Analysis of Chronological and Structural Evolution of three Canadian comedy-drama films:

Answer

Analysis of Chronological and Structural Evolution of three Canadian comedy-drama films:

Archangel (1990 film), Arrowhead (1994 film), Digger (1993 film)

Archangel (1990) was a comedy drama film that was written by George Toles, produced by Andre Bennet and directed by Guy Maddin. The film is a fiction of historical conflict related to Bolshevik Revolution which took place in the Arkhangelsk in Russia. The film was the first to use formal collaboration with co-screen writer. Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity (2002), written by Dennis Foon, produced by Scott Garvie and directed by Mina Shum, is also a Canadian drama-comedy film, filmed in Vancouver, Canada. It features a 12 years old girl, Tian as the star, attempting to fix her single mother’s romantic and financial issues by using Taoist magic.  Maps to the Stars (2014) is a satirical drama film, written by Bruce Wagner, produced by Said Ben Said and Directed by David Cronenberg.  It features Jullian Moore, Mia Wasikowska as the starts of the film. It presents the plight of a child star, and a washed up actress who helps with commenting on the entertainment industry’s relationship with western civilization.

Evolution of the Films

Archangel was shot in outstanding black and white cinematography. On the contrary, Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity and Maps to the Stars were shot in the natural colors probably to signify an evolution in technology. Archangel is hailed for being a special, anti-naturalistic and anti-mimetic film because it does not feature human real-time life by imitation. In other words, it unfolds in a more of fantastic manner with recurrent divergence from imperceptible variations of sound and image, which emphasizes continuity editing style of cinematography and filmmaking (Kehr 1991). This is not something that is explicit in the Maps to the Starts by David Cronenberg and neither noticeable in Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity by Mina Shum.  Consequently, the Archangel looks embroidered with illusory and trancelike quality. Andre Bennet and Guy Maddin achieve this style and characteristic feature through clothing the film in antiquated age dress of early sound film. Additionally, the director adds intertitles to describe the action, dubbed voices which are out of sync (Pevere, 2009).

Maps to the Stars on the other hand captures the profundities of madness afflicting Hollywood culture that other contemporary attempts at comparable films stories such as  Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity  have not achieved  or have a achieved  to far lesser impact.  In the film, Cronenberg transforms Hollywood into an analogous of grotesqueries that so comprehensively carries away its inhabitants such that they can’t relate with is practically (Tartaglione, April 18, 2013). This is a quality of style which distinguishes Maps to the Starts from the two films. In addition to the transformation by the director, the film; Maps to the Stars unlike Archangel and Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity, is a poetic dissection of well-known components that zeroes in on its ghastliest delinquents (Jagernauth, April 18, 2013). Every major plot point in the film, from Havana’s  struggles to landing a role playing her own mother to Agatha seeking to reenact a debauched happening from her parents’ past, accentuates the brand of Hollywood’s superfluous predispositions wrapped in an perpetual downward cycle.

Archangel further differs from the other two films the common jumps which are characteristically and casually bamboozled in the film.  The director pushes naturally puzzling account of endlessly baffled characters by intentionally using bizarre elements like female warriors going to the front adorned in stylish and odder sights (Rankin, 2008). This style is not evident in either of the two other films.

Another unique element is the setting of the Archangel which matches best Guy Maddin’s gloomy style which centers on recreating the miserable and disturbed look and feel of the film in the early 1920s though the producer and director were able to transit from quiet to sound pictures (Vatnsdal, 2000). The transition was itself an evolution with elevated the film to even more quality. Nevertheless, the silent film styles enhanced the atmosphere of the film but partiality for surrealism and occasionally subtract something from the dream movie. The Surrealism interrupted the spell being cast. The film was played straight but filmed in the style of Eisenstein or a von Stroheinm (Kehr, 1991). These styles create a quality of satire that compromises the genuine desolation of the plot. Moving progression at the culmination of subplot completes the creation of emotional purpose and that is one happy ending for Archangel’s denizens who are fond of sad experiences.

Stylistically and structurally, Cronenberg in Maps to the Stars matches the ire of Wagner’s script with weighted imagery (Tartaglione, April 18, 2013). This is not the case with Maddin’s Archangel. The Hollywood sign hangs threateningly in the background of various scenes. Unlike the Archangel, Maps to the Stars is shot is brightly lit lodges where several transitions occur. The characters’ lives are utterly meaningless, but while Cronenberg makes that much obvious to the audience, his characters remain unmindful until the last messy scene.

Cronenberg’s disconnected, ill-omened style, both formalist and fungoid, which enables the audience to enjoy some cold-blooded comedy, like Benjie telling the perishing devotee so much that the audience does not realize that his big hit, Bad Babysitter, grossed $780 million globally. Nevertheless, Cronenberg’s mannerist cinema harmonizes with Wagner’s modish impulsiveness exceedingly perfectly. Cronenberge himself said, “My job is to be realistic and poetic at the same time, so that people have a sense of being transported somewhere else.”( Isaacson, n.d).  That notwithstanding, Maps to the Stars does not achieve this, it is a fantasized trip to nowhere. Consequently, it is argued by film makers that Maps to the Stars is a style in which nihilism meets the Buddhist tenet of letting go (Jagernauth, April 18, 2013). It is also evident that Cronenberg does not wander away from the big illustration of a world not only comprised of detrimental compulsions, but designed to generate more of them. However, the ultimate aftermath is deficient of interconnection of the incidents leading up to them, and the awkward staging of climactic instants diverts from the instantaneous black humor that give the film its preliminary vigor and momentum (Isaacson, n.d). Still, the movie’s furious outlook retains its edge. Cronenberg never strays from the big picture of a world not only comprised of destructive impulses, but designed to breed more of them.

