Through the Olive Trees is a prime example of the Iranian New Wave in the sense that it has a small focus on children, we see traditional values play a role in the film, it’s film about filmmaking, poetry of everyday life through long shots, de-dramatization of actions, outdoor shooting and finally an exploration of Iranian Identity among others I am missing. Yet, because this film is so different than your typical Hollywood production it is difficult to maintain focus throughout the film. After primarily watching American/Hollywood productions for the last 20 some odd years I have become conditioned to expect an action packed film, or be laughing the whole time, or be deeply engaged by the plot, but Through the Olive Trees failed to capture any typical Hollywood elements. So how on earth am I going to be able to pay attention to a full length film that is at an extremely slow pace and lacks any action to say the least? By taking an empathetic approach to the film, I was able to associate with Hossein and this allowed me to engage in the film through his perspective.

In the beginning of the film, the lead male role in the film is occupied by another male other than Hossein, but due to a speech problem Hossein is given the role. This is where the first connection is made. Like Hossein, I myself have found myself falling into something simply out of good fortune or more so luck. It appears to be lucky that Hossein is given this role and especially because he now has a chance to woo the woman he is interested in. On the way to shoot the movie, the female driving Hossein is asking him if he remembers his lines and Hossein seems to not be focusing on what she is saying. He recites his lines, but clearly his mind appears to be elsewhere. As the movie goes on, I came to the conclusion that Hossein was thinking about Tahereh on the way to the film. As a straight male I could easily associate with Hossein and his clouded mind. I can recall multiple points in my life where I have had a female of interest on my mind which steered my focus away from what I was doing at the time. I’m sure I am not alone here, I would think all of us have let someone of interest come into our mind and distract us from what we are doing at the time. By making these connections, I was able to stay engaged during the film.

Yet the biggest connection I was able to make with Hossein was through the frustration of not being rejected, but being ignored to a certain extent. Throughout the film Hossein is extremely persistent with Tahereh, but she does not speak to him the entire movie. I felt myself getting frustrated for Hossein. Like him, I feel myself to be a determined individual and the fact that she was not accepting or rejecting him kept Hossein continuously pursuing her.  If Tahereh would have rejected Hossein, it may have taken a couple times, but I think Hossein would have moved his attention elsewhere. It was this silence that drove him to slowly increase his persistence throughout the film. We can see Hossein becoming frustrated by begging Tahereh for an answer. From my perspective I do not see how one could not be extremely frustrated by this. If you want something bad enough, you will not give up without a definite answer and this is why the silence did not deter Hossein from Tahereh.

In the final scene, based on my interpretation we are finally given some closure to the love story of Hossein and Tahereh. Although the final scene is ambiguous, from my empathy with Hossein the final scene make perfect sense. First, he sets his things down to run after Tahereh. After what appears to be Hossein catching up with Tahereh, he later runs back. Hossein could have easily ran with the things he was carrying to begin with, so by setting them down they were clearly not important at the time. Finally, after the two meet up, Hossein is running back. I believe Tahereh has given him some sort of positive answer. After all the build up for Hossein, had he been rejected I think he would have been so devastated he would have left what he set down or he would have at least not ran back to it. By him running back, we get a sense of the energy in Hossein at the time implying some positive vibes.

When watching difficult films, outside our normal realm of expertise, I think it is helpful to pick out something you can associate with to remain engaged for the whole film. Like Professor Platt has said, most of these films our movies people wouldn’t watch unless in a class like this. It has been very helpful to me to pick out something or usually someone in the film I can make a connection to and let this guide my focus for the film. Hopefully this will help you with your future studies of film.

I have never been one for horror films, mainly because they all seem cliché and thus, aren’t scary. After watching Peeping Tom directed by Michael Powell, I have realized that my perception of horror films is based more off of contemporary films. Michael Powell was able to create a realistic situation that most viewers could easily relate too. The psychotic protagonist Mark appears as an average man within society until you start to pay closer attention to him. To also help us relate and sympathize with Mark, we are shown a traumatic childhood experience in which his father puts a lizard on him and videotapes the incident. And finally, the one not so normal thing about Mark is his fascination with murdering people and videotaping it. Michael Powell was able to get into the viewers mind by creating a sympathetic feeling with Mark’s traumatic experience and by also placing the viewer behind the camera during the murder scenes. These techniques proved wildly successful and have been used in other well-known horror films such as Halloween.

It is basic human nature to care for other people and so we easily sympathize or empathize in certain situations. One situation most people are easily sympathetic to is something happening to a child, who we consider to be innocent beings in our society. During Mark’s childhood, the viewer is led to believe he is treated more as a science experiment than a child. His father, researching fear videotapes Mark for most of his childhood placing Mark in different situations that typically evokes fear. In one scene we see Mark’s father place a lizard on him and Mark is forced to let the lizard move about him. As humans it is in our nature to feel bad for this child. Now that Mark is grown up and we see how he spends most of his time we can justify why he is a little creepy. It is normal for us to want to take the blame away from Mark and say it is not his fault because of what happen to him as a child. Michael Powell used this to connect to the viewer and gain their sympathy for Mark.

