Conor Fagan Reflexive Journal 1

- September 10th

“The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” was a very interesting film to kick off this course. I think

that this film was visually an amazing film to watch even in the modern-day. I do enjoy more

modern films (1970s until today) as compared to movies from the early period of filmmaking,

but the visuals for the film captured my attention right away. The darkness of the film, the eye

shadow and makeup that contributes to the darkness of the people’s faces, and the use of

expressionism really made the story interesting to me.

I can really see how this film set up the future for horror movies and intense-drama

movies. There is an eeriness to this film at all times when Calgari is on-screen. You always know

that he is up to something, and there is just something about his facial motions and the persona in

which he carries himself that always made me weary of his intentions and just flat-out horrified

by him. I personally enjoyed his performance the most because of this and because he was just

an all-around great villain that the audience could be interested in. I thought the whole

atmosphere of the film made it interesting to view, and made the film challenging to watch in a

positive way. Because there was no dialogue to rely on, except for the few passages that

appeared on screen here and there, it made you really have to pay attention to the actor’s

performances and the mise-en-scene as a whole. I had to look at the lighting, make-up, actor

performances, the set changes, and more to truly understand the film. I thought that was

interesting and something that I do not have to do for the large majority of the films that I watch.

The mise-en-scene really brought me into the film. There was the scale, and the close

ups on the faces of the people to show horror for the victims or evil for Calgari and the

Somnabulist. The editing really affected the film, as the shots moved faster at highly intense

scenes and slower at regular scenes. The lighting was dark during scenes of the Somnabulist
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killing or of Calgari developing an evil plan at night, while it was light during the day. All of

these factors in the film helped me learn and better understand the essential aspects of film

because I had to look for them in order to understand the essence of this film completely.

I took this film as more of a metaphor for the world at the time than just a conventional

horror movie with a crazy man controlling a killer. I related it to Germany and its history because

this film is said to be the founding film of German expressionism. I took Dr. Caligari to be a

higher-up in Germany, potentially a Nazi-leader type figure. I think this because Caligari is a

man with an evil plan for the world, to which he is sneaky about and hides his true evil persona

behind the mask of being a good public figure. I took the Somnabulist, the character who is

brought back to life after being asleep for twenty years, to be an example of a German soldier.

He is brought back to life to just take orders from Calgary and do his bidding, which tends to be

just killing people. This film may be a criticism of Germany, it may not, but that is just a

personal connection that I made to the film.

- September 17th

“La Jette” was a movie that really challenged a normal sense of reality. The time

traveling and the man getting shot and killed in the airport twist ending really showed that the

filmmaker really bends reality to make a good story. To me, the film is about finding a sense of

reality from your past. We all have memories from our past, some haunt us, (like the airport

memory for the main character in this film) while some are joyful. I took the film as attempting

to show the audience that the past is an enigma because of our memories and their limited

capabilities. We have had experiences in the past that we may think we understand or have full

recollection of, but sometimes our past is not as we thought it was because we only can truly
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understand the current moment of time. By this I mean that we only truly have full knowledge of

what is going on in the present, the past or the future are a blur, so to speak.

While I liked the concept of the film and the different style of it, I did not really enjoy the

film overall. I thought that it was often confusing and hard to follow, which could have been

executed better to make the audience understand what is going on. I would relate this film to the

text of “The Republic Book X by Plato” because it shows that our memories are not reality. They

are only a mere interpretation of reality, a picture of sorts as the film presents, and while we can

remember the past, we can never truly experience it again as reality because we are not actually

there to re-experience it.

“Tokyo!” was one of the most insane movies that I have ever seen before. The

bizarreness of the character of Merde was something that made me unable to look away from the

screen throughout the entire film. The film just increased throughout in its insaneness from just

doing weird and funny things to people after he came out of the sewer, to firing grenade

launchers at people, to being unable to be hanged, it just got crazier as the film went on. I found

it hard to try to find the true meaning of the film, so I think the film to me was just a questioning

of reality. The movie tries to present the events of Merde as events that actually occurred in real

life, and I think the film wanted to present a scenario of what would happen if a crazy man like

this did these kind of things in the real world. I enjoyed the sense of madness that the film

showcases and took the film as a whole to generally just be about reality and how far we can

bend reality to make an intriguing story. I liked the movie overall, but thought that some of the

scenes were much too grotesque and jarring to view.

- September 24th
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I thought that “Suspiria” was a very thrilling horror film that was captivated my attention

throughout. I liked the mystery aspect of the film with Suzy, along with the audience, attempting

to figure out who is committing the murders. Something I did not enjoy about the film was the

pure excessiveness of the killings. I understand that the murders had to be in the film for the

story to progress, but I just thought that they were extended to almost a comical effect. I think

someone in class summed it up well after a multiple minute killing scene when they said, “Is she

dead yet?”

To me, the film’s message is to be weary of authority. Most people just take trust for

granted and trust people in authority figures because they seem reliable and accountable, but this

film tells us to beware of that. The school’s director is the perfect example of this, as she is the

mastermind behind the killings at the school. Some people may have a different interpretation of

what the film means to them, but that is what I took away from it.

