and how conservative he is.
Yes I see what you're saying about Vicky. Towards the end of the film Vicky and Juan are looking at a painting and out of no where comes Maria with a gun firing it off. Before this, Vicky was saying how she couldn't possibly have an affair with Juan and just go back to her fiance normally.Vicky had changed herself for Juan, but in this moment of chaos, it became clear to Vicky that she really shouldn't get further involved with Juan. When Vicky returns back home and the last peice of dialoge Vicky shares is, "It was a passing thing and now it's over". I think that really sums up the whole feel of the movie. It happened but nothing significant changed from their lives except knowing what they don't want in life. Vicky gets married and continues her life, while Christina is still searching for what she wants, and she knows that she does not want anything like Juan again.
I agree with what Shannon said about Allen showing the two women being different from each other. In the opening scene he shows them in the taxi, and cuts the screen so that they are shown on two different sides as two different people. I also feel like Vicky and Christina view love differently. Christina made a film about why love is undefined, and Vicky had a fiance at the beginning of the film. Also Vicky states that Christina had a lot more courage than she ever had. Something I didn't like about the film, however, was the use of diegetic narration. It made feel almost as if the narrator was reading from a book the events that were happening, and I found it very annoying. I'm happy that the film didn't end with Vicky and Christina having dramatically different lives, because that would have been too unrealistic. Vicky goes back to the States with her husband, and Christina goes on with her life just as she had at the beginning of the film. I'm glad that both women didn't stay with Juan, though they had both had flings with him. I didn't really like Juan's character-he seemed unstable and unreliable in terms of being in a relationship.
I also think that an important theme that Woody Allen uses in this film, and also with Match Point, is that people are not always easily changed just because certain events happen to them. For example, with Vicky and Christina, they both had a fling with Juan. Vicky is very uptight and conservative with her views and opinions. When she slept with Juan, I almost thought that she would change her personality a little bit to be more spontaneous and liberated because of her affair with him. In the end, however, she stays with her husband and doesn't really become a dfferent person, as Christina also stays the same as she was in the beginning. I like that Allen doesn't make the endings of his films too unrealistic, because there are a lot of films out there that end with the characters totally changing their ways in such a way that would probably never happen in real life.
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