Once Upon a Time in the West

Once Upon the Time in the West is a great western movie which tells a story about a widow competes with a railroad tycoon and a cold blood killer who try to rob the land bought by her died husband. However, the main focus of this movie is not the story but the characters. All the characters have their own goals but the desire for surviving brought them together. The races behind the main characters are something that challenges the ideology at that time. Frank, he cold blood killer, who apparently is the bad guy in the movie, is a White American; Cheyenne, the bandit but also a ‘green wood hero’ is half Native American and half White American; Harmonica, the avenger, obviously a positive role, is a Native American.

The movie challenges the ideology for most Americans at that time, which is Native Americans are inhuman, fierce and cruel while those cowboys in the west are brave, tough and good, by totally changed the normal roles of a white man and a Native American in movies. The audience has to accept that the nasty, cruel killer is a white man and the mysterious, attractive, and innocent guy is a Native American who was hurt and humiliated by white men before. The change of roles help people give up the stereotype of a certain race.

Another thing the director did to challenge people’s ideology is that he chose Henry Fonda, the actor who always play a righteous man, hero or gentleman to play the role of a heartless killer which, in another way, challenged our habitual thought.

The music in this movie is very famous; almost every main character has their own music that represents their personalities. Another thing I found was very interesting is their attitude towards death. Being in a situation that people can die in seconds, no character in this film is afraid of death. Harmonica’s brother choose to die instead of linger on his brother’s shoulder; Frank wants to pay anything including his life to know who Harmonica is; Harmonica doesn’t want Frank to be killed by his rebellious followings; Mr. Morton wants to be close to the water even he is dying. Water is a symbol of hope and fortune in the movie. Frank and Morton try so hard to get it even at the cost of their lives.

http://i.mtime.com/mrbig/blog/4875557/2/

The Searchers

To be honest and say, i really did not enjoy this movie. Although i know it must mean something historically--a dark look at the American frontier and the bitter struggles between the Indians and the settlers in the years following the Civil War, a lot of shooting and editing problems in it made me feel uncomfortable. However, i also noticed that it is not fair to judge an old movie based today's stander since the techniques cannot be compared. The Searchers told a story about two cultures that cannot tolerant each other--Native Americans and White Americans. It may intend to say that the hatred between Native Americans and White Americans is caused by misunderstanding and we should not stereotype or kill each other. However, this intention does not seem obvious to me, instead, i found this movie itself was stereotyping those two groups.

Firstly, i do not like the way the movie  portrayed Native Americans. It seems to me that they are stupid, violent, and inhuman in the movie. However, those are only misunderstandings White Americans have towards them, not the truth. They have their culture, their way of living and their emotion, however, i cannot see any of them through the movie. One idea i think the movie was delivered was that kill is understandable and reasonable between White and Native Americans.

Secondly,  i really do not think that many sound effects in the movie are necessary. Suspicious music appears frequently, which are distracting and annoying. Also, there were a lot of irrelevant stories going on which made me fail to concentrate on the searching process. The storyline was not very clear and sometimes, the director tried so hard to bring some humor to the movie which, from my point of view, hurt the story. Something that really needs to be shown, such as the process of Ethan's change and the difficulties they were facing when searching for Debbie, was not clear in the movie. So i found the story to be unrealistic because i cannot understand why it took them several years to find Debbie and how Eathen's attitude changed.

Another thing that disappointed me was that there was no exciting moment in the movie. Even there were, they ended too fast.  I was expecting a climax since the movie begin, but i never found one. I assumed that there would be one when Scar saw Martin in his temp and i expected a fight between them. However, the story ended in a second after Martin shoted him without showing his face. I do not know is that because of the media regulation at that time or lack of advanced techniques, the gun shot scenes never appeared. Sometimes we only hear the sound of shoting but no image of people got shot.
http://classicfilm.about.com/od/westerns/fr/TheSearchers.htm

The Panama Deception

I've been thinking about this documentary after i watched it and i have to confess that it had a great impact on me and made me think about American politics differently. I am a political science minor and thinking about getting a PHD degree in international relations in the future. I choose to study it here, in America, is because i thought US was a symbol of the free world, a place that fully support democracy. However, not only the video we saw today but also America's attitude towards what is going on in Egypt now, showed that democracy, as a way of improving people's lives, is only for western countries. For many other places in the world, it is just a excuse for America to control them.

The documentary begins with showing the beauty of the Panama City and civilians' happy daily lives with light music. Then it suddenly changes to a scene of bombing at night with sound of people screaming and gun shooting. It implies that comfortable lives for people in Panama were broken by the invasion. Then scenes are changed back and forward between the interviews of people who witnessed the attack and the interviews of the US officials who were in charge of the invasion. After hearing people in Panama talking about the situation of innocent people died, family members being killed by the military, audiences find the officials’ announcements, for example, no Panama citizens died because of the invasion, to be extremely ridiculous. The comparison clearly differentiates deceptions from the truth.

Then the documentary talks about the history of the relationship between US and Panama and tries to find out the real reason for the invasion. During this process, the scenes are changed back and forward between the reality in Panama and the media report of Panama in US, such as the TV announcer’s report and the headline of mainstream newspapers. By doing that, the documentary recalls all the excuses Bush used to explain the invasion and proves that all these excuses are lies. The most ironic moment was that when the previous scene showing that people in Panama were suffering, the following scene changed to Bush’s speech and he announced that Panama now was free. The documentary finally reveals the real reason for attacking Panama is not to protect Americans in Panama, but to ensure US’s control over Panama.

Next, the documentary explained why citizens in US could all being fooled during that time. It showed that the media was actually under government’s control. Journalists did not have the freedom they were supposed to have. Moreover, people in US seems to be less critical and suspicious about their mass media or government because they know they have democracy, so they just trust whatever they were told,

The Panama Deception is really a great movie and I feel so lucky that I had a chance to watch it. The documentary itself never said what deception is and what reality is, however. A lot of comparisons the director uses make it easy for audiences to distinguish lies and truth. As Ryan mentioned in her film review, the camera works and the editing techniques in this documentary are not the most outstanding part, however, the overall significance of The Panama Deception is to be an impressive source of information on an event the US government would sooner have us forget.


http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/CineastePanamaDeception.html