Film Analysis: Lars And The Real Girl

Craig Gillespie’s ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ explores meaningful ideas portrayed through Lar’s experience with mental illness. This is accomplished through the use of symbolism. Gillespie explores Lar’s isolation to the outside world linked to his emotional attachment to his blanket. The manipulation of Lar’s workplace scatters childish toy figures around the office with a stuffed teddy bear belonging to one of Lar’s main companions, Margo symbolising the immature atmosphere of Lars surroundings. Additionally, the handshake shared between Lars and Margo after the bowling alley exhibits the breakdown of mental barriers. Gillespie presents,

Galindo analyzes that the fundamental “mission” of a congregation is the same as any other congregation that exists in any part of the world. He argues that though every congregation has a mission and a vision, at the same time, it shares a basic common mission. (43) This reminds me of my home church The First Church of Evanston and my Field Site, The Evanston Vineyard Church. Both churches have a common mission of welcoming people to the church, irrespective of their ethnic, cultural, racial, and economic and, gender backgrounds. The mission is to help people be received in the house of God with due and deserved Christian love so that they feel loved and welcomed. Both these churches encourage church attendees to attend the service and receive the Eucharist.

A new and alarming trend that has been occurring in American society is the increase of violence committed by young women. The documentary Girlhood offers an insight on the emotional, psychological, and social reasoning behind the girl’s actions. Girlhood focuses on the life of two young juveniles, Shanae Owens and Megan Jensen both incarcerated for violent crimes. Shanae and Megan both experienced similar circumstances that yielded different outcomes. They were followed for a period of about three years which allowed viewers to really see what kind of role the justice system, family and peers have on the success of an at risk juvenile.

The movie Mean Girls is set in a high school setting. The movie starts with a new girl coming to the school as a first time public school student. Cady, the new student, is immediately accepted into a group of friends, but later invited to another. The first clique she joins pushes her to become friends with the second group. This subsequently led to a typical high school drama scene. The ways these high school students go about their normal life seem very alike to the “typical” high school. Even though the movie Mean Girls by Mark Waters, uses humor to portray some questionable realism, it effectively depicts characteristics of ordinary high school life and uses realistic characters.

Living in Christian community is a necessity for the everyday life of a Christian. Without community, the Christian has no one else to “sharpen” them, no one else to understand the everyday struggle of living in the world, sharing the Gospel, but not partaking in the sinful ways of the world. In “Life Together”, Dietrich Bonhoeffer explores Christian community, and presents not only the benefits of Christian community, but also the toxins that can destroy the community. Living in Christian community brings incomparable joy and community in and through Jesus Christ, but can be easily lost due to humanistic ideals, or “dreams”.

“Restoring At-Risk Communities,” written by John M. Perkins is a collaborative work of urban professionals in ministry, providing a blueprint for working in urban communities. It provides the personal expertise of so many to help fellow missionaries and those in ministry to develop a Christian community. In today’s culture, many of our cities are falling apart due to poverty, lack of education, lack of religion, and large amounts of people leaving for the suburbs. People who are being called to minister in the downtowns, or those who are already suffering in the trenches are struggling with how to reach the community for Christ. Perkins shares his personal experience of being on the frontlines of ministry, and the appropriate strategy to reaching those communities. He writes, “The desperate problems in America’s inner cities will not be resolved without strong commitment and risky action on the part of ordinary Christians with heroic faith” (Perkins, 1995).

