A wonderfully, twisted and an extremely tense movie - you are gripped with this film from the start to it's final ending.
This is not your typical movie where there is a set protagonist. Instead, this film follows the Battleship Potemkin style with a dash of modernism - the storyline does not follow any specific character, it follows the beginning, middle and end of the RAF. This, in film speak, is an unbelievably well structured story.
In the first act of this film, you almost unquestionably want to take up arms and fight along with them to help win the war for their specific cause. War is bad. Imperialism is bad. America and the thirst for oil is terrible. The images that portray this starves the audience into having a hunger for joining their cause. And then the second act begins....
The second act of this film takes the viewer into the terrible depths of their actions where they go from freedom fighters to actual terrorists.
And, as I have said before, it has no specific protagonist... but, the story of it and our own ideas of how stories are told makes one think that Meinhof is the stories protagonist... but again, as this movie progresses very aggressively, one can see that this film is not about one person at all... it's about everyone who had anything to do with the RAF.
The movie is a mindblowing experience into our histories past and it portrays the outright cruelty of the insanity that is the terrorist all most too horribly perfect.
This movie is a must see.
Except, of course, the beginning really needs better choice edits.
To further talk about the structure, I will say this this film adds and drops characters as needed to only further the story of the RAF. People come and go so quickly in this film and it makes the average film consumer wonder exactly who this film is about. But, by structure and directorial choice, it is not about any one person - it is about the group.
Excellent film.
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2 comments:
Erik,
The problem with this post is that your stated thesis does not say anything beyond the fact that you like the film and encourage the reader to see it. In your first 2 paragraphs, you assert that the film is:
- "wonderfully, twisted and an extremely tense"
- "not your typical movie where there is a set protagonist"
- "an unbelievably well structured story"
None of these statements suffice as a strong critical statement. Critical does not mean critique. It means you are investigating how the film works. What it's doing, and how it does it. Saying it is well structured is an opinion, an evaluative statements - not a critical statement. As a hypothetical example, you might have altered your thesis to something more like "By abandoning the commitment to a main protagonist (so often seen in conventional fiction films), the film opens the narrative to a more sociological view of the subject matter." Then you would have something you're claiming, that you can then back up with examples of how that works scene by scene.
As it stands, this is a popular review, not a critical essay. Please see Ch 3 of your text for clarification of the difference.
Sorry, wrote Erik but meant Jared...
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