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s0023329asfilm · 8 years ago

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Post C. Textual Analysis Draft

Explain how the theme of coming of age is portrayed in The Fault in Our Stars (Boone, 2014) and The Spectacular Now (Ponsoldt, 2013) as unconventional teen films.

Between these two American teen films <The Fault in Our Stars> and <The Spectacular Now>, probably the first thing in common we would notice before watching these films is that they both have Shailene Woodley as a heroine. However, after we finish them, it’s not hard to recognize that they’re very similar to each other, excluding the fact that Shailene Woodley is in. One of the crucial points we ought to be paying attention to between them is that ironically they’re both very conventional and unconventional as teen films at once. Both of them present how it’s like to be an adolescent very well using typical coming of age conventions such as romantic/sexual relationships, peer groups, parents, alcohol, etcetera. Meanwhile, although they contain lots of those conventional factors, they’re still distinguishable from other typical teen films because what they focus on throughout the whole movie is how characters address their perceived imperfection and instability to mature, rather than normal rites of passage which generally appear in teen film genre. The way they portray those alternative representations of teens for coming of age theme would be the point that I’m going to cover in this essay.

The First film to discuss is <The Fault in Our Stars> directed by Josh Boone and released on 2014. The movie is classified as romance and drama genre. The key themes are coming of age, which also can be considered loss of innocence and virginity, love, family, death and grief, loss, etcetera. The film is basically about a girl named Hazel who got cancer, meeting a boy named Augustus, also a cancer patient, and building a relationship with him. A protagonist of this movie is technically Hazel, but I think Augustus is also a very large part of the movie since he’s the one who encourages Hazel to lead her life and gives her meaning of life that she was losing. I can’t really find any antagonist in this film, which presents how grounded and realistic this film is, because in our normal life, it’s hard to find merely bad people around us. In real world, everyone is a protagonist in their own lives.

The next film is <The Spectacular Now> directed by James Ponsoldt and released on 2013. The movie is classified as comedy, drama, and romance genre. The key themes are coming of age, and it also contains the meaning of loss of innocence and virginity, love, family, hedonism, man vs himself, etcetera. The film is about a high school boy named Sutter who only lives in the present. However, through meeting a girl named Aimee and finding his long lost father, he started to get changed. The protagonist in this film would probably be Sutter, but simultaneously he’s also shown as an antagonist. Throughout the whole movie, the story is entirely built around Sutter, which tells that he’s obviously a protagonist, but all the hardships he needs to go through have been caused by him, and that setting reinforces the theme of man vs himself in the film.

In this chosen scene in <The Fault in Our Stars>, there’s not much considerably distinctive cinematography shown, since the scene focuses on a dialogue between Hazel and Augustus while they’re sitting quite statically. However, in the beginning of the sequence, there are some points that we can find some important relevance to the chosen macro concept from.

The first crucial aspect of cinematography in the scene is the use of Extreme Long Shot. Hazel and Augustus visually take very small part in this shot and it makes them seem to be quite powerless and even trivial and unimportant. It’s significant in relation to the theme because it connotes that although they feel special and extraordinary about themselves, still they’re just tiny parts of this enormous world.

The second aspect of cinematography is the use of off centre frame. They put Hazel and Augustus who are the main factors of the scene on the left quite small to show the contrast between them and the kids playing in the playground. It means more than it seems to do because in the first half of the movie, there was a scene that Hazel and August went to picnic together to the same place, and at that point, they were part of those kids because both of them were much more stable physically and emotionally. It fragmentarily shows how vulnerable their mental and physical status became, compared to their past.

The last aspect is the use of Medium Close Up. Instead of using Long Shot to show their entire look, the director chose to focus on Hazel’s hand helping Augustus getting up and his facial expression during it. It emphasizes Augustus’s feeling about his own health condition which is very precarious and facilitates comparison with how he normally acted like before his cancer got worse. This relates to my focal macro concept because it shows how much people can change due to circumstances and how hard it is to overcome when you face adversity which can never be overcome.

Meanwhile, in <The Spectacular now>, cinematography is used in quite different way from <The Fault in Our Stars>.

The first aspect to focus on in this scene is the use of dim lighting. While Sutter is driving his car on his way back home, light only comes from the outside of the car so that we only can see Sutter’s vague silhouette in the dark. It represents pessimistic attitude of life that he got at the moment and that he’s being emotionally closed because of fear and despair. It’s strongly connected to the theme because it portrays adolescents’ insecurity that appears when they’re having a hard time to control their feelings.

Next significant aspect is the use of dutch tilt. When Sutter is parking his car, it seems to be slanted which gives us some vital clues to, psychologically, unease of his mind, and physically, his drunkenness. Therefore we can get the idea that he’s quite out of his mind because of the trouble he’s got with Aimee and his dad.

The third aspect is the use of a face in half shadow. It’s one of the cinematographic aspects in the movie that clearly represent Sutter’s characteristic as both hero and villan. It also shows the inner conflict that he’s having and confusion of his identity formed after he met his dad and found himself from his dad’s careless behaviour.

