Wendy's and Lucy's Best Companion is...

For starters, in this film by Kelly Reichardt, the characters Wendy and Lucy already have each other for companionship, so I don't know why I need to play the role of matchmaker and find a new companion for them. Nevertheless, if I had to pick a film we previously watched from this class that would be the "best companion" for the movie Wendy and Lucy, it would probably be My Own Private Idaho. This may be a very surface observation, but the complete lack of any dominant male role or discussion about men and the solo bond between Wendy and Lucy paints a very "lesbian-like" image of Wendy. Not to mention her ragged butch clothes and haircut (obviously I mean no offense towards anybody). The feeling of homosexuality in this film is what remind me of My Own Private Idaho. Plus there is the fact that Wendy and Lucy as essentially drifters, just like characters Mike and Scott, and are just "passing through town" on a vague strenuous journey towards a hopefully better life. Just as similar, in both movies the characters are continuously stricken with hardships and obstacles that prevent them from achieving happiness. I also noticed that both Wendy and Mike have to give up their companionship with their best friends, Lucy and Scott. Although they lose their companions for different reasons, the even of losing them is the "final straw that broke the camels back" for Wendy and Mike. For this reason, I see it appropriate that My Own Private Idaho would be the best companion film for the movie Wendy and Lucy.

"Odysseus McGill" - A Man of Constant Sorrow

My excitement to watch Oh Brother, Where Art Thou for this class was very high thanks to my already developed love for the movie. This having been approximately the fourth time I've watched the film, I can confidently say that it is a timeless classic and the story never gets old. Maybe that is because the story itself is indeed loosely based off of Homer's "The Odyssey". I am familiar with the story of "The Odyssey", but until the connection between it and Oh Brother was discussed in the article, I had no knowledge of the connection and had not noticed it in the film until now. But thankfully it all makes sense now and heightens the beauty of the film for me even more so.

A particular theme of the movie that has always captivated me was the concept of The Man of Constant Sorrow. Not only was I hooked by just how catchy and song was, but I was amazed by the way that Everett McGill actually filled the role of the man of constant sorrow through the story and his part of the adventure/journey. Just like Homer's Odysseus, Everett was forced upon a great and perilous journey just in the hope of returning home to his family. I will avoid diving into why Penny is an awful character compared to Odysseus's Penelope, but I will say that Penny definitely contributes to Everett's constant sorrow. The hope of Everett's journey is that he will be reunited with Penny and remarry her, but even when he finds here, she does not accept him. She even renounces him, tells their daughters that he was hit by a train, and engages herself to the "bona-fide" Waldrip. Everett will never satisfy Penny no matter how hard he tries (aka. "she counted to 3!") which adds to his sorrows. And by "constant sorrows" it doesn't mean that Everett is a depressed man, but that he is a man struck with constant misfortune but always manages to survive and slowly journey on. It just so happens that the Soggy Bottom Boys hugely popular song captures the true nature of Everett's and Odysseus's struggles. For example, the song lyrics, "For 6 long years I've been in trouble, no pleasure here on earth I found. For in this world I bound to ramble" are a perfect description of their connected perilous journeys. The fact that whenever they sing "A Man of Constant Sorrow", the entire state of Mississippi goes crazy with excitement is only an ironic reaction that the protagonist will never truly receive for his efforts and survival. Therefore the man of constant sorrow is always destined to journey on as a stranger through life.

New Queer Cinematography

Within Van Sant's film, My Own Private Idaho, I believe that there is a unique element of cinematography present that could clearly be outlined as a defining aspect of New Queer Cinema. The usage of the cinematic filming technique of quasi stop motion throughout the film is something that I believe to be a defining element of new queer movies from that time period. That specific technique was a very new concept at the time and once cinematographers started using it, it grew very popular, but only for that short period of time in which the genre lasted. The stop motion filming concept was used most noticeably in the movie's sex scenes, in which still frame images of various sexual acts were shown almost artistically and had an austerely beautiful nature to it. This technique of displaying the sex scenes made it feel like you were skimming through a 90's erotica magazine or porn magazine photo story. Stated in Adnum's article, the stop motion technique of the sex scenes was “one of the most beautifully nuanced depictions of naked desire ever captured on film.” The technique was also applied in the imagery where there would be sudden spontaneous cuts to scenes of wooden houses whirling around in the air and crashing suddenly as a metaphor for Mike's childhood. I believe that this technique concept could certainly read under the New Queer Cinema association as an underlying aspect for that era of cinema.