I think that this movie relates well to the “Why Horror” reading by Noel Carroll that we

read for class. I became attached to the story and became interested in what would happen next

because of the “monster” of the film. From the opening scene with the brutal death until the very

last death, I was interested in learning about this monster and discovering what it would do next,

and how it could potentially be stopped. This impossible being captured my curiosity with the

incredible and unbelievable that comes with the horror genre. The fact that I knew that this

monster was not real and that this could never happen to me in real life made me enjoy seeing

what the monster would do next and who would be its next victim.

I thought that overall this film was a solid horror movie with a good, intriguing plot to

figure out the mystery of who the monster was along with good visuals. The lighting in particular

was done really well to show us when the killings would happen. The makeup and costume
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designs were done well to portray the massive amount of gore that was in the film. One critique

on the making of the film was that the blood did not look very real at all, even for the time period

that the film was made in.

- October 1st

I really enjoyed the style of the film “Branded to Kill”. The costume designs made the

characters look very hip and cool, the cars made the characters seem rich and desirable, and the

sex scenes made the characters seem irresistible to women. The action was great. It was over the

top at times, but it still made for a really wild ride that I enjoyed thoroughly as a major fan of

action films. It actually doesn’t surprise me after doing some research on this film that Quentin

Tarantino took this film as one of his major inspirations to be a filmmaker, as I see many

similarities between this director and Tarantino’s work.

To me, this movie was just a really good hitman movie with a lot of great action and

heart. It was just a fun movie that had a lot of cool moments and a lot of interesting things going

on in it. I really enjoyed the rivalry between Goro Hanada and the Number One because it

seemed like a great match between two heavyweights that are the best in their fields competing

to win. Goro Hanada seems like the underdog who has to overcome many obstacles to beat the

Number One, and it is very satisfying when he does. An underdog story is something that I

always appreciate as I consider myself an underdog. I think this film relates to the “Ideological

Film Criticism” reading in that the reading discusses the use of violence in films and how that

affects spectator emotions. The violence plays to both cognitive and affective factors in this film,

which makes it very pleasing to watch the absolute spectacle of violence that ensues in this film

as Hanada and Number One battle it out.

- October 8th
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MIDTERM EXAM (NO MOVIE)

- October 15th

CLASS CANCELLED (NO MOVIE)

- October 22nd

I didn’t really enjoy the movie “Blowup” as a whole, but I did find the ending of the film

very interesting to watch. I didn’t enjoy the film overall because I thought the pacing felt a little

off. It often took a lot of time to show Thomas’ life as a photographer, showing each and every

shot that he was taking for a photoshoot. I understand why they did it, just to show a day in the

life of a photographer, but the pace felt too slow and dull at times for me to get into the movie

and become invested. One personal touch that I really enjoyed from the film was the concert

scene with the band “The Yardbirds” because that band featured Jimmy Page, my all-time

favorite guitar player from my all-time favorite band, Led Zeppelin. I thought that the plot with

the search to find the murder in the background of the wedding photo was interesting, but didn’t

grab my attention as much as I felt it should have. However, the thing that intrigued me the most,

and where I get the most out of the film was in the final scene with the mimes playing tennis.

The final scene with the mimes playing tennis is one of the most interesting scenes that I

have ever seen in a film, and honestly saved the movie in my opinion. When Thomas throws the

ball back and realizes that there is no court, no mimes, and he is standing in an empty field, it

makes him question his whole sense of reality as he fades away. What I took away from that

scene is how do we find our sense of reality in this world? Thomas seemingly begins to question

if he even saw a murder in the first place, or did he make it up because he wanted to see

something. For a broader purpose, I think the film is asking us, who are we as people and do we

even exist in reality? I think that is one of the most fascinating questions ever asked in a film.
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I think that this relates really well to the analysis of the film by Julio Cortazar, when he

talks about seeing and understanding what one sees. Ignorance and a lack of desire to see reality

blinds Thomas, and can blind us all as we look at reality. The pictures that he takes are the reality

to him that he wants to see, but when he blows up the pictures, it puts him into a reality that he

doesn’t want to see or believe. I think that is true for all of us as we all want to see good things

for our lives and see reality as it should be, instead of how it is, so it is a constant struggle of life

for humans to see the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be and being open to viewing things in

different ways instead of being stuck in our own mind.

- October 29th

Seeing “The Witch” in class this week was an overall great experience to have. To be

able to experience a movie with so many people and to be able to witness a Q&A with a director,

which is something that I have never done before, was a phenomenal experience. I enjoyed the

film a great deal. I thought it was a very good horror movie, which is a genre that doesn’t usually

appeal to me. I found it interesting that the film in New England in the 1630s and centered the

movie around witchcraft, which is great for historical perspectives and real life instances of

witch hunting.

I took this film to be a movie about a struggle of a young girl trying to find her place in

the world. She ultimately becomes a witch because that is the only place that she is accepted,

even if it is a dark path that has caused so much pain to the world, and specifically her family. I

think that the ultimate message of the film is to go somewhere that you belong and somewhere

where you are accepted, even though that does seem extremely dark given the context of this

movie.
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I relate this film to two of the readings that we have done over the course of the quarter.

