Week Thirteen

Making choices is hard. When Professor Mack said that we could choose our favorite work to write about this week, I honestly froze up a bit. It's not that I don't have favorite things. For example, my favorite color is blue. My favorite book series OF ALL TIME is Harry Potter. My favorite food is pizza. But what is my favorite work/text/film from this class?

That's a tough choice. From Diego Rivera's murals to Bless Me, Ultima, the works we've looked at in this class have all been fantastic. But because I have to choose, I would say I particularly enjoyed Black Orpheus.

To me, this movie is a Gesamtkunstwerk. The cinematography is beautiful. Unlike the flat, insubstantial movies we have today, each angle meant something. The lighting meant something. The staging meant something. For example, at the end of the film, Orpfeu falls off the cliff and lands with arms outstretched as if he were hanging on a cross. We talked about this symbolism in class, and it is a very significant aspect of the film. 

 Another reason I think this film is a total work of art is because of its reference to ancient myth. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice comes from Greek mythology. The integration of a modern, Latin American theme with a Greek myth is very well done. This use of mythology helps me to connect better with other Latin American works. In my mind, Latin America art and literature and film seems so different than Western art and literature and film. The origins of Latin America are so different than the origins of my own country, that sometimes it's hard for me to relate to these works. But this film helped to realize that, although our cultures are very different, we often draw from the same sources. 

I guess what impacted me the most about this film is that it shows that, at the end of the day, we're all human. Despite cultural differences, we are all still human.