'Here On Earth' is a Melodrama, Sort Of

Last night I viewed the film Here On Earth. It’s a 2000 romance film, and after viewing the first minute of the trailer before watching the actual movie, I had high hopes. It was pretty misleading. Or it was my fault for not watching the whole trailer. Either way, it’s a bad version of Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk To Remember. If you know me, you know I love cliché, sappy romance films; however, this movie was terribly acted and the storyline was just completely frustrating. A girl is trapped between two boys; one troubled by lack of family and therefore is spoiled with materialistic things, the other she’s known all her life. Guess which one she falls for. Beyond that, she randomly has cancer and has kept it a secret. Aspects of this film reminded me of the melodrama Written on the Wind that we recently watched in class.

Both films are sappy and emotional (characteristics of a melodrama), as the audience is mainly women, according to past film critics who saw melodramas as bad filmmaking (as discussed in class). Though beyond that, the film has a storyline that is quite male driven that is filled with drama and emotion. First we have the tension between Kelley, the spoiled rich kid always looking for a fight, and Jasper, the humble, loving boy that claims he and Sam (the pure, good-willed girl next door) are destined to be together. This love triangle is parallel to the love triangle in Written on the Wind, between Kyle, Mitch and Lucy.

In Laura Mulvey’s 1977 paper “Notes on Sirk and Melodrama,” a response to Douglas Sirk’s melodramas, she says, “Although this device [mise-en-scène] uses aesthetics as well as narrative to establish signs for characters on the screen as for the spectator in the cinema, elements such as lighting or camera movement still act as a privileged discourse for the spectator,” (Mulvey 41). Lighting is a large component in this film, because if we are not outside where the boys are working to rebuild the diner they destroyed or not doing their mandatory farm work, we are inside a dim house, feeling Kelley’s dull, empty attitude.

In the shot below, we can see the disconnect between Kelley and his father who is often distant (notice how he is on the laptop). Besides the psychical distance created by all the objects between the two, which reflects back to their minimal relationship, the darkness in this shot is saddening. Kelley deeply longs for his father’s attention after his mother’s suicide; however, he only gets it when he creates trouble for himself. Or rather for his father’s name and reputation in society. The lighting in the office is uncomfortable, a feeling that our character Kelley is feeling sitting in that chair. Their bodies are almost lost with all the peaks of light above their figure. An unsettling shot overall.

There are quite a bit of these shots, along with close up shots to express the character’s emotions. Notice the close up on Jasper’s face below. Sam just broke up with him and went on a bus to Boston to be with Kelley. What is the point of focus in this shot? It’s his tear filled eye. The whole background is out of focus but his left eye is the central point of contact as that side of his face is established (due to lighting).

Mulvey is not wrong when she says lighting adds to the narratives in melodramas, and while this is not a melodrama all together, it contains the same characteristics.

Another powerful shot is this one below, where Kelley carries Sam back after her knee gives out, signaling the cancer that Kelley nor we are aware of has come back. At this point, I still was not pro Kelley. Sam leaves the great guy (Jasper) for a rich, spoiled guy who is troubled due to his family life. It doesn’t make sense to me, mainly because she falls for him after hearing him recite a verse of one of her favorite poems. Suddenly he is just misunderstood to everyone. Too cliché, even for me. Anyway, this is the moment where the bad-boy becomes the soft, caring hero. He saves her. We are focusing on their almost silhouette as they enter over the hill. The orange skyline meets the out of focus ground, creating a very simple, yet narrative turning, scene. He is the hero, and we now accept him. He saves her, he’s a good person…?

This film is often times in Kelley’s point of view when dealing with his family and his tense emotions, though like a melodrama according to Mulvey, it’s much from a woman’s point of view, as again, women are the central audience, for both a romance and a melodrama. Both are meant to make you feel and make you cry. “The story-line is extremely simple, if not minimal…and is told strictly from a woman’s point of view, both in the sense of world view (the film is structured around female desires and frustrations) and point of identification,” (Mulvey 42).

