Hi there and welcome
to my blog! Today I am going to do a movie analysis on one of my favourite
movies. This is movie is one of my favourites because, it is a sport/ action
film, it is a very motivating movie and most of all it is based around the
World Cup of my favourite sport, Rugby.
The genre of this movie
is kind of a mix; it is a mix between Biography, Drama and history, within
these genres there are a few iconography devices that are used, through-out the
whole movie we can see that this is a movie that has been set in the past
because of the clothes that the characters and extras wear, the cars that can
be seen, and also the locations. This all adds together to make up a picture
for the genre of the movie, a great example of a genre being shown through the
iconography is a western film. In a western film there is many things that we
associate with the genre, i.e. a saloon, Guns, Beards, tumble weeds, horse and
carts and bottles of whiskey with “XXX” written on them.
Narrative structures
play a big part in a movie, it can set the mood, for the movie, it can give it
the feel of having a whole different storyline. In the movie Invictus the story
is a very linear story line, this means that it runs in chronological order,
i.e. it has a start middle and end. The directors will have chosen this kind of
narrative structure because; a sub genre of the movie is History and biography.
This would mean the movie would send mixed signals if the movie wasn’t in
chronological order.
Narrative
structure also looks at how a movie ends; there are many different endings to a
movie, the main endings are: Open and Closed. Invictus to me is a very closed
ending because, at the end of it we have closure that the story is over, South
Africa have won the World Cup and Nelson Mandela has untied the divided
Republic of South Africa.
During
this movie we can get a sense of there being some stereotyping going on,
however this is mostly from the characters and how they act towards other
people which is in keeping with how South Africa was back in 1995. Back then
the Black people believed that the whites were suppressing them. As a result of
this they didn’t like to associate with them, support their teams or even walk
on the same street. In a particular scene in the movie the president’s bodyguards
are black and they get assigned a task to work along side a group of white
special agents, however they are not happy because they remember how the white
agents used to treat the black people.
The characters are presented to us in various different ways, for characters like the players in the team, we get the feeling that these men are playing the innocent role along side the bitterness that is going on in their country and all they really want to do is play rugby and forget about the troubles that have happened in the past. The Character of Nelson Mandela is presented too us as a humble and peace driving man, who simply wants peace and the best for the Country he is now president of. These are mainly the positive characters in the movie, however there are some not so good people who are seen in the movie expressing their opinions on the matter that Nelson is now the president. I am referring to the Youth coach at the beginning of the movie where Nelson is in the cars that are travelling on the road away from the prison he had just been let out of. There is a group of black children across the road at a run down village made up of metal shacks and the coach says "remember this day boys, this is the day our country went to the dogs"
I am now going to move on a talk more in depth about a particular scene. For this I have chosen to do scene that really set the movie apart from other sport films, and made it a historic film. The scene I am going to talk about is a scene that is three quarters of the way into the movie. The background to this scene is, South African captain "Francois Pienaar" is trying to inspire his team in the lead up to the rugby world cup final. He takes his teammates to the prison where Nelson Mandela was sentenced to serve life "Robben Island".
During this scene there is many things going on, the team is walking through the halls and corridors they are peering into some cells and looking around then the captain asks their guide "can we see the Presidents cell?", the guide shows them to the cell and Francois goes inside to have a look around, he shuts the door behind him and begins to look around. After a few shots of Francois in the cell the group go outside where they are still looking around, while they have been looking around Francois has been having visions of Nelson Mandela doing things like sitting at his bed and outside breaking rocks. When the team get outside they look down into a big bowl in the ground where again Francois has a vision of Nelson smashing up bolder as part of his punishment, this time however Nelson looks up to Francois as if he has seen him and takes notice to him.
