Monday, April 02, 2007

So it's come to this.

This paper started out as a study of Claude Jutra's early career, the opposing viewpoints that he consistently found himself between, and the childlike point of view that emerges in each of films. My discovery was that the childlike view relates his opinion and stance on all of these tensions surrounding him. I brought forth evidence of other critics recognizing his childlike view, i then brought forth the mammoth of all evidence, Jutra himself stating his quality as a 'perpetual child,' and then launched in to my theory on how this view came about.
When he was a kid, it was the family tradition to become a doctor, so despite finishing medical school to please his family, he had always loved film. My theory is that when he was going through medical school, he was only able to be himself and live out his days of youth when he was having fun making films, thereby attaching this relation of his childhood to movies, and his extreme joy in making movies that make him feel like a kid. The guy just wants to live out the childhood that was taken from him by medical textbooks.
While providing basic biographical linking, we then launch into A Chairy Tale, which hilights this childlike nature of his as I believe he was responsible for the direction and all of the movements within the movie, Mclaren was simply the genius who made it all seem real.....and maybe doing some directing. We see he's a kid, and likes to be a kid. Then we jump into his days at the NFB, showing the tensions of being French in an English company, being in Unit B - the favourite child of the NFB while everyone was jealous, then being in cinema direct vs candid eye, then as a filmmaker influenced by Jean Rouch within the cinema direct. While along the way touching on, being the only arts lover in his family to accept art as a career, everyone else were doctors and nurses, and also hinting on Jutra's supposed homosexuality, some confirm, some deny. It's a grey area, but still pretty relevant.
From this point, we are to jump into a view of The Devil's Toy illustrating all the problems of the NFB, and a look at Niger, Young Republic showing the Rouch influence. This is the step that I am currently at. What follows is what has been decided upon, no more than 20 minutes ago.
We then take a look at his place in the Quiet Revolution of Quebec, he was a seperatist and was extremely passionate about the nation of Quebec and the protection of it's culture. We show his fears of the invasion of american culture, the quebecois being degraded by the English, and how quebec, while a product of France, has made a clear and separate identiy for itself. We will look at his place in the French New Wave, a very sturdy topic as the man actually wrote in Cahiers Du Cinema........jealous, but then show how he is seperate from that movement due to his documentary background. Final tension begin fiction vs. documentary, Quebec seperatism and english vs. french.
We then round the bases and head for home with a brief view of how this childlike view has been received by other critics, why I think my view is better, and a nice meatty conclusion. Sounds good right? Well that's just the start, originally I was to include in this, but have now had to cut, due to a) I am running out of time and b) I DO NOT WANT TO FUCKING DO THIS ANYMORE. Here are the cut topics:
-A look at A Tout Prendre, his biopic, the best candidate for the french new wave and fiction/doc debate
-A look at Wow, his feature length film about THE YOUTH OF QUEBEC AND WHAT HE THINKS OF THEM!!!! my god this one hurt, but shit, I had over 20 pages of notes on this film and including it will mean that I never finish this paper.
-His role within the counter-culture
-his feelings toward the failing seperatist movement
-looking at the films
Perpetual Movement, the Madman of Jean-Jeunes Lake, Youth and Music (ouch), Cine Boum (double ouch, about the pressure placed on filmmakers from the gov't and about cultural censorship), Knowing to Learn (about the introduction of electronic teaching aids in public schools....just shoot me now) and Mon Oncle Antoine(a film about a youth growing up in Quebec.......actually kind of glad that one was gone).

SWEET JESUS!!!!! Why did this whole thing have to drag on forever, only to be torn to shreds in the last night as I watch this paper tower higher above me, gaining power through fear and stress (hehe, its now 4:20), as every other class seems to burst into flames around me. I did not go to school for 3 weeks, because I just could not pull myself away from finishing this damn thing. There's a chance, this paper won't even be excepted, but we must try or else the low, low mark in this class will decimate the 95 that I have been working my ass off for in Astronomy. I want that mark so bad so that I can finally.....maybe....even get my CGPA up high enough to become, wait for it, a cinema major. Or better yet, a cinema specialist, since that is what I am currently working towards, and screwing myself over for, if i never get in.

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