Hamilton

I think the thing I enjoyed most about Hamilton was the realistic feel of the film. We talked about atmosphere, and I really think this applies especially. Most people in real life do not act, they are awkward sometimes, and more often than not there are awkward silences, muffed words, and long times of just being ourselves with no one caring. This film really felt like that. It was alot like a mode of theatre called 'realism", in which the play was not a play within itself, but actually a snippet of life, or fragment. It had no beginning or ending, and it had no moral of the story. It was just say, a dinner scene, and that was it. No one talked necessarily, it was just real life. Now this is interesting as a genre in film, but it's also boring. Even though I was captivated by several of the scenes, I couldn't help drifting from it at the same time. When I did pay attention I thought it was interesting that I filled in holes of the story with what I assumed was happening. Like when Joe was in the car with his mom, I assumed she was disapproving of him, even though no words were said.

My favorite scene in the film was when Joe got up to play video games. It really caught my attention because I have a friend who plays video games and has no life outside that and work. To me, this character of Joe was very much a personification of my friend. Because the storyline and character description was so vauge I was able to keep this impression. Perhaps you all know a guy like Joe, and you can fill in your own details that you've experienced for yourself. Perhaps this was Matthew's whole point. After all, his name is Joe.

Anyways, I was really engaged with this scene because of the girl. I felt bad for her, because he was so indifferent to her. It was like he didn't care at all that she would like to sleep. Even when she got up and put her head on his shoulder, I could tell she wanted to get his attention, and he didn't even acknowledge her. That's not a guy I would want to be with! Any other film and this idea would be forced on us, but this film made me come to this conclusion myself. There was no need for dialogue.

Now, that said, there's nothing wring with a film that tells you how to feel about a character. I like being told how a person is. This is the director's choice, and there's a point to the characters and how they all fit together and relate to the story. But for Matthew's film, his detatchment worked as well. I'm not sure I'd say I prefer this style, but it was definitely a style all its own and it was a unique experience because of it. I didn't even mind the open ending, which is very rare for me. The story was so realistic to life and you brought so much of yourself into the story that I could make up my own ideas of the ending without feeling let down. In fact, I was actually excited to feel that I could bring my own closure to the film. The ideas were scattered but no so far that it was ridiculous, and yet there was space for me to take ownership of the plot.

Finally, I really liked the imagery. To me, this was aa true art film. The camera work was interesting, moving from far off, stable shots, to closeups, and back to high angles and pans and tracks. I also liked the extreme closeups, especially in the bakery where Lena worked. When she was sharing photos with her friend, I felt like her, smiling politely at each picture, but not really caring about the content at all because I had no connections with any of them. I wanted to be there to share subtle annoyed looks with the unfortunate coworker. I liked how the photos were shown, and then the next camera angle was stable and looked like a photo because it was of a hill and far off. When Joe appeared at the top and walked down I almost laughed. He was portrayed as an awesome object, king on top of the world, yet far off, and he had followed my feelings of polite annoyance of the showing of the pictures. I got the feeling it meant Joe thought of himself as a very cool man, but really he was seen as annoying by his girlfriend, who maybe idolized him only out of habit. Now that she was mistreated by him and he obviously didn't care about her, why should she idolize him any longer?

My ovwerall impression was that this was a study of coming of age, and learning responsibility. Joe was still very immature. His girlfriend was more mature than him and had to put up with his immaturity, and he still fought with his mom and lived with her. I found the church scene especially interesting when Lena took the baby outside because he was crying. Joe looked annoyed and like he wanted to be anywhere else, even though they were in church as a family, like your typical perfect family...yet we know better from outside glances at their lives.

I really liked this sense of bordem I got from this film. it has inspired me to incorporate this idea into my feature film, which deals with bordem. But I want to be sure not to put anyone to sleep as well. I'll haev to see if I can experiment with his idea and see if I can make it work for me.