How to Analyse Films

Seen Pulp Fiction? Kill Bill? Reservoir Dogs? Inglorious Bastards? If you have seen any of

these classics you’ll know that it was directed by the legend that is Quentin Tarantino.

However he should be known as an auteur rather than a director. For those who don’t

know, an auteur is a director that creates a film that isn’t conventional to the specific genre.

A good example being Pulp Fiction (1993). You may think it is a conventional

action/crime/thriller film with the guns, the flash cars, flash suits, violence etc. However

there are certain things in the film that make this an unconventional action/crime/thriller

film. Firstly the fact the film is non-linear narrative based makes it different to most action

films. The first scene ends up clashing with the last scene and the scenes go forward and

back in time. The character of Uma Thurman is represented as a strong and manipulating

character rather than asex object which was very rare when Pulp Fiction was made. Another

rare characteristic was Samuel. L. Jackson’s character. It’s not very often that the black guy

would take charge and have a white guy as a side kick it’d quite often be the other way

round.

For a film to be considered a conventional genre is if it applies to 7 key areas. Codes and

Conventions, setting, characters, themes, narrative, iconography and an ideological

message. The film Mean Girls (2004) fits the teen comedy genre perfectly. The main setting

for this film is the school they attend. In every teen comedy the main location is the school.

Where else would you set a teen comedy considering majority of teenagers are in school or

education? Another location used in Mean Girls is a shopping mall. In pretty much every

teen comedy there will be a few scenes set in a mall as there are a lot of teenagers there in

real life and in films they usually go to buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes and change

their style. Another regular setting of a teen comedy is a big house belonging to one of the

rich and popular kids. They always have the nice cars outside and the most amazing house.

They always rubbed it in the face of all the other characters like those really annoying

people that have everything. In teen comedy’s you always see different stereotypical groups

of people like; the jocks/popular people, math geeks, skaters, bandies the list is endless. All

of these groups are shown in Mean Girls therefore sticking to its conventional genre. In the

plastics (popular girls) there is the main girl of the group (Regina) that every girl in the

school looks up to, as in every teen comedy. Regina’s mother also plays a stereotypical

character. Although we don’t see much of her in the film it’s obvious that she plays the

mother that tries to act younger than her actual self and be ‘down with the kids’ and sort of

lets Regina do anything she wants. There is also a good looking, perfect boy that all the girl

love and want a relationship with (Aaron). That type of character is also in every single teen

comedy film. The main themes of Mean Girls are Love, jealousy, revenge and friendship.

These themes are often found in teen comedies. Firstly we realise that Kady (Lohan) falls in

love Aaron as does Regina and that is a huge part of the film and when Regina starts having

a relationship with Aaron, Kady becomes jealous and tries to break them up. Revenge is

used when Kady’s best friend Janis (Lizzy Caplin) used to be best friends with Regina so she

turns to Kady to make her suffer. Friendship is used throughout the film; Kady first makes

friends with Janis who tells her everything about the school. Kady suddenly becomes

popular and befriends the plastics but ends up unfriending them and the whole school turns

on her. In the end her first friends forgive her and everything is back to normal. This sort of

storyline is similar in all teen comedies. The main iconography of Mean Girls is the American

styled schools and the educational system. You have the dinner hall where all the separate

social groups like the jocks and popular/beautiful people, the weird geeks, the emos the

skaters etc. These are usually scenes where characters are more free and express

themselves truly. In the same way the narrow hallways with the lockers is where all the

characters gossip and come out of their shell more. The teachers in the film also have the

iconic characteristics of one ‘trying to be down with the kids’ and one teacher that is really

strict. Don’t deny we’ve all had them. Also iconic with teachers in films is that one of them

(usually the head teacher) would have a crush on another teacher and tragically fails at

trying to impress them. Also iconic in teen comedies, more often than not the main girl (in

this case Kady), would be a favourite of a certain teacher the more the character changes

they slack off more in class and become less of a favourite and then eventually making

amends and have everyone liking them again. The ideological message of this film is

remember who your true friends are and don’t take them for granted which in my opinion is

a lovely message.

A very famous scene in the hugely successful war film Apocalypse Now (1979) called Ride of

the Valkyrieswhich fits the war film stereotype perfectly. Set in Vietnam, where the

infamous war between USA and Vietnam took place.This scene alone is how you would

describe a conventional war film. It is set on the beaches of Vietnam where some of the

most horrific battle scenes were based in real life and a lot of other wars for that matter.

The characters in this scene are; Lieutenant ColonelBill Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who takes

charge of the onslaught with his group of men and squadron of attack helicopters. The

Lieutenant colonel is in every single war film you will see, these characters are highly

respected by their crew and squadrons. Obviously there are also hundreds of other extras

that act as the Vietnam army that are getting bombarded with missiles and bullets from the

helicopters. The iconography in this scene is all the war machines and weaponry. The huge

helicopters and the machine guns are seen in every war film. People running for their lives

in to the bunkers is also a very common sight in war films.The theme of this scene would be

the same as the ideological message, it is a very anti-war film. In this scene it shows all the

helicopters flying over the sea and then it quickly cuts to a school yard with little children

playing and then being rushed back inside for cover. This is quite a shocking clip as it gets

the message across that hundreds and thousands of innocent people, in this case school

children, die from war. Showing that war is horrible thing.