Choose one of the following five topics to write a 1500-word essay. Make sure you watch the
selected film in its entirety and offer in-depth analysis according to the given topic. Discuss at least three substantial sequences in the film to illustrate your points. By substantial I mean that these sequences are not just important on their own, but they also affect the overall understanding of the film. You may look for other secondary sources, but make sure they come from a reliable source. Generally speaking, websites such as GradeSaver or SparkNotes are not recommended for citation. Type your essay according to the MLA format. Use Times New Roman, 12 font size and 1.5 line spacing. You are welcome to include screen captures of selected shots in your essay to facilitate your discussion. Submit your work, in pdf format.
1. ‘Leigh’s movies are not about performing a task or achieving a goal. The drama is generated
out of states of being more than acts of doing’ (Ray Carney, The Films of Mike Leigh). In
relation to the above statement, examine how adoption as a central theme is treated in
Leigh’s 1996 film Secrets and Lies.
2. ‘Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk
about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings…even the
character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium.
Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem’. Examine the tales of the bandit, woman, Samurai and the woodcutter in Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon in relation to the director’s commentary on human beings’ egoism.
3. Lars von Trier fuses the elements of literature, theatre and cinema in his 2003 film Dogville.
Examines the ways in which such a hybridized approach to the film facilitates the reflection
on the central themes of the film (e.g. poverty, grace, arrogance, etc).
4. ‘I cannot see what you see, you cannot see what I see. Does this mean that we can only see
half of everything we see, Dad?’ Examine the disintegration of family bonding in Edward
Yang’s 2000 film Yi Yi in relation to the child’s question to his father.
5. ‘On the one hand, we were playing a husband and a wife, and on the other hand, we were
playing a paramour and his mistress. In the beginning, we didn’t know that our partners
were having an affair, our identities were a husband and wife married to others. Then we
developed a relationship and we became a lover and his mistress, which were the roles of our partners! We were playing two roles at the same time. This makes it different from our previous roles’(Tony Leung). Examine the multilayered dimensions of the relationship between Chow and Lai-Chen in Wong Kar-wai’s 2000 film In the Mood for Love with reference to role-play.
6. ‘The result is that what brings them together (‘we do not want to be like them’) is also what
keeps them apart. Unlike affairs that end in disappointment, this is an affair that begins in
disappointment. We find out not how desire is followed by disappointment (a banal theme),
but how desire is generated by disappointment, how disappointment itself becomes the
source and resource of the erotic’ (Abbas, ‘Wong Kar-wai’s Cinema of Reptition, 125). In relation to Abbas’ commentary, in what ways In the Mood for Love is a film about disappointment?
