Amir Abou-Jaoude Assignment 5

My plans for the future have changed over time. When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an actor. Then, a guest speaker came to our 2nd grade class and told me that acting did not use enough neurons to be considered a viable career. So, I decided that I was going to become a great novelist, the Charles Dickens of my era.

Then, in the 8th grade, I enrolled in a video production class. We would produce short PSAs for the school news and we learned about the different types of shots and lighting. What I liked about the class was the atmosphere of total freedom. You had to find out why things did not work by yourself, and you came up with the methods that you used to finish the project on time. At the same time, you were not entirely on your own--there was a network of classmates that would help you and give you advice. After taking this class, I began to develop an interest in the cinema.

My interest in pursuing a career in the cinema was solidified as I began to learn more about the masters of the form and watch more films. Akira Kurosawa's Ran, in particular, made a lasting impression on me. In this film, Kurosawa transposes the story of Shakespeare's King Lear to feudal Japan. The film is a profound reflection on old age, greed, and the nature of power. Kurosawa's film is not just an adaptation of Shakespeare's play--Kurosawa actually transcends the source material, imprinting his own beliefs and worldview onto the play. For me, however, the most striking element of the film was its final shot. A blind man stands on the edge of a precipice, having lost the sacred scroll his sister gave him for protection. The man is but a small speck on the screen, surrounded by an immense and barren landscape. In this shot, Kurosawa is saying that we are all standing on the edge of the cliff. No matter how much security we seem to possess, we are all lost in an uncaring world, and yet, we are still holding on. This shot summarizes Kurosawa's worldview and the message of Ran. Kurosawa was able to encapsulate all of his thoughts into one shot, and this illustrates the extraordinary powers of communication the cinema possesses.

I want to be able to connect with people through the cinema. The great director Jean-Luc Godard once defined cinema as "the most beautiful fraud in the world"--and it is a fraud. Actors pretend to be involved in a dramatic situation, while technicians manipulate light, sound, and the image to create an artificial world. Furthermore, this is not happening in real time. We still watch films that were made a century ago. However, the artificiality of cinema can work to reveal truth--to open our eyes to plights and issues that we may never have considered. Films cannot change the world, but they can comment on the world and our place in it. Perhaps this is more valuable. Works of art that change the world, like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, age poorly. However, we can still admire the Depression-era optimism of Frank Capra's It Happened One Night and the total freedom of Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider. Films can also remind us of the dark side of our culture--we can grimace at the racist attitudes expressed in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan, and look with horror at the hordes of unthinking Nazi troops in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. With my films, I hope to bring attention to issues of social injustice that plague our world today. Like Woody Allen, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Ingmar Bergman, I would like to be a screenwriter, so that I can keep my creative writing skills sharp.

I do not know if I will go right into film school or major in something else, like art history or English, first. I would like to build a strong foundation so that I have the knowledge and the tools necessary to write screenplays or direct films. I want to learn more about drama and history in college so that I can be a stronger writer and director. Studying the career trajectories of the great film directors, it becomes apparent that there is no conventional route to becoming a film director. Some directors, like Francois Truffaut, were critics who started to make films. Others, like Kurosawa, only became involved in film because they needed some money, while directors like John Ford were working in the cinema for their whole lives. However, I am confident that with persistence, I can overcome any obstacles and accomplish my goals. I do not know how much money a film director makes, but I have learned that things done solely for monetary gain are not satisfying. I want to be a film director solely for the personal fulfillment and the happiness that it would bring me.