In Farrokzhad Film "The House is Black" I noticed a
lot of Juxtaposition between many different ideas. With this she was able to
show the leper colony in many different lights. In the beginning of the film it
shows a woman in front of a mirror, this is showing us how the woman is
covering her face to conceal her disease. This mirror image is a great way to
begin the film because during the rest of it their are a few mirrored ideas.
The mans
voice versus the woman's voice shows two different things as a narrator. The
man, like we said in class, is very factual and almost matter of fact with his
voice. While the woman speaks in a very light voice that almost calms you, and
is much more hopeful then the mans. The man states how Leprosy is incurable,
while the woman is more about talking of enjoying life and the different good
things in it. These two voices together help differentiate two different ways
of looking at this leper colony. One being the cold hard facts and the other
being hopeful and happy.
Community
is something that is shown in this film to try and explain that all these
people worked together still and didn't let their disease get them down. In the
beginning when the man is speaking its all almost seams very drag and everyone's
all alone doing separate things with the doctors. However, after that it shows
them in their communities working together, getting food, playing, and even
celebrating! Here it is taking our image of how we think this leper colony must
be, dark and lonely, and twisting it to show us how it is the opposite, that
they all work and live together.
Watching
this film, with all its quick takes, made it seam like a horror film. However
what was able to be accomplished was she was able to juxtapose insanity with
beauty. Each person that would be on
screen would almost be tough to look at, and you may have even wanted to look
away, but during all these scenes the dialogue that the woman would speak and
the people themselves would speak was beautiful. They were happy about life and
embraced what they were able to and with this it gave them hope.
This all
was a great way for her to show us by juxtaposing all these images that our
image of what these people are, is not true. That we need to not look and judge
them, but listen to them and work with them because their people like us and
deserve the same kind of treatment. As well she may have been trying to make a
comment on woman's rights in Iran
and this film was a way for her to help open up peoples eyes to the issues
around them and confront them, not hide them away. All in all I thought it was
a great film that was able to capture a lot of imagery in it.
Chris, I agree that one message from the film is that we need to, as you said, listen to people in situations like this and work with them, and their condition doesn't make them lesser human beings. I like that you pointed out the juxtaposition that is both obvious and subtle in the film. I guess I subconsciously noted the juxtaposition all along, but I didn't fully realize just how far it extended until our class discussion, these blog posts, and even reading Sin. As Jamie wrote in her blog post, the poem "On Loving" is a great example of juxtaposition in Farrokhzad's poetry where she writes that she loves someone so much that she wants to both "run through meadows and bash [her] head against mountain rocks."
ReplyDeleteChris,
ReplyDeleteI really liked all the detailed elements you looked at when assessing The House is Black. The first image you describe "In the beginning of the film it shows a woman in front of a mirror, this is showing us how the woman is covering her face to conceal her disease". While this image is within the film used to show the woman's frustration with the visual elements of the disease, I think the idea can be expanded a bit further. The female character was trying to conceal the ugliness of her disease,we have sympathy for her because we as the audience know what she's feeling. Everyone has at one point in their lives had something they wanted to hid about themselves, it could be a physical issue as small as being embarrassed about acne or as big as not bringing up certain memories or subjects due to shame related to it. I think Farrokhzad uses the mirror image to make this "unrelatable leper" into simply a person who feels detached, and a little sad. Farrokhzad was able to humanize a situation that we tend to fear.