If I try to analyse every single mise en scene in these scenes, although they’re only about 3 minutes long, the list would be endless because everything in the frame has been planned to be placed. Thus, I’ll pick up only some clearly noticeable factors of mise en scene in these two sequences.

First, in the chosen scene of <The Fault in Our Stars>, those two characters’ costumes are quite significant. While Hazel is wearing jeans and jacket which seem to be a normal teenage girl outfit, Augustus is wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants with a woolly hat and we immediately can notice that he’s a patient from what he’s wearing. It directly represents their health status, especially how sick and depressed Augustus is compared to Hazel.

The second factor to focus on is a champagne bottle. In this scene, the champagne complements what Augustus talks about his anxiety about getting forgotten after death, since alcohol in movies generally has an image of distress and instability, either mentally or socially. I think it also means although he doesn’t want to be forgotten, he still wants to forget about his life because it’s not what he expected to get.

The last key prop is Hazel’s oxygen tank and Augustus’s wheelchair. While they’re talking to each other, the tank and the wheelchair keep being shown in the frame and they remind us that those two kids are sick and different from other ‘normal’ teenagers. It’s important in relation to the theme because they’re medical assist devices that directly show us incompleteness of the characters.

In <The Spectacular Now>, the first mise en scene that catches our eyes is the colour.

Since the frame is quite dark overall, the yellow colour of the traffic light, traffic sign, the car’s headlight and rear light seems to be very conspicuous. In this case, the colour yellow represents negative images such as cowardice, egoism, and madness. It implies what kind of emotions that Sutter will express in the following shot, which can be considered ‘warning’, another important symbolization of yellow.

The second factor we can find is Sutter’s costume. He’s wearing a t-shirt that is very crumpled, greyish, and obviously not quite clean. It tells us that what we expected about Sutter’s emotional status from the previous shot was exactly right and gives more plausibility to his words and actions.

The last mise en scene to analyse is the location of the scene when Sutter’s mom soothes him crying. The kitchen represents Sutter’s mom since she’s the only person who generally uses it and the fact that he’s crying in her area symbolizes that he’s wanted to rely on her, express his feeling and show his weak inside to her.

As I mentioned before, the chosen sequence from <The Fault in Our Stars> is a plain scene that mainly shows a relaxed conversation between two characters. Only non-diegetic sounds in this sequence are two pieces of score, one that comes out at the beginning and the other one at the end. The first one named ‘Funky Bones 2 Part 1’ gives the whole scene quite sad and gloomy atmosphere and implies the idea of how their conversation would be like. The music stops right before the dialogue starts. The following dialogue emphasises the theme through showing that teenagers commonly think themselves as a protagonist of the whole world and expect something greater than others in the future, but inevitably they only get their small world just like others. At the end of the dialogue, it tells you that although that tiny world it all you get, it’s eternally meaningful to you because the world will always be there for you till the end. Then the second background music named ‘Funky Bones 2 Part 2’ comes out and changes the atmosphere of the scene more delightful and hopeful.

We can find almost exactly same composition of sound in the chosen scene of <The Spectacular Now> as well. There are two pieces of background music at the beginning and at the end, which are only non-diegetic sounds in the scene, and in the middle, there’s a long dialogue between the two characters. The first piece of music functions as a factor that gives the scene tension and anxiety. It reaches its peak when huge banging sound effect comes out as Sutter runs into the mailbox. After that, they start their conversation and it lets us know what kind of kid Sutter was. He seems to be quite defiant and indulging at the moment but he’s actually very caring person, except that it’s not being shown well because of his identity crisis. His mom reminds him how special he is to her and a melody that suggests feeling of hope and delight comes out at the end of the scene and gives us a hint at the way the rest of the film would go.

Since neither of the chosen scenes used dramatic and various editing techniques, there’s not much to analyse about what kind of editing technique has been used. One noticeable editing skill that I found from both of them is that they followed 180 degree rule very well, which relates to the theme because it helps showing argument between the characters with more tension and intensity. Also they both use shot reverse shot during conversation, and it helps us to see the characters’ reactions to each other, especially Augustus’s and Sutter’s, since they keep venting their stress and negative emotions through their verbal and facial responses.

As I mentioned above, <The Fault in Our Stars> and <The Spectacular Now> are very similar films in many ways. They have similar narrative structure, characters, and themes. However, through this essay, we found out that although they have a lot of things in common, still the way they’re being presented can be quite different. I think the difference might be mostly caused by the fact that <The Fault in Our Stars> was produced by 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest movie production companies, with 12 million dollars of budget, and <The Spectacular Now> was produced by an independent film production called Andrew Lauren Productions, with 2.5 million dollars. In relation to my focal macro concept, the most effective micro feature was mise en scene for both films in my opinion. Sometimes things placed in the frame tell us more than actual words do because they can be interpreted in so many different perspectives. Since everything in the frame is placed for the right reason, they all got messages to tell us and we can derive one big theme from those messages.

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