Snatched

These are my notes for January 26

I don't know why I didn't suspect that an American Film and Culture class would contain a section on American Indians.

Haha the main character got spam mail in the first few minutes! Just sign up for our magazine subscripting to receive 1 million dollars!!! It's a long tradition I guess.

Woah I was not ready for this! We got Shakespeare really quickly. This seems pretty tragic though, there's definitely irony here. No one besides the main character knows that it was suicide except for the main character and even he must not know that she's still alive.

The inaccuracies are startling. There are three chiefs in this village according to the eagle feather bonnets, but there wasn't a single discussion about the proper course of action. Bad Depiction...

Ok now kill your father on the count of three! We're indians we do this all the time. If you don't we're gunna have to dance! 100 years later there would have been a casino joke in this movie. I don't think that White Fawns honorable suicide makes up for how salience of the racism. If anything I find that the stereotype of the Noble Red Man shines a prettier light, but its tinder by prejudice nonetheless.

Oh god, I don't know what I would do if the girl I wanted belonged to a matador. Seems like it would be a hard angle to work. I'll give Alessandro one thing though, great timing and skill with a lute!

I don't really like when the text has to explain key elements in the movie. I feel that if you're film has to be without dialogue then you should rely on your pictures to tell the story. When they finally come together though it's pretty well told.

How did they shoot looking over the cliff towards the village? Was that a screen or an actual cliff?

It would be hard to describe the massacre of your people without words I feel like. I'm glad that our main character has the sense enough to keep the girl. Other characters I feel would have too much conflict and reject her after the trauma.

There's Catholic practice in many of the scenes of this movie. I wonder what a woman like ramona would think of christian religion after being deceived most of her life about her heritage only to be persecuted for a marriage to an indian man.

The idea of property is a main theme of this movie. It still staggers me that in any of the many circumstances in which foreigners came into a place already inhabited, they claimed ownership based on laws that should not have applied to a sovereign nation of people. My conclusion based on this practice is that in groups we are still very primitive. As individuals we can easily adapt to coexistence but as a group we seek to dominate any party that we perceive as a threat. When our actions as a collective are examined I find people to be more primitive than individuals.

Some of these shots have a magnificent background. The landscapes are allowed to occupy a lot of the shot. It seems like there's always something towering over the couple. This movie ended as the relationship ended after Alessandro is killed. In both of these movies the viewer is left with a morbid sort of hope. We are reminded that nothing really ended, tomorrow will come and we will have to work with what we've got.