Catfish

When I first heard that the name of the movie that was going to be playing at the Christian Study Center was called Catfish I had no clue what to expect.  I kept questioning what catfish had to do with anything. This curiosity caused me to finally go to the screening to see what this movie was all about. I quickly learned that just because the name of the movie was Catfish, it had nothing to do with the actual fish. The movie was actually a documentary about Facebook. It proposed the argument that on Facebook, you can create your own identity and distinguish for yourself the line that divides reality and truth from fantasy.

 Nev, the person in the film whose life was being documented, started communicating with this little girl named Abby, who was a child prodigy at drawing. He became close with her mother Angela, as well as her entire family. Abby would send her paintings to Nev, and they were constantly talking over Facebook. Nev even had a love affair with Abby’s half-sister Megan. Months went by and things were going smoothly until Nev realized that Megan was lying about being able to sing. What she was claiming was her voice was actually a random voice found off of YouTube. This made Nev put everything into question and the deception came to the light. After going to Michigan, he found out the truth. There was no drawing Abby and definitely no Meg. Angela looked nothing like her pictures on Facebook. Everything was made up, making Nev feel foolish for so easily accepting the information given to him from off of Facebook. Angela, a lonely housewife who has to care for her husband Vince’s disabled sons has many regrets. She escapes through Facebook, and creates a world that she wishes she could actually live. This explains the fabrication that got out of hand.

Some people argue that this is not a real documentary, which makes this movie very controversial. Just the fact that there is so much debate over this movie makes the structure ingenious. This was a point brought up in the discussion after the screening that I would have to agree with. Basically, we are all like Angela in some way or another. Most of us have a Facebook, and on our page, we romanticize ourselves and manipulate what we want others to see. We shade the truth because we do not want to put our faults out there to be judged. The final argument that can be made out of all of this is whether or not it really matters what reality is? Are we really going to go around questioning if everything is real, or just take things for face value and live our lives? There is no general consensus however; I plan on just living my life. I learned an important lesson from Catfish. This movie taught me that there are people out in the world who create fake lives and live through them like Angela. Without Catfish in our lives, life would be dull. Catfish keep us on our toes, constantly questioning the world around us.

    

A Single Man

The review of A Single Man by Robert Ebert is a complete plot synopsis. It takes you through the entire film, from start to finish in great detail. Ebert does take the extra step to analyze George’s personality by mentioning that George’s “thoughts cannot be read in his eyes.” This explains who George is in a nutshell and how he acts throughout the film, a dismal man. The final two paragraphs of the review are dedicated to the director of the film, Tom Ford, but as I was reading the review, I could not help but ask myself, “Is this even a review?” I was expecting a lot more out of Ebert, and was highly disappointed with the way that this review was approached. Not once did Ebert give his opinion of the film’s content. I believe that, in a partial way, Ebert achieved Sontag’s prescription for a successful criticism because it did give a thorough description of the film however; I would have to argue on the form. I feel that if Ebert would have given just a brief synopsis of the plot and then went about describing the content and his opinion of such content, the review would definitely have been more meaningful. Ebert might have been hesitant to say anything negative about the movie because of the fact that the subject of the film, homosexuality, is touchy and he did not want to look like he was attacking the gay community.

The element of mise-en-scene that really stuck out to me was the lighting aspect of the film. Ford’s use of color is truly artistic. Some examples that stuck out to me within the film was the scene were George was going to the store and spotted a dog (the same dog that him and his lover Jim had) and starting to sniff the dog. Although this is a sort of creepy act, the artistic part was when he started sniffing the dog, the picture got saturated. Another part that was artistically presented was when George was driving out of his driveway and the scene was desaturated, but when he came across the little girl Jennifer, things went in slow motion and the image got saturated and the pink in her dress was bright. This was very artistic because in my opinion, it expounded upon the theme of the film which is to cherish every small moment in life.