The Goddess of 1967 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

The Goddess of 1967 - Essay ExampleThe enter, The goddess of 1967 (Law, 2000) has a duration of 118 minutes in which the viewer is invited to traverse a beautiful physical landscape that parallels a whimsical and melancholy emotional landscape. Before immigrating to Australia, Clara Law, the mastermindor of this film, had make a number of films in Hon Kong which won good reception also (Phillips, 2001). This particular film had realise entry into prestigious film festivals worry Venice and Toronto film festival (Phillips, 2001). The theme of the film is a jaunt undertaken by two strangers- a man and a woman- under odd circumstances, and the recollections they make of their lives through which they recover themselves as well. On surface, it is for the sake of a railroad car, the whole journey is undertaken, but deep inside it is a journey through ones own self for the protagonists. This was a movie that perplexed its viewing audience so that they were divided into its fans an d foes (Coyle, 2005, p.67). Only two things that atomic number 18 seemingly holy in this film are 1) the car, which is a much coveted Citroen DS, and 2) the natural hit that encompasses the visual narrative of the film. Everything else is flawed- the minds of the characters, the biography situations and the memories. Yet the hit of the car is paralleled by the beauty of the landscape in each frame in which they appear together. And the film, like many another(prenominal) other travel films, shows how the emotional wounds are healed by mutual understanding and companionship, by revisiting the past with a retrospective calmness. What the director tries to explain This film is about a lot many things including the mechanical life that one encounters in a city, the helplessness of man existence, loneliness, crime and the baser elements of human mind. Chaudhuri (2007) has called this film based on themes of exile wherein the male protagonist is a temporary migrant in Australia and the young-bearing(prenominal) protagonist is alienated from her society and family in her own land and hence living a life of exile (p.122). Fung Cheu (2007) on the other hand has opined that the theme of this film is cultural dislocation (p.129). From a direct view point, this film has been also called the story of an abused woman (Fung Cheu, 2007, p.141) By making a car the major presence in this film, a car with a history, a car venerated as perfect and elegant in all times, the film contrasts the perfection of a machine with the liveliness of even a flawed human existence. A machine cannot sin against its design and it is built to behave, but a human being is prone to vices but still retains a hand full of godly moments in his/her life. In a feminist interpretation of the presence of this car in this film, some critics (Senzani and Florida Atlantic University, 2008) have verbalise that the car represented a channel of escape for the abused women, and even a mobile abode (p.4 31). It is also a depiction of how circumstances make and carve human characters. The film is made in such a way that this conclusion can be arrived at either with pessimism or optimism. The beauty of the film is in that it never advises the viewer to make either of this choice. The director herself has called this film an attempt to gift the dysfunctional character of contemporary life and personal relations (as cited by Phillips, 2001). The isolation that comes inevitably with urbanization, the bizarre ways in which humans try to relate, even by trying to love reptiles and strangers, and the visible absence of a community around human lives, are some aspects that gets subtly discussed in this film.