At the start of the film in class today, I already noticed two main pieces of the scene to declare its background. The drapes were white and clearly polish,I noticed because I come from a very devote polish/European background, and the vehicles that drove passed the window were European; not to mention the window opened to the inside, very classic in Europe, not so much in the US.
A little background on me. I was born in the US, in Chicago Illinois 1988, January 15th. You can go back and walk into that hospital at around 7PM and hear my loud screaming just as I came out of my little room, never to return. I learned polish first before my English and have kept most of my polish traditions, especially the house setup because of my mom, furnishing and such. Also, food at my house is very traditional. Greasy foods that give you most of your vitamins so cholesterol is high, but you stay skinny...Great success!
So, because I speak polish, been to Europe over 7 times in my lifetime so far, I knew where we were after a few shots. Most, if not all, the shots were about culture. The shot of the old couple in the beginning playing cards and just chillin in the morning was typical. The guy eating the home cooked meal was typical, I swear I've seen that same table at my grandma's house and the cabinet setup. The doors, if you noticed, consisted of less wood and more glass or plastic screens. At one point of the Polish orchestra scene, also in the first twenty-thirty minutes, there was a muffled dialogue between the band and speaker, he forgot what the name of the polka song was, he asked the band after he thanked the audience members for attending.
Because the filmmaker was traveling through europe, there was a certain narrative between the long shots of people just standing there and waiting for the train or bus. The producer shot the people waiting and then some cultural aspects of the city or country that was visited, and back to the bus. We definitely started in Poland for a while, then we moved on across the boarder to the current Slovakia, a deeper dialect of polish with less sz and cz sounds. Cool thing is that both languages: Polack and Slovak, even Russian and Ukrainian but not as easy to understand, come hand in hand, one can speak only one but understand both. I knew we were in the Russia/Ukraine section by the establishing shot of the sign sometime into the film with the weird writing on it, the Russian alphabet is funky.
The lines of people were fun to watch. European culture, I thought, was best expressed in those sequences. The way I was taught to treat life is to keep your distance from self expression. Most of the people at the bus stop knew the camera was there and just looked at it funny. I mean the women stared at it, typical of Slavic nations, and the males looked away, but still caught glimpses a little here and there. If that same camera was in the US every self-righteous person who noticed it would be on the spot yelling and screaming. The mentality at the bus stops was don't say anything, it has nothing to do with me, just let them film. There were a few oddballs that criticized the camera filming them, and the woman most likely yelling at teens being dumb, or drunks being dumb, but then waves it off because she knows she can't change anything. In that scene with the older woman yelling, I couldn't understand what she was saying, but just the way she said it convinced me plenty, my mom has the same tone with me, strange, it's very culturally European.
Finally, our crowd which we viewed the film in was great. I mean really, I thought the film was boring and repetitive. The crowd was more restless than a pack of hungry wolves. A huge pile of change dropped, I dropped my cellphone twice, and everyone around me was moving constantly or sleeping. Though culturally explicit, like a culture fist to the face---HYAHHH!! TO THE FACE!!---it was presented in a slow fashion that bored the audience after about thirty minutes in. Personally it may have been fun to scope out the culture differences for me a little, it took the fun out of any narrative that was expected by the typical American.
No comments:
Post a Comment