We get both Kelley and Sam’s desires and frustrations, as they both want each other and long for something exciting and different in life. For Kelley, it’s happiness outside of material things. For Sam, it’s a change in relationship and a change from her small town, routine life. And we can identify in one way or another to each character.

Then there are scenes that follow the words suggesting the scenes. For instance, at the beginning of their relationship, Kelley says for Sam to meet him that night. Cut right to them walking the baseball field at night. We don’t need to see the time in between. Why show what we can infer, right? Again, a lot of scenes are derived like such. This relates back to David Bordwell’s article I mentioned in my first blog post “Understanding Film Narrative: The Trailer”. While I plan to use the section of ‘Narrative as inference-making’ for a future blog post, this sort of jump cut is a perfect example of what he is talking about.

“By saying that narration pushes us to make inferences I’m not suggesting that the inferences are models of deep thinking. They are, we say, commonsensical,” he says, using The Wolf of Wall Street as his mode of examples. I plan to go more in depth with this in the future; however, in Here On Earth when we don’t see the petty time passes in between, we make the common sense inference that Sam agreed to meet Kelley that night, as we then see them together a scene away.

Overall, Mulvey, while talking about melodramas in her article, is quite right when she, along with Bordwell, says that camera movements (and lighting) add to the narrative. While Here On Earth is not a melodrama, it has components that connect with Sirk’s melodrama Written on the Wind. 

While this is was not a very strong film plot and acting wise, in my eyes, the camera work did a solid job to keep me from turning it off.

Works Cited:

Mulvey, Laura. "Notes on Sirk and Melodrama." Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. 39-44. Print.

A Peek into 'Marvin's Room'

NOTE: The videos can be seen and do work - to view, click on the link that says "Watch this video on YouTube".

This week I watched Marvin’s Room, a 1996 film with what we would recognize today as star lineup. – Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, and Diane Keaton (with Robert De Niro, as well). Lee (Streep), an uninterested, unconnected mother who smokes too many cigarettes, and her two sons, Charlie and troubled, misunderstood Hank (DiCaprio), travel down to Florida after almost 20 years, to be tested as possible bone marrow donors for her sister Bessie (Keaton) who is diagnosed with leukemia. Bessie, who has spent her life taking care of her bedridden father, meets her nephews for the first time, one of which she has a strong connection and understanding for. This film is heavy, as there health and mental problems are the core of the conflict. So, how does the camera and cinematography help this narrative? Let’s find out…

First, we have to classify this film. It’s a coming of age film, for sure, if we look at the character of Hank. He is in between adulthood; he classifies himself as an adult, as adults still treat him like a kid. When asked by his aunt Bessie what he wants to be when he grows up, he gives a disgusted look and says “I am grown up.” With all the trouble he causes (burning down his house, not listening to his mother, getting into fights), he is sent to the ‘loony bin’ as his mother refers to it (to make light of the situation). This is also a movie about family and damaged relationships. The relationship between Bessie and Lee, Lee and Hank, and Hank and Bessie all turn out stronger in the end than in the beginning. It’s a realistic film, though not to be confused with art or slow cinema.

Timothy Shary, author of the article “Teen Films: The Cinematic Image of Youth”, would think this is accurate as well, since this is about a juvenile outcast with social restraints; “The output of juvenile delinquent dramas has been the most voluminous of youth films, although their attention to contemporary realism is much debated, since they offer a rich appreciation for the aggressive expressions which teens most crave and parents most fear,” (Shary). This is the exact description of the film, however, I wouldn’t necessarily say that there is an appreciation for the aggression that Hank holds. In fact, the character of Bessie of the film try and rid him of his poor ways, as he is encouraged that he is smart and better than that.

During the opening credits, we get the sense of immortality and darkness the movie expresses, as we are tracking an endless amount of pill bottles and medications. This one take, endless tracking shot goes on for almost two and a half minutes. This is our opening scene, our introduction, which is very telling and foreshadows many of the issues the characters express in the film (cancer, old age, mental instructions).

