Movie Essay

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Austin Hepburn

The two movies, “Mona Lisa Smile” and “And the Spring Comes”, depict two different languages and two different cultures, yet, they both follow the same critique on old conservative values. “Mona Lisa Smile” looks at the conservative ideology toward woman and its shift to liberal. “And the Spring Comes” looks at the conservative ideology of being “normal”. In another words, it critiques the normality of normal and encourages individualism.

“Mona Lisa Smile” takes the role of a critic on conservative ideology toward woman. Not only does it make the conservative ideology seem laughable, but it also embraces the liberal feminist ideology of the time by using the character Kathrine Watson as the main protagonist rhetor. The setting focuses on a small college and Kathrine’s art history class in particular. Kathrine preaches to her students that there is more to life than marrying a wealthy young man and tries to teach them more than what is in their textbook. Her ideology is new and controversial. Betty, a student of Kathrine’s, in particular challenges her teachings and writes an editorial critiquing Kathrine’s liberal viewpoint.

Throughout the movie, we see the journey of her students throughout their college experience and their dealings with the conservative female viewpoint. The conservative viewpoint can be described as the female mostly having a role in the household as the caretaker, mother, and wife of her family. The liberal viewpoint describes the female having the same role as the male, to be successful and happy in life. This means a female should be able to strive to be successful in a profession without the need to be married. The audience sees the pressures from society along with pressures from the family to marry young and to a rich man so that particular woman has a luxurious life. In one particular scene, we see Kathrine getting hit-on at a wedding. The entire scene focuses on the gossip from the others at the wedding about the man flirting with someone the likes of Kathrine, already assuming Kathrine would flirt back. As a young woman, it is assumed that Kathrine would be into this attractive and wealthy man. Yet, as if unexpected, she disregards his flirt and he goes on to dance with someone else. This reflects back on the liberal viewpoint that a woman does not need a man and a woman does not have a responsibility to flirt back to a rich man. Also, throughout the movie, after every students’ situation, we see the downfall of the conservative ideology through the events that unfold. This is done as the mechanism to convey the producers’ message. We see the character, Charlie, turn down his parents’ arranged marriage offer and go off on his own journey with a different woman. This in itself is controversial since arranged marriages were typical and it was often an insult to the parents to turn down such an offer. In the end, we see the editorial student divorce from her husband and apologize to Kathrine. This was the signaling that progressive liberal feminism had won the fight against conservative feminism in the movie.

In one scene from “And the Spring Comes”, the two characters discuss what is considered “normal”. He starts the conversation off by saying “don’t you know I’m one of the dangerous in town”. She replies, “that is because you are the most courageous of them all”. These lines explore how society looks at people who are different and how they feel about them. She calls him courageous because no one would come out the way he did if they knew the social repercussions that are therefore put against them, yet he did. He then goes on to say, “I am the source of deep confusion people feel about themselves”, turning the situation into not his problem, but society’s problem. The woman looks concerned and saddened throughout this conversation, but he remains smiling, as if he has accepted society’s response to his difference and she has not. The movie effectively embraces the liberal ideology of individuality when the woman says, “knowing you gives me the courage to stay in this city”, finally putting a positive spin on the man’s individuality. His own courageous actions had convinced her to be courageous and stay in the city that attacks their individualism.

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Hello, Austin. We, Xu Xinyue and Tang Zirui, have already read your movie essay. Your idea of analyzing the ideology is very singular and great, and you also have deep understanding of Mona Lisa Smile, especially in the aspect of feminist and individualism, but there are still some problems mainly in the part of And the Spring Comes. One problem is ambiguous reference. It’s better to use “Wang Cailing” and “Hu Jinquan” to replace “she” and “he”. The other problem is misunderstanding. Actually, Hu Jinquan didn’t give Wang Cailing courage to stay in the city that attacked the individualism. Instead, Mr. Hu’s tragic experience totally changed Miss Wang’s belief of pursuing her dream. You’d better research much more information of complicated social backgrounds at that time(1940s-1990s) so that you can get deeper understanding of this Chinese movie. Generally speaking, it’s not bad and you can do better in the last paragraph.

