Eric Saxon -Aesthetics

BUNNY

My first impression of the clip was one of a magical atmosphere. Being that there was a bunny actually assuming human characteristics brought me to assume that magical assumption. When the bunny looked at the picture, my first thought was that the picture was of her and her late husband, and she was longing to be with him. I believe that the moth was her late husband attempting to take the bunny to the afterlife. The fact that the moth does not go away, no matter what the bunny tried to do shows that death is always there no matter what. The clip also had a light tone to it with the music in the background and the bunny showing annoyance to the moth. The clip was actually funny to me at first. When the oven opened and the bunny crawled in, I was amazed by the coloring. The oven acted as a passageway to the afterlife. I was also impressed by the coloring and aesthetics of the film when the group of moths were flying towards the light at the end of the clip. The clip started out humorous, but then quickly changed to a mood of awe and magic. The bunny finally was able to reunite with her husband through death.

NORTHFORK

My first impression of the clip was the isolation around the boy running. The only things near him were the buffalo grazing in the wilderness. While the boy was willing to run and find his goal, the buffalo were content with staying stationary. The bison were put in the clip to show that the town was about to become extinct. Just like humans caused the town to become extinct, year ago humans almost caused the extinction of the buffalo as well. The buffalo also symbolize the wildness and freedom of nature, while at the same time humans are about to alter nature. In the second clip, the men are at a crossroads, trying to figure out what to do with their mother. The car in the clip seems to be out of place, with mountains and natural scenery all around it. The boy and the men's dead mother as the question, "are we trapped after death, or free?" The boy seems to be free after death, running wildly through the field to meet his final destination with the angels. The mother, on the other hand, is trapped in a wooden box.

PARIS TEXAS

In the first scene, the man is walking through a desert. The first thing I noticed was that there was no life around the man except for a hawk that landed nearby. The next scene where the man met his brother took place in a greener landscape, but it was still very isolated. There were many references to communication in the clips. Railroads, roads, power poles, and phones all connect people. One thing I noticed in the second clip where the man tries to pick up his brother was the mountains in the background. Each man had a mountain behind him, but the mountains differed. This could have represented the brother's personalities. When the brother is walking along the freeway, he meets up with a man preaching the apocalypse. The audience may have thought that the brother was crazy, but when the brother meets the preacher, the brother thinks that the preacher is crazy. I noticed a sense of irony during this scene because of this. Also in the scene, we see the freeway. The freeway is extremely large and chaotic. I believe this references the chaos that mass communication causes. The movie tends to support the peacefulness of the wilderness more than the chaos of the city. When the brother meets his former wife in a Brouffel, they are only able to communicate through the phone, which is also another form of communication. The brother can be with her, but not be with her at the same time. This may have symbolized what their marriage was like. One part of the scene that I found fascinating was when their faces overlapped. This may have shown them that they had the chance to be connected as one, but were unable to accomplish this.

PINK FLOYD THE WALL

This was by far the most chaotic of the clips we watched aesthetics wise. The animated characters in the film are all distorted. In my view, the movie was about how everyone is forced to fit into the mold of society. Pink used this movie as a sort of rebellion from this mold. He made fun of many authority figures such as teachers and judges. Everyone seems to judge each other and think their views are better than everyone elses. Pink shows that he does not agree with this in his film. However, in the school scene when the kids rebel, Pink shows that combating authority with chaos only causes more chaos. Material things are also a target in Pink's movie. The film was also very anti-artistic, distorting the characters in the film severely. Overall, I believe that the film had a dark and gloomy atmosphere, with pink attempting to expose everything he thinks is wrong with the world.

CABASA DE PACA

This was also a very chaotic film. The clips start of with a scene from a chaotic battle where a priest gets killed by arrows. However, even with arrows in his back, the priest continued to walk until he couldn't anymore. This shows that faith can give people extraordinary will-power and desire. This film also reminded me of the movie Apocalypse Now. Like Apocalypse Now, the clips took place in a wilderness setting that was consumed by violence and war. The sacred order of the wilderness was disrupted by the profane actions of humans. One part of the clip that jumped out at me was when Cabeza escaped from the Shaman. He ran for seemingly hours, attempting to get as far away from the shaman as he could. However, the shaman performed a spell that caused Cabeza to run around in a complete circle, eventually ending up in the same place he started. This caused Cabeza to sort of "give up," as he collapsed on the ground with a look of despair in his eyes. The clips brought a feeling of the beauty of wilderness and also added a violent and magical touch with the conflict with the natives.