RoweReviews
  • Viewing Log / Reviews
  • Search
  • Ramblings
  • Contact Me

House of Hummingbird (2018) - Kim Bo-ra

7/2/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Kim Bo-ra's House of Hummingbird is a coming-of-age story with a lot to admire, particularly how it traverses the commonality of its archetype to enunciate the fissures in the social fabric of society caused by South Korea's rapid industrialization and push towards modernity in the 1980s. The impressionable and transient temporal space of adolescence works well with the film's understated grammar, exhibiting through its narrative rhythms how the grand implications of modernization often distort and strain the familial unit and the social arrangements of society under the push for economic progress. Despite the film's narrative falling victim to over-dramatic moments, which are wildly unnecessary and somewhat out of place given its understated formalism, House of Hummingbird is a quietly affectionate story which touches on a litany of social issues while remaining steadfast in its over-arching message of self-love and self-worth for its young protagonist caught in a sea of change she cannot comprehend. The social transference of emotional and physical violence is displayed throughout House of Hummingbird, detailing how larger societal transformations subjugate and strain the social and familial cohesiveness, incubating violence within the communal spaces. While the film remains relatively empathetic to the acts of violence carried out by members of the family, fully recognizing these characters themselves are struggling to make sense of the world around them, the impressionably young woman at the center of our story becomes increasingly despondent given the conditions of her upbringing, bottling up her emotions and becoming passive towards any sense of injustice. It's through an encounter with a teacher at her school, who herself never quite fit into larger societal expectations, that this young child learns notion of self-worth, a notion which is fundamental to mental and physical health not only in a time of larger cultural transformation but to anyone who themselves may see the world differently.
0 Comments

Deathdream (1974) - Bob Clark

7/1/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Prescient in its depiction of post-war trauma, Bob Clark's Deathdream remains one of the greatest explorations of the effects of post-traumatic stress on the homestead long after the last bullet is fired. Traversing the horror genre in its biting commentary of the familial scars caused by Vietnam, Deathdream enunciates the coercive effects war-induced trauma has not only on the individual suffering but on the familial collective psyche, filtering it through a raw b-movie aesthetic in which Clark's use of blocking and framing is a under-appreciated highlight. Through a steadfast interplay between intimate close-up compositions and more voyeuristic aesthetic constructions that linger on a moment, Bob Clark's film grammar synthesis these two elements into a formalism that is poignant and penetrating, demonstrating an intimacy in its imagery while exposing the psychological and physical violence distributed across the collective spaces of family and locality. Through a horror film facade, Deathdream distributes a biting critique of the psychological casualties of war, deeply humanizing its characterizations despite the near finality of their trajectory towards inevitable doom. The family members who slowly succumb to their son's violent, heightened supernatural persona do so through largely through actions which are highly recognizable to anyone who has loved another, making their inevitable deaths all the more heart-wrenching and empathetic. From the father who struggles to find a sense of closure - feeling somewhat responsible for his Son's fate in Vietnam, to the deeply maternal mother characterization who refuses to see her son in any pejorative light, Deathdream traverses its horror genre construction emphatically to become of the best and most prescient films about War and the externalities it distributes on those in the periphery who never once fired a shot.
0 Comments
Forward>>

    Author

    Love of all things cinema brought me here.  

    Archives

    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Viewing Log / Reviews
  • Search
  • Ramblings
  • Contact Me