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Hello, Austin, we are Chinese students who interact with you across the ocean. Next we will cooperate and interact together to increase our understanding of each other's culture. Through reading your film review, we find that you have a deep understanding of Mona Lisa's smile, but you still need to watch and understand And the Spring Comes. First of all, you put forward the theme in the first paragraph, which is very good. Then, in the article, you have a lot of appreciation and comprehension of Mona Lisa's smile and a lot of description of the details of this movie, which shows that you have carefully considered the meaning of this movie. But in fact, we don't think a film review should be so long. Moreover, your introduction and evaluation of And the Spring Comes are too little, which is undesirable. For the sake of the structure and reading effect of the article, we suggest that you should reduce the description of Mona Lisa's smile and increase your understanding of And the Spring Comes. From our point of view, you can find the similarities between the two films, and then put them together for comparison and understanding, which is not only conducive to deepening your understanding of the two films but also conducive to strengthening your thinking on feminism. And in the end, you can re-emphasize the meaning and thoughts of the two films, which can echo from beginning to end and increase the integrity of the article. These are our views. We hope you can adopt our suggestions. Thank you very much and wish you good luck.
Xie Ting, Xiao Junqi

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Hi Austin, we’ve already read your reply. Thank you for your great advice on how to correct our mistakes in preposition miss-use, word choice and the aspect connection, and we will revise our essay at last according to your advice. Also, the reason for the importance of narrative techniques and character development is that when we were searching information of making comments on movies, we found that many relevant articles all mention these two points. So we think they are important. However, we have a question. When we read our classmates’ essays, we didn’t find any essay that connected the aspect well and everyone directly explain their quotes. Can you give us some suggestions on how to revise it?
Hope hear from you soon!
Xu Xinyue
Tang Zirui

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Hi Austin, we forgot to ask for your email or wechat in order to have deeper communication because we don't have facebook. Our wechat: xxy2057230076 and email: 2057230076@qq.com.
Hope hear from you soon.
Xu Xinyue
Tang Zirui

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Hello, Austin, we are very happy to receive your comments and suggestions. First of all, I am honored that you can understand my point of view, but I think it is not far-fetched to analyze And the Spring Comes from feminism. Perhaps, the theme of And the Spring Comes is mostly reflected in thinking about dreams and reality through the pursuit of art. But I think this movie also reflects feminism, which is a major theme. We can see from the movie that although Wang Cailing was rejected by love and dreams because of her ugly appearance, she did not give up but strengthened her heart, preferring to adopt a child rather than being bound by secular marriage, which reflects women's challenge to tradition. Moreover, in the film review, various kinds of women are depicted, such as the simple and lovely Song. When Hu Jinquan was insulted by Song's husband, he pulled Song into the toilet and tried to rape her. This shows that when men suffer setbacks, their revenge is always directed at innocent women, which shows that women are only appendages of men and society. Through the description of women in the movie, we can see the unequal status of men and women, which is the basic resistance of feminism. When I was writing movie reviews, I mainly linked the two films through feminism. I think that through the common comparison between the two films, readers can better understand the theme. Of course, I hope you can understand the feminism in beginning of spring and the theme I want to express. I will seriously think about the other questions you raised and then revise my article.
Thank you very much and wish you all the best.
Xie Ting, Xiao Junqi

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Xu Xinyue and Tang Zirui: I'm glad you found my advice valid and helpful. In terms of the connections, in the first paragraph you stated "This essay is going to state the main plot in these two movies, and compare their aspects of social backgrounds, narrative techniques, images of characters, symbols and themes." Throughout your essay you stated the aspects and gave quotes as evidence for your findings. But as a reader, it felt like each paragraph (aspect) was a separate analysis. It felt like the paper was just stating the different aspects in the book instead of connecting all the aspects together. What are the purposes of having these aspects? How does having a certain social background impact the character image? Did narrative techniques impact the overarching theme? These are such questions you could ask and answer.

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Xie Ting and Xiao Junqi: Perhaps it is not far-fetched but it is simply just not the main theme. Which is okay. I just believe you should state that initially. I think the idea of feminism as the connection between two movies is a great idea and allows you to analyze one central theme from two different viewpoints. This essentially allows you to connect the two movies (similarities) but also contrast them by culture and social background. I am glad you found my other advice as helpful.