Fast forward to when Lee and her boys make it to Florida. Hank mostly keeps to himself, but that’s not good enough for Lee; she picks out everything the boy does or says wrong. Bessie, who has now started her treatment, on many occasions tends to connect and give Hank the time of day to really get to know him and let him express himself. In the scene below, while giving light to the history of the family, this is the first real breakthrough Bessie and Hank have. There is patience.

We see the two looking out at the ocean, then we see direct ocean shots. Normal. We may even loosely call it a foreshadowing of the coming moments. Then Hank gets off the hood into the driver’s seat, Bessie following his movements moving to the passenger’s side. Hank recklessly, as his mother would call it, drives forward towards the ocean and drives along the ocean’s coastline with the windows down. As we get reverse shots from their faces to the car splashing along the coast, we see that Hank isn’t harmful at all; both need the freedom and rules broken, and with that they’re innocent. The alternating shots of the freedom and pureness of the beach represents what they both are, and the pureness of the aunt-nephew relationship they hold.

Hank finally decides to be tested to see whether he is a match (he previously refused because he felt he was being used). The scenes where Bessie and he are at the doctor’s office is a very vulnerable scene, and that is partly due to the camerawork.

When they are outside and are facing each other, they are in half of the screen. The second half is a reflection of them both in the office glass. For a while I struggled to figure out what this means, and to be quite honest I still am in midst of questioning the reasoning behind this shot. But it's a very evident, telling shot nonetheless. Maybe it symbolizes a breakthrough in their relationship, that they are facing their issues head-on. This is a distant connection, however, it's the only one I can really justify. This is the point where Hank is told by his admiring aunt not to make up stories, so he realizes that people want to listen to him. His thoughts, his goals. This is also an instant where the boys are getting tested to potentially save Bessie's life; she's facing her fate. The blinds splicing through their mirrored reflections maybe in some form symbolize the flaws and holes in their lives, or the missing answers they are searching for.

As this one take scene unfolds (the outdoor scene mentioned above starting at 00:49), we slowly zoom in close to Hank's face, a close up shot, which tell his emotions after being yelled at by Bessie. This adds to the narrative, as we've talked about in terms of David Bordwell in the first blog (style as narrative).

In the scene right after this, where Hank meets Bessie back in the waiting room, as he tells his aunt of his accomplishment of coming in fourth in a pool tournament and his mother not caring, along with other endeavors and distant goals that make us sympathize with his character, we start off facing the two to the side. Slowly, as Hank's monologue goes on, the camera tracks the two, eventually as we face them almost head-on. Instead of a tight shot of just shoulders and head, it becomes loose and as Hank becomes more vulnerable we get to see more of his body and more of him in general; we see him in whole. At the end this scene when Bessie asks why he burned down the house, we get a tight close up of his face again to really see his struggle internally as he says nothing close to tears.

Throughout this film we see DiCaprio's character struggle to fit in and be happy. The only person he is 'normal' around is his aunt Bessie. We become attached to the pair and we as an audience want what is best for Hank. Mental health is a big issue in coming of age/young adult films because it is more relevant in today's society; "the problematic yet popular tradition of pushing their characters to the extreme limits of moral and social acceptability" in terms of this film is quite applicable (Shary). Lee wants her son to just get better, as if he doesn't have a real problem, but in reality the internal problems he has is becoming more accepted today, granted this is a 1996 flick.

There are in fact a lot of over the shoulder shots, like in our last film (Ride). There are many simple shots, which give the clear meaning that we aren't supposed to focus on beautiful frames, but the raw, deep emotion/feeling displayed. If there were to be a lot of movement and many scenes shot in obscure angles, it would take away from the blunt takeaway of the movie.

I know I have somewhat intentionally veered away from my central point of cinematic/camera movement as a contribution to narrative, but it's hard not to discuss Marvin's Room without bringing in the reality of illness. There's only so much a camera can say, as sometimes body language and words are better referenced and more clear.

Works Cited:

Shary, Timothy. "Teen Films: The Cinematic Image of Youth." Film Genre Reader IV. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas, 2012. 576-601. Print.