Writing Issues in Movies Project

The Usual Suspects

Memento

Fight Club

There are a number of approaches that you might use.  The task, however, is to take two of the assignments below and transform them into your own polished creative pieces.

1.      Take any one of the movies from above and write about the movie as a whole, in the terms of its presentation (i.e. narrative technique, point of view) and its deeper meaning.  You may make this into a poem or any other genre, including a formal essay, but you must demonstrate your mastery of not only the movie but your own artistic expression.

2.      Fantasy/Reality.  Write a poem or any other genre, including the essay form, on any two of the film’s handling of this issue.

3.      The Narrative Technique.  Write a poem or any other genre, including the essay form, on any two of the film’s handling of this issue.

4.      Social Commentary.  Write a poem or any other genre, including the essay form, on any two of the film’s handling of this issue.

This project is due a day after we have finished our last film.

Poem on Memento and the Fight Club Question

A. Memento

Why is closure so important for the main character?  How is the main character’s approach to memory similar to the writing process?  What are the linear chain of events?  What narrative technique is the story told in?  Overall, what does the movie as a whole imply about memory and truth?

*You have answered these question above.  Now, write a ten line poem about this movie and send it to me in an e mail.

B.  Fight Club

The first rule of fight club is: there is no fight club.  This film is textbook psychodrama but more than that a tale told from the inside of our narrator.

In addition to its psychological wanderings, the film takes up a number of artful story-telling techniques.  Our narrator fabricates as well as changes the starting points of the narration as a whole.  If you choose to write about the narrative strategy of this film, take note of the inconsistencies in the actual tale and some of the clues, either verbal or visual, that the viewer must catch to understand the full nature of the multiple meanings examined.  

What is the narrative sequence?  

What is hallucination and what is real?  Explain why- what proof.  

Remember, the art of story telling is essentially telling a lie to tell the truth.  What are the lies we are told?  What is the truth?  

How is this style of narration a mirror of how the human mind comprehends the truth and creates it as well. 

*Send your responses to these questions in an e mail as well- due one day after we are finished with the film.