The characters are presented to us in various different ways, for characters like the players in the team, we get the feeling that these men are playing the innocent role along side the bitterness that is going on in their country and all they really want to do is play rugby and forget about the troubles that have happened in the past. The Character of Nelson Mandela is presented too us as a humble and peace driving man, who simply wants peace and the best for the Country he is now president of. These are mainly the positive characters in the movie, however there are some not so good people who are seen in the movie expressing their opinions on the matter that Nelson is now the president. I am referring to the Youth coach at the beginning of the movie where Nelson is in the cars that are travelling on the road away from the prison he had just been let out of. There is a group of black children across the road at a run down village made up of metal shacks and the coach says "remember this day boys, this is the day our country went to the dogs"
I am now going to move on a talk more in depth about a particular scene. For this I have chosen to do scene that really set the movie apart from other sport films, and made it a historic film. The scene I am going to talk about is a scene that is three quarters of the way into the movie. The background to this scene is, South African captain "Francois Pienaar" is trying to inspire his team in the lead up to the rugby world cup final. He takes his teammates to the prison where Nelson Mandela was sentenced to serve life "Robben Island".
During this scene there is many things going on, the team is walking through the halls and corridors they are peering into some cells and looking around then the captain asks their guide "can we see the Presidents cell?", the guide shows them to the cell and Francois goes inside to have a look around, he shuts the door behind him and begins to look around. After a few shots of Francois in the cell the group go outside where they are still looking around, while they have been looking around Francois has been having visions of Nelson Mandela doing things like sitting at his bed and outside breaking rocks. When the team get outside they look down into a big bowl in the ground where again Francois has a vision of Nelson smashing up bolder as part of his punishment, this time however Nelson looks up to Francois as if he has seen him and takes notice to him.
Sound
wise the scene is a very important part of the movie, in this scene is where
the real inspirational stuff kicks in this is where we hear for the first time
the poem "Invictus" and the sound track "9000 days" how
ever the sound used throughout the whole movie have
been professionally compiled and put together all the sound effects
and ambient noises are very good at helping to set the scene and even set the
tone at times.
During this scenes we have a couple of different types of sound, we have some diegetic were we can see the source of the sound, non-diegetic were we can't see the source of the sound, ambient which is all the background sounds that could highlight the location i.e. birds singing, waves, cars or even wind, we also have sound effects this is sound that has been added in, in post production this can also include things made by Foley artists.
Some examples of diegetic sounds that can be found in this scene, is the footsteps of the team walking in the corridor, the tour guide talking, the door of the cell closing when "François" closes him self inside, we can also hear the tanging of hammers and picks hitting of the stones and in the last scene we can hear the sound of the prisoners shovelling up the crushed stone.
Some examples of the non-diegetic sounds that can be found in this scene are: the soundtrack of the movie "9000 days" a voice over from Morgan Freeman who is playing the President Nelson Mandela, later on in the scene when the team go outside we can hear some ambient sounds of the wind
I am now going to go on and talk about the connotation and the denotation of a part of this scene for this I am going to talk about the part of the scene where Francois is in the cell and he is looking down towards a chair that is sitting over a mattress and he begins to have a vision of Nelson Mandela sitting on the chair.
Denotation is the basic literal meaning of what is going on in the scene or shot. As we can see from the picture a opaque image of a man sitting on a chair reading a book. He is wearing a prison out fit and is sitting in the corner of the room.
The Connotation is what we can interrupt from what we are seeing and what its possible meanings are. Saying as he is in prison he could be reading a bible, trying to communicate to god and seek fogginess for the crimes he has committed to get there. As we see the opaque figure of a man we could maybe see this as the person looking at him is remembering how the man acted. We could also see the book that he is holding as a dairy and that he is recording his days in prison by writing them down.
Mise-en-scene is a term used to describe all of the things that have been put in the scene. It is a French word that means, "Put on stage". The miss-en-scene for this scene is that it is set in a prison in South Africa there for there aren’t big fancy statures or pretty furniture it is simple and not costly. The lighting because it is set inside the prison is quite dark however I can imagine they have made it brighter just for the shoot of the movie. The editing is very minimal not much needs to be done in a scene like this because it is important that the viewers get a sense of how prison life would have been back then. The costume of the team is very simple they are wearing the team tracksuit this helps us to see who they are. The tour guide/ prison guard is wearing his uniform and Nelson Mandela is wearing his Prison clothes. From what we can depict the make up used in the whole movie is very minimal this maybe because of the fact it was set in about 1990 or because it is a movie about rugby players and a male president. The Sound track of the movie is a very inspirational and reflecting song called "9000 days By the Overtone with Yollandi Nortjie.