The second technique Powell used to get into the viewers mind was by placing them in the shoes of the protagonist. This is actually how the film starts; by placing the viewer behind the camera as Mark murders one of his victims. In every one of the murder scenes excluding when Mark dies, the viewer is placed behind the camera as if they are the one committing the murder. Although, we are all obviously not murders; it emphasizes the point that a murder doesn’t have to be someone special it can be just an average, regular person or so they appear that way to most in society.

In Peeping Tom, Michael Powell is able to create a work of art portraying an average citizen who also happens to be a murder. By grasping the viewer with the traumatic experience of Mark and placing them in the eyes of the killer, Powell is able to connect with each viewer in this chilling thriller. Powell’s techniques appeared again in later popular horror movies. In John Carpenters Halloween, protagonist Michael loses control as a child and murders his sister. He is later locked away and escapes back to his hometown, the site of his childhood killing. As he stocks and murders individuals of the community we see the killings through his eyes. These techniques were extremely successful in their time and I believe we have gotten away from reaching the viewers mind within the horror genre. The horror genre needs to find ways to reach the viewers through sympathy or empathy and finally, make them feel like they are apart of it. For true fans of horror, feeling as if they are in the film is the best way to be scared and the cliché techniques horror films are trying to use now days are simply not going to cut it.

In today’s world, silent films are essentially non-existent. To most the idea of a silent film is not the ideal way to spend an evening and I, like most, am part of that large extensive group. It seems almost as simple as, why watch something silent when I can watch something with sound? More than a legitimate critique of silent film, but to truly understand how and why the movie industry is the way it is today, we must examine the whole history of motion picture. To truly understand movies, you even need to go further back and examine plays that eventually led to the creation of motion picture. In the essence of time we’ll stick to a brief analysis of Buster Keaton’s silent film Sherlock Jr. While I’ll admit that silent films seem rather outdated and not entertaining, I was shocked by the amount of strategies used in the film to make the audience laugh that are still extremely common comedic ploys used in today’s film industry in films such as StepBrothers and Big Daddy. Don’t change something that works, and that is exactly what the American film cinema has done by relying on the same strategies that were relied on over eighty years ago.

This narrative uses many common strategies used today in comedies such as reaching the audience through the misfortunes of others and the portrayal of unrealistic events. In one of my favorite scenes; Buster Keaton follows the man who actually stole the pocket watch after reading in his, “how to be a detective” book to “shadow your man closely.” In this comedic scene, we see a vast array of typically thought of as unrealistic events. Keaton is within a footstep of the man while the man simply doesn’t notice. Also, during the scene Keaton catches a cigarette the man is smoking and he smokes some as well, they avoid a car by making the exact same movements and finally, Keaton walks into a door towards the end of the scene. An example of reaching the audience through another’s misfortune also comes in what I regard as one of the best scenes of the movie. Keaton is finishing sweeping the theater and he is asked about finding some money. He asks the lady to describe it (probably looks like every other bill) and she does, so he gives it back. Next, another lady comes looking for lost money and with a confused look on his face Keaton describes it and the second lady confirms it. Finally, a man comes looking for his lost money and Keaton without question gives the guy a dollar and surprisingly the man gives it back only to pull a wallet with a stack of cash in it out of the pile. Instantly Buster dives into the trash and starts looking for money.  In both scenes, Keaton intends to make the audience laugh and I think he absolutely succeeds.

Moving forward more than eighty years, we still see these same two strategies in most modern day comedic successes. One of the most recent, wildly successful unrealistic comedic films is StepBrothers, the story of two forty year olds who both live with their parents and become stepbrothers through marriage. In one classic scene, Brennan Huff and Dale Doback walk home and are forced to eat white dog poop by kids who appear around middle school age. This is just one small example of the many unrealistic events that take place in this film. The entire film is primarily based on unrealistic events, but nonetheless has most audience members in tears after watching for the first time. A classic movie that capitalizes on the misfortune of one man comes from comedic icon, Adam Sandler in Big Daddy.  In the film Adam Sandler struggles to get Frankenstein (Julian), a kid he is taking care of to stop crying. He finds that hurting himself helps the kid stop crying. This leads to numerous scenes with Sandler purposely hurting himself, one that sticks in my mind is when he jumps in front of a car and tells the guy, “Next time, kill me.” Using this strategy, Big Daddy was able to reach the audience through the misfortune of Adam Sandler and insight laughter.

Through examining a wildly successful silently movie in Sherlock Jr. and comparing this with two successful comedic movies of our time, one thing becomes evident. It is clear that although technology changes and we make advances in costume, microphones, cameras and everything else that the strategies used to induce laughter from the audience remain constant. In class and in our text, Professor Platt, and author Richard Barsam touched on the conformity of Hollywood primarily around the early 1900’s, but based on this simple comparison, conformity is still widespread in the movie industry. As a business major and current accountant, it is relatively safer and bares less risk to conform to strategies that have proven to work rather than innovate, although innovation can be accompanied by greater reward.