Watching this movie was like watching the wild side of immature teenagers. I didn’t understand most of the language, so most of my opinion is from a visual observation. It was like watching a party that I probably wouldn’t ever want to go to because it consisted of adults behaving like teenagers. The Human Geographies essay says that “They eat and drink, sing, flirt, make love, talk, argue, fight, threaten each other with violence...” (58) They played with boundaries, especially the way that the women were treated (the grandmother in particular...). The men and women seemed to want to fool around with people who they didn’t arrive with, and I don’t know her name, but everybody was all over the lady in the pink outfit...when she fell on the ground (which didn’t seem like a very hard position to get up from) everybody reached in to “help her.” Also, I don’t know his name either, but the main character whose mom died...when he found his daughter on the ground with her boyfriend, he seemed to snap out of party mode for awhile and act like an adult in order to punish her, but then he kept hitting her throughout the movie, even when she was sorry that his mom died. When the mother died, you would have thought that more people would have acted more serious, but they only seemed to act decently as a group when the press was there and when they were in another traffic jam at the end in the moment of silence. Otherwise, they were more interested in the race...even the old woman’s son couldn’t stay by her for more than a few minutes even though he seemed upset...especially when the race started. He got up from her side, and then all that was left was a dog for awhile. The whole thing was a giant party, and the death was hardly a distraction...they wouldn’t let it ruin their event.
The Human Geographies essay also says that the traffic jams at the beginning and the end are supposed to be a parody of a growing population....I didn’t get this connection until I read this in the essay...I just figured that it was supposed to symbolize impatience to get to their party/race.
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I like how you put it: watching the wild side of immature teenagers. At certain points of the movie, I feel the same way too since many of them were behaving irresponsibly for their role and their age. The husband in the movie didn't do that great of a job as a dad nor a husband. I find it ironic how he was so harsh and suddenly so much of a "father figure" towards her daughter when he caught her with her boyfriend.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I find the way people act insulting when the grandmother died. It was insulting when they still cared so much about the race but at the same time grieving. It appeared very superficial, which I think is rather insulting to the dead.