I am now going to go on and talk about some audience responses, my own personal response is that this movie had a very positive effect on me. This movie left me feeling positive and motivated to do better in sport and in life in general.
However other peoples response to this movie may well be different. For example someone who is actually from South Africa may react very different. They could like the movie and agree with some of the ways the producers have presented some characters or they may not like the idea of a movie being made about the dark times of their country.
Although on the other hand some South Africans may not like the movie because it drags up the countries' bad times, a part of their history they would rather not have to think about.
In conclusion I think this movie is a great sport movie for sports fans, however it could also be seen interesting from the perspective of a historian to see an insight to how the rugby world cup played a critical role in binding the broken country again. It now has a spot at the top of my DVD stack and i would certainly recommend it to anyone (being a rugby fan may help).
During this scenes we have a couple of different types of sound, we have some diegetic were we can see the source of the sound, non-diegetic were we can't see the source of the sound, ambient which is all the background sounds that could highlight the location i.e. birds singing, waves, cars or even wind, we also have sound effects this is sound that has been added in, in post production this can also include things made by Foley artists.
Some examples of diegetic sounds that can be found in this scene, is the footsteps of the team walking in the corridor, the tour guide talking, the door of the cell closing when "François" closes him self inside, we can also hear the tanging of hammers and picks hitting of the stones and in the last scene we can hear the sound of the prisoners shovelling up the crushed stone.
Some examples of the non-diegetic sounds that can be found in this scene are: the soundtrack of the movie "9000 days" a voice over from Morgan Freeman who is playing the President Nelson Mandela, later on in the scene when the team go outside we can hear some ambient sounds of the wind
I am now going to go on and talk about the connotation and the denotation of a part of this scene for this I am going to talk about the part of the scene where Francois is in the cell and he is looking down towards a chair that is sitting over a mattress and he begins to have a vision of Nelson Mandela sitting on the chair.
Denotation is the basic literal meaning of what is going on in the scene or shot. As we can see from the picture a opaque image of a man sitting on a chair reading a book. He is wearing a prison out fit and is sitting in the corner of the room.
The Connotation is what we can interrupt from what we are seeing and what its possible meanings are. Saying as he is in prison he could be reading a bible, trying to communicate to god and seek fogginess for the crimes he has committed to get there. As we see the opaque figure of a man we could maybe see this as the person looking at him is remembering how the man acted. We could also see the book that he is holding as a dairy and that he is recording his days in prison by writing them down.
Mise-en-scene is a term used to describe all of the things that have been put in the scene. It is a French word that means, "Put on stage". The miss-en-scene for this scene is that it is set in a prison in South Africa there for there aren’t big fancy statures or pretty furniture it is simple and not costly. The lighting because it is set inside the prison is quite dark however I can imagine they have made it brighter just for the shoot of the movie. The editing is very minimal not much needs to be done in a scene like this because it is important that the viewers get a sense of how prison life would have been back then. The costume of the team is very simple they are wearing the team tracksuit this helps us to see who they are. The tour guide/ prison guard is wearing his uniform and Nelson Mandela is wearing his Prison clothes. From what we can depict the make up used in the whole movie is very minimal this maybe because of the fact it was set in about 1990 or because it is a movie about rugby players and a male president. The Sound track of the movie is a very inspirational and reflecting song called "9000 days By the Overtone with Yollandi Nortjie.
I am now going to go on and talk about some audience responses, my own personal response is that this movie had a very positive effect on me. This movie left me feeling positive and motivated to do better in sport and in life in general.
However other peoples response to this movie may well be different. For example someone who is actually from South Africa may react very different. They could like the movie and agree with some of the ways the producers have presented some characters or they may not like the idea of a movie being made about the dark times of their country.
Although on the other hand some South Africans may not like the movie because it drags up the countries' bad times, a part of their history they would rather not have to think about.
In conclusion I think this movie is a great sport movie for sports fans, however it could also be seen interesting from the perspective of a historian to see an insight to how the rugby world cup played a critical role in binding the broken country again. It now has a spot at the top of my DVD stack and i would certainly recommend it to anyone (being a rugby fan may help).