Unlike the seemingly modern films, Maps to the Stars and Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity, Maddin jabs amusement at nearly every period disinformation, romantic, and combat cliché, featuring the iconography of that remote era with vigorous accuracy via ponderous voice-overs, hyperbolic imagery, flash cards, and intentionally unsynched dialogue.  Anyone in pursuit of a lovely skewering of a brand of antique-flicks he/she could have experienced in college film courses should find solution in Archangel (Kane, 2000).

Although the styles of Archangel are archaic and characterized with 'vignette' effect that moderates the attention around the edge of the black-and-white image, the complex mixture progressions used to capture the themes of horror of war or bridge a gap of time is outstanding. Stylistically, the film is supported with rhetorical devices which seem to have lost meaning by the time Maps to the Stars and Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity were shot and produced. The same evolution is observed on characters, who have dramatically lost their identity if they were to be featured in the two other films (Kane, 2000). All that remains is sheer, empty form, talking to itself.

Maps to the Stars is stylistically just not a very stringent film like Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity. As much as there are analogies to learn within its fragile storytelling, each of their disclosures feel erroneous and unmerited. In other words, the impacts of Weiss family embrace are puzzling and awful but their impression provokes and wearing sigh rather than a frightened pant, which most likely isn’t what the writer and director had in mind. Once more, the execution of the film seems to be the underlying problem. More specifically, the film’s admirable-yet-unconvincing combination creates a whole mess. For instance, Cusack tussles with his pocket of lines, while Williams kind of just stands there, and Pattinson murmurs through his scenes like he is some confused idiot (Isaacson, n.d).

The mood at the start is pronounced not with mystery, as in Mina Shum’s Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity but with frustration, as audience struggle to figure out who is related and dependently clamped to whom. Hence the recurring theme of incest, which is another variety of parody: the scandalous expression of romantic love affair between close blood relatives. Deviant from the Archangel and Maps to the Starts, Mina Shum applies many techniques to ensure that Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity feels like it shot it in a genuine Chinese-Canadian community. The film is almost entirely an Asian cast, something which is not the case with the two other films. It is a total drift marked with evolutionary deviation from the traditionally non-Asian Hollywood cinema (Isaacson, n.d). All the main characters are Asians or closely Asian. This style is even more distinguished but through lighting the scenes with soft and dim light in order to create congruence of the gloomy skies that Vancouver often experiences. The director makes use of an Asian color sensibility to communicate themes within the movie. Mina Shum marches each word within the title to a color that can be seen over and over again all through the movie. For example, Blue epitomizes long life, red represents happiness, and gold signifies prosperity. The color schemes are also evident with some characters. Shuck and Hun Ping's scenes for instance are characterized with a lot of blue color which point to their desires for long life, Kin and Mindy's pursuit for happiness is manifested by red color red and in many of Bing Lai's scenes, golden color is predominant to emphasize his efforts to bring prosperity into his life (Thomas, 2003).The main restaurant setting of the film, exhibits all of the three colors in order to represent how all of these storylines unfolds (Shum et al., 2005). Through this, Mina Shum demonstrates how decision making affects lives of people and their neighbors. The style of relaying information through chromatography is a new technique that is not be found in Archangel or Maps to the Stars. It is a whole new technology that also signifies evolution in style of cinematography.

The director of Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity successfully crafts an intimate representation of the Chinese community in Vancouver. Moreover, Shum features the regular and daily realities of Chinese-Canadian immigrant population and uses them to fabricate a narrative of gifted youthfulness, obstinate old age and overwrought changing aspects of family units (Thomas, 2003). Relative to Archangel or Maps to the Stars, this theme does not seem to be entirely unique but rather displayed in a unique and transformed structure and style.  Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity is a meandering fiction which takes three narratives as they intertwine.

Some critics argue that Shum is whitewashing her audience but really there is no whitewashing here. The film features no ghost like could be common in some kind of superstitious ad horror movies. The cast is relief with the only difference being that the cast is almost entirely Asian, who notably engage in long conversations in Cantonese with some version of film including subtitles/intertitle like in the case of some versions of Maps to the Stars (Shum, 2003). It thus presents an evolution characterized with deviation from the white dominated Canadian movies and cinema screens and thus the film exhibits some level of unmatched authenticity and intimacy with the audience.

The Film is generally much slower than the Archangel but even much slower than Maps to the Stars. This effect could be considered a deviation from the norm but the director used it to explore yet another style of cinematography. That is to say, the director creates a meticulous and beautiful graphic framework which makes the plot feel as though the plot is subordinate to the art. Each scene is distinct, and some trial camera angles add more quality and life to some parts of the script (Thomas, 2003). The lighting, too, adds another feature of shooting style which portrays another dimension of sanity. Most of the scenes are lit softly and dimly which could be intended to imitate the melancholy dull skies which were a regular phenomenon in Vancouver (Shum, 2003). Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity succeeds as both a rom-com and a focused and enlivened observation of a city. Although the protagonists in the film may be young, the film does not lose its charm to time.

In conclusion, the three films are special in their own capacities. Although all of them are drama comedy casts, their themes, styles and even structure are different although when all put together they represent an evolution in film and cinematography industry. Archangel was short strictly in black and while with dim lights and more of a fantasy, Maps to the Starts was shot in natural color and thus with a more surrealism presented in a poetic dissection. Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity on the other hand differs from the rest in that it deviates from the culture of many Hollywood by presenting cast comprised of almost entirely of Asian.