Friday

There are similarities between The Last King of Scotland and The Pursuit of Happyness. They are both based on true stories, and they both underachieve at adapting those stories to film. (It was interesting to note the different audiences attending each movie.) The life of 'Chris Gardner' is a fascinating one, but it has not been made into a good film. As a film director you have to manipulate your material to create the perfect movie. The highs and lows, the pacing, follow too simply the life. Real life very rarely makes a compelling movie. Will Smith and his son are great, but they could have gone much further than this. The director manipulates the audience's emotion (as opposed to allowing audience emotion) too crassly, and the soundtrack was inappropriate at times, too sentimental. As much as I endorse the use of music to heighten cinematic effect, some filmmakers are afraid of silence, of letting the pictures stand for themselves. Moreover, from the trailer I had thought this might be a gritty movie about the American dream. It was a real story, that man really slept in a subway toilet with his son, it really happened, but the filmmakers made it into a fairytale. It is a very difficult balance to show the reality, manipulate it into a good story, and add the effects to make a it into a great movie.

Now, a question that I hope to try to answer tomorrow: what if you met someone at a party who said they hated film and saw no value in it as an art form? You tell them you think movies are great. And they reply 'Ok, I'll watch one film, and one film only, of your choosing: convince me it is an art form I should engage with'. What film do you show them?