determine what you believe the film’s message/meaning/themes to be. Once you have done so, show how the film’s narrative design supports your interpretation. Focus on specific scenes, motifs and structural elements that support your thesis. Why does the film give you the information that it does when it does? How does the way that the story is told convey meaning in and of itself? OTHER IMPORTANT NOTES AND ADVICE: - Don’t waste time on plot summary (i.e. filling pages by simply describing the film). Focus on analysis instead. - Emphasize close textual analysis. Pay attention to specific details you think are important, and then make a case for the significance of those details. - If you don’t have a thesis, you don’t have a paper. “I liked the narrative design. It had many good elements and therefore [blank] was a good movie” is NOT a thesis. Think about subject and theme – the subject of a film should be obvious, but a good thesis can be developed from your interpretation of a film’s theme (attitude towards its subject). It’s obvious that Thelma and Louise is about ‘friendship’; what, specifically, is it saying about friendship? - This paper is NOT about trying to prove that your film is “good.” The point of this assignment is that analyzing a film in detail will help you receive more meaning from that film – try to devise a thesis that will allow you to demonstrate this. Watch the film once, purely to get a sense of what you think its meaning is. Then watch the film again more closely to see how the approach to narrative supports your argument. - The way to get an A on this paper is to show how a film’s approach to narrative supports your interpretation of it. Remember, there is no one right or wrong way to read a film; there are only degrees of persuasive arguments. - Proof-read your paper. Make sure it’s typed, double-spaced, has reasonable margins, has page numbers, has been spell-checked, etc. Failure to heed this note will affect your grade. - Titles of films should be italicized or underlined. Include the year of a film’s release in brackets only the first time you mention it: e.g. Citizen Kane (1941). - Do not do any research for this paper! This paper does NOT require outside research; concentrate instead on the lectures and readings. Your argument should be entirely based around your own ideas. Nevertheless, remember that plagiarism is the act of representing another person’s work as your own. If for some reason you do engage with another writer’s ideas (OR THE COMMENTS OF ANOTHER PERSON ON A DVD), make sure that you cite their work properly (see my citation of Timothy Corrigan below). TIMOTHY CORRIGAN ON IDENTIFYING/DISCUSSING A FILM’S THEMES: - “… alienation may very well describe the broadest thematic lines of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931), Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take it With You (1938), Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003). This may be a good start, but a sharp analysis demands that the writer make finer distinctions about the … presentations of that theme in each movie. Does the alienation seem inevitable, or perhaps even desirable? Does it lead to new knowledge, or is it a disaster that could have been avoided? Is it presented as a tragic or a comic problem in the movie?” (38) - “Going over your notes, your first step may be trying to identify the major themes of the movie, which often comes down to stepping back and asking what this film is ‘about’: the triumph of good or evil in Star Wars (1977), for example, or reluctant heroism before unimaginable brutality in Schindler’s List (1993). These themes, in many cases, become the foundation for an analysis because they point to the main ideas of the movie. They are not, strictly speaking, the ‘moral’ or the message of the movie; they are the large and the small ideas that help to explain the actions and events in it.” (37) - “Ask, for example: Who are the central characters? What do they represent in themselves and in relation to each other? The importance of individuality or society? Human strength or human compassion? How do their actions create a story with a meaning or a constellation of meanings? Does the story emphasize the benefits of change or endurance? What kind of life or what actions does the film wish you to value or criticize, and why? If there is not a coherent message or story, why not? How does the movie make you feel at the end? Happy? Depressed? Confused? Why?” (37)