Reoccuring theme - FILM!
In Silliman's blog one of the recurring themes is Film. The blog explores some of the movies which are based on the theme poetry somehow. The korean movie "Poetry" (Shi) won the award for best foreign movie in Cayenne film festival in France. This movie tells the story about a grandmother who lives with her grandson. And at age 66, she starts to learn poetry. She come across many odds of life successfully and all happens from the poems she started to write. The other two movies this blog analyzes is "The Conversation" and "The Double Hour", both movies are thrillers and takes some detective roles to unfold the crimes occur in the story. There are many other movies in this blog which are discussed, and reviewed. Reading this blog gives us a view for the movie world and also let us enjoy the scripts and the stories. Its a good read for someone who is interested in world cinemas and movie making.
Jay, your post got me thinking. It never occurred to me before reading this post that I've
ReplyDeletewatch and enjoyed a couple of mainstream (non-Seussical) films based on poetry ... or that
used poetry as their inspiration: Beowulf
(2007), Troy (2004) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000).
Beowulf is based on the centuries-old Scandinavian
poem of the same title; Troy on the Illiad, and O
Brother, Where Art Thou? is inspired by the Odyssey. These poetic catalysts are epic
works. I guess monumental poems provide a lot of content for movie makers to work with.
(Apparently,
Braveheart is as well, but I've never watched it.)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is by far one of my favourite movies. Period. I think I've
watched it about 20 times ... and I have the soundtrack. For me, there's a certain non-
literal modern relatability to the story. It's outwardly quirky, the characters are
painfully flawed. It's not a remembrance sanitized to perfection.
The trend of films based on poetry didn't really dawn on me until I read your summary
of 'film' as a recurring theme on Silliman's
blog ... even though I consciously knew I was watching something that used a piece of historic literature as a jumping off point.
I watching with eyes wide open now. Thanks for this.