I have recently watched the film, The Illusionist by Neil Burger in 2006. The film utilizes a lot of good mise-en-scene elements and has a very well laid out plot. The movie is about Eisenheim, an entertainer, who fascinates crowds with magical abilities. The movie starts out with one of Eisenheim shows, with him right in the center of the screen to grab the audience's attention and with almost utter silence, leaving the watchers curious as to what is happening. As the scene progresses, the crowd began to become rowdy, and Eisenheim was arrested by the police for some unknown reason. This scene gets the audience hooked, and leaves them with the question of how it came to that point. All of the actors in this film were phenomenal, they seemed to become their roles. The use of screen density plays a big part in this film. When Eisenheim is in the middle of his acts, there is nothing on the screen except him and the objects that he is using, nothing else. This really pulls in the audience and helps them to focus by making him the dominant feature in the center of the screen. The film also consists of a lot of grey colors, which could represent the mysterious or mournful tone of the film. The movie also consists of a lot of close up face shots, which occurs when characters are discussing somethings, These leaves very little room for the characters to move in the shot and focuses the audience on what they are saying rather than what is going on around them.
I personally enjoyed watching this film. From the very beginning, I was hooked to the screen. After the first scene, it showed another one of Eisenheim shows, only this time it was in the present. He made an orange tree grow from an empty pot, that seemed almost like magic. This was fascinating and left me with the question of whether this was a trick or magic, which was a great technique by the director to create suspense in the film. In the movie, Eisenheim’s love, Sophia, is killed by her fiance. The ending of this film was spectacular and unexpected. It turned out that Sophia was not killed, but that it was all an “illusion”, and her death was faked in order to be together. This ending also satisfied my desire to know if it was magic or not by showing how all of his tricks were simply illusions and tricks. Overall, I enjoyed this movie very much because I love mysteries and illusions and this film was just that. I loved how all the pieces of the story lined up, in the end to show how the trick was pulled off.
(Good, Good)
Nice post here, Josh! The title is a great introduction because it introduces a key topic (illusions) and gives us a sense of your tone about the text (extraordinary). The objective paragraph is well argued with the kind of objective language that doesn't slip backwards into neutrality. Good tone flavor and a clear sense of what works for the movie. The subjective paragraph was strong too because it allows you to connect the film to yourself and your experience as a movie-watcher. Consider how you can use topic sentences to further organize your paragraphs!
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