The first is the “Why Horror” articles that we read, by both Noel Carroll and Andrew Tudor.

From Carroll’s perceptive, this is an enjoyable horror film because of the monster of the film.

The Black Phillip is the monster in this film and because it can shift from goat form to human

form and has magical abilities, it is an impossible being that captures our curiosity so that we

become interested in the tale that the film is telling. Even though a lot of the setting is real for the

film, we know that this never occurred in history, so the audience takes pleasure in the scary

journey ahead for the family as they face this beast. From Tudor’s perspective, we enjoy this

horror movie because of the shared, social experience of it. We enjoy this horror movie at this

particular time in history because we have a current fear of the supernatural and the potential

dangers that come with that, along with knowing the history of witch hunts that occurred in this

time period of history. We enjoy “The Witch” because we realize that there is a safe distance to

come to terms with the potentiality of a situation like this actually occurring in the mid-1600s,

whereas it would be too disturbing or threatening to our current life if it was made in the time

period when witch hunts and witchcraft conspiracies were actually taking place. The second

reading that I think this film really relates to is the Blowup reading by Julio Cortazar, because I

think that applies to a film like this as well. We have to question if the monsters are physically

real, and that can be hard based on seeing what we think we see versus the reality of what we

actually see.

- November 5th

“Tony Manero” was easily my favorite film so far that we watched in this course. I was

completely invested in the story of Raul and his strange, dark life that it engulfed me into the

film completely. The most interesting aspect of the film to me personally was the struggle that
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the audience experiences at the end of the film while Raul is competing in the competition

against others to see who is the best Tony Manero impersonator. I found myself at one point

really wanting Raul to win the competition. I was actively cheering him on, and got excited once

he had a large cheer from the crowd because it seemed like the first time ever that this character

experienced joy throughout the film. Following the ending of the film (where it seems really

likely that Raul is only following the winner of the contest to kill him in the end), it really made

me reflect because how could I be rooting for someone who did so many bad things throughout

the film. Granted we never actually saw Raul commit his crimes, it just cut away every time one

of them was about to occur, but still it begs the question of if we should root for someone to

achieve a goal, (seemingly the only thing Raul cared about throughout the film) even if they have

done such bad things.

This question is the biggest thing that I took away from watching this film. If we can

become so invested in a character and their desires, will we root for them despite their flaws?

And how do we become so invested in these characters in the first place? The “Ideological Film

Criticism” reading for this week really helped put the spectator’s emotions on film into a good

perspective for me to look through. It says that a cognitive approach to film is the best way to get

emotions out of the spectator. Specifically, “cognition creates, alters, and/or promotes scenarios

for behavior and emotional response”. There are so many examples of this throughout “Tony

Manero”. The whole movie sets up Manero being an outsider and being disliked by the world, so

by showing all the scenes of him alone practicing his dance moves for the performance, the

audience can not do anything but feel bad for Manero and want to root him on at the end, as an

example of this cognitive approach to spectator emotion. The style of the film and the form of

the film really made you connect to the narrative of this character and become attached to his
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story despite him being a genuinely bad person. The narrative content drives this home really

well, which is a key aspect of the readings on spectator emotion, because we really become

attached to Raul’s story.

Overall, I really liked the film because of the story of the main character (Raul). I liked

seeing this world of this mobster and the struggle that he undergoes. I did not like how the movie

was made however. The graphic sex scenes in particular were very jarring, even though I do

understand why they were included tonally. The movie just felt really creepy and dirty, which

exemplifies the character of Raul really well, but isn’t particularly my “cup of tea” when it

comes to film.

- November 12th

The structure of “The Act of Killing” was a really interesting choice for a documentary.

The film is based off of real events, but has re-enacted killings that are acted out from the

Indonesian killers, but also is a documentary of the real Indonesian killers re-enacting their

events. The Indonesians themselves seemed to be very cocky and boasting of their killings in the

film. They don’t seem to show any kind of remorse for the wrongdoings that they have done.

The neighbor character is the only one that seems to have any kind of sadness to the character to

the point where you feel bad about what has happened to him. Besides the neighbor, I didn’t

necessarily feel bad for any of the other people in the movie, although I did feel a sense of the

heaviness of the weight that their experiences have had to carry on their shoulders from killing

all of the people that they did. A lot of the story felt like the actors were acting, not saying their

real feelings about the killings, just to have a better persona on camera. Overall, I enjoyed the

film and thought it was really interesting to see these killers in a real life atmosphere and see how

their lives are now.

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The film uses many different rhetorical strategies that are typical of documentaries as

stated in the “Documentary” reading. They use the talking heads and director-participant strategy

a lot, with nobody asking any questions or trying to put a narrative on the actors, they simply let

the real people tell the story and make a narrative out of that. This film also uses direct cinema as

it limits the director’s influence on the film and presents the situation as it is just showing how

the lives of the actors really are.