Director Alfonso Cuaron is able to convey a strong message that relates quite closely to our peaceful, yet unstable society through several highly effective film techniques that accentuate the setting. He uses techniques such as lighting, to emphasise the stark contrast between hope and despair. He includes cows as props, to show the societal difference between women and animals, as to highlight the hope of Kee's pregnancy. Lastly, he manipulates sound effects, using the miraculous sounds of a baby on top of the monotonous drone of gunfire, and using haunting music to provide an eerie sense of calm. Together, these film techniques contribute greatly to our development and understanding of the film's underlying theme, that despair has a destructive effect on an individual and a population, but hope is transformative and beneficial to a dystopian

The character of Lars seems to be a fantastical person who couldn’t really exist in real life. Truth is, there are many people like him who struggle to have relationships with others due to mental illness. Lars is able to find a way to channel his insecurities of personal relationships onto Bianca, whom is a realistic looking sex doll. Ironically, Lars never has sex with Bianca, he treats her as a real human being and forces his community to accept Bianca in ways he never imagined. This acceptance from the community turns out to effect how Lars views Bianca over time, and they unknowingly help Lars grow to have feelings for a real girl named Margot.

“Working Girl,” depicts important battles that women are still fighting today, it brings light to the ridiculous judgments and barriers that women had to smash to establish themselves in the business field. The film was written by Kevin Wade and released in 1988, the story is based in New York City from the inspiration of New York commuters and the noticing that many young women were wearing white tennis shoes on their way to work, carrying high heels to change into once arriving to work. Tess McGill, an undervalued and mistreated sectary to the ultimate feministic triumph, Kathrine Parker who steals Tess McGill’s idea for a radio deal for their company, are the main characters. While Kathrine Parker is on a skiing trip and breaks her

My second week in the class, I was introduced to sexualization and parents priming their

In this essay, I will explain a cultural object from a scene from the movie Girls Trip, which was released on July 21, 2017. Girls Trip is about four women by the name of Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall), Sasha Franklin (Queen Latifah), Lisa Cooper (Jada Pinkett Smith), and Dina (Tiffany Radish), who have been friends for over 10 years, and are traveling to the annual Essence Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana. The cultural subject is Ryan Piece assistant Elizabeth Davelli, who uses terms and body language to define “blackness”. To reinforce and challenge the discourse that is taking place is people of color have to speak up about the discourse and inform people who are not of color, to show how people of color are offended by those actions.

The movie that I have chosen is a classic film from 1988 called Heathers. Heathers is an American cult black comedy film written by Daniel Waters and directed by Michael Lehmann. The film portrays four teenage girls—three of whom are named Heather—in a clique and a teen named Veronica Sawyer who desperately wants to fit in, as well as a crazy and unstable boy named J.D that plans to ruin it all. The focus of this essay will be on three characters. Analyzing their internal and external battles, as well as their social interactions with loved ones and other members of their fictional society.

A trope states different categories of figures of speech e.g. similes and puns. They used to describe and analyze a convention that can easily be understood and recognized as its common applied. Popular cultures are the images, perspectives and ideas that are within a given culture and is directing a certain mass. Final girl, a horror movie is among those movies that have many tropes in them. This movie is about a certain woman who becomes the last in line to ever confront the killer. She becomes the only person to ever narrate the story. This all happens after all her friends were killed by the killer holding her. The killer won’t let her go as he is holding a knife to finish what he had started. Hence, the essay below analyses tropes in pop cultures in the movie, the final girl.

Girl, Interrupted is a captivating and striking film about the struggle of coming to terms with mental health and overcoming personal obstacles to allow treatment and support. While the main character Susanna Kaysen stays in the Claymoore psychiatric hospital, she is introduced to a whole new world, one where she is forced to confront the fact that she has a mental illness and needs professional help.

In the movie, Lars and the Real Girl, Lars suffers from an undefined medical condition. He goes through a phase of having a life size doll and thinking it is real. He also tries to avoid any contact with his brother or his brother’s wife, Karen, which are his neighbors. He shows symptoms of the Schizoid Personality Disorder and Schizophrenia. His symptoms of the Schizoid disorder are he avoids relationships and prefers to be alone with no social contact. From Schizophrenia, he has disorganized and confused speech, and social withdrawal. Towards the beginning, Karen would always try to make Lars come over and have dinner with them, but he would always make an excuse not to. Also, he would never let people touch him. As a treatment, his doctor would start to hold his hand