Whiplash (2014) reflected a dark time in Jesse’s life. He was playing on the school basketball team. Training was every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday directly after school, 5-6:30 p.m.

It was the start of 9th grade. Jesse and his teammates were sitting on the gym floor, awaiting the new coach’s arrival. Little did they know, this season was going to be different. While the old coach had injected a sense of fun in the training atmosphere, the new coach immediately established an iron-fisted presence. He rarely let up this persona, once punishing the players with unique conditioning exercises for laughing on the sidelines during a scrimmage. Even worse, he once ordered a conditioning session disguised as punishment, blaming the players’ pains on their own incompetence and idleness. At least, that’s what Jesse saw and felt. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, for a year and a half, he dreaded the school bell that signaled the end of school, because he knows of the pressure to come, the pressure of appeasing the coach, the pressure of not making a mistake…

Finally, he quit. A couple of teachers asked him if he wanted to tell his story to school administrators, and the events of Whiplash flashed through his mind. Andrew is a passionate young drummer, taken under the wings of Fletcher, a cutthroat instructor. Fletcher physically, verbally, and psychologically abuses Andrew, and when Andrew couldn’t take it anymore, he anonymously tells his story and Fletcher is fired. The two’s paths meet again, but Fletcher ends up sabotaging Andrew’s drumming dreams by purposely embarrassing him in a major performance.

Jesse feels the story – Andrew’s experiences and emotions – being played out in his own life, and is convinced not to say a word to the administrator. And if the movie convinced him of something about his own reality, what more can you really say about it?

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense is, strictly speaking, a horror movie – it follows an 8 year old boy (Cole) who can see and communicate with dead people, and a child psychologist attempting to understand Cole’s powers. The film is famous for its mindblowing plot twist at the end, yet arguably the most powerful scene is the one with Cole and his mother (Lynn) in the car. These two characters have had a strained relationship the entire movie, as Lynn is extremely worried about him and Cole’s sanity is ebbing away thanks to his disturbing abilities (which his mother knows nothing about). In this scene, he finally reveals the truth to her. Lynn is disbelieving, so Cole proves it with a message from Lynn’s dead mother: that Lynn made her proud, every single day. The performances from both actors are wonderfully affecting – Lynn breaks down crying at the story about her mother, and as she and Cole hug, there is a sense of catharsis, relief that Cole’s mother finally understands him and he no longer has to bear his haunting burden alone.

This scene resonates with Rithana because it speaks to a universal, complicated relationship – that between parents and children. It spans two generations (Cole and Lynn, Lynn and her mother), and there is a poignancy of Lynn’s mother only being able to tell her daughter she was proud of her from beyond the grave. The audience can see how much this means to Lynn, and how this translates to her relationship with Cole; she desperately wants to protect him but has no idea how. As for Cole, it’s clear how painful and terrifying it is for him to reveal his powers to his mother – he doesn’t want to scare her, but he needs her to believe him. There are several layers of tension and emotion woven into this short, quiet scene, and the directors and actors do an incredible job of moving the audience.

Emotion began to overcome Cannon as he took in the last scene of Rudy. He watches with pleasure as Rudy is taken off the field on his teammates shoulders after having sacked the Georgia Tech quarterback in the last seconds of a Notre Dame win. Joy fills his face and  he smiles, showing his approval for the moment as well as the movie as a whole. To Cannon, there is nothing more satisfying than a movie that has a well deserved, hard-fought happy ending. If there was one word to describe Rudy’s time at Notre Dame, it would be sacrifice. He gave up his time, his effort, and even his body to persevere through what would be a difficult experience for anyone, let alone a runt like Rudy. His trials throughout the movie had led to Cannon’s emotional investment to Rudy’s success. The completion of Rudy’s journey to play football for Notre Dame now leaves Cannon content. But, there is another reason the movie brings Cannon joy and fulfillment. He has a deeper connection to Rudy. Cannon also plays football and is in a similar situation as Rudy, working tirelessly to prepare his team for games that he probably will not play in. Every moment of the movie reminds Cannon of his own journey. The final moments of the movie give Cannon fulfillment in knowing that someone who dedicated himself to a cause, despite his limitations and lack of talent, was given praise for all that he has done. It seems like a fitting ending, especially for someone seeking that ending for himself.

The movie Call Me by Your Name is a piece of artwork; it makes use of visual and audio sensations to trigger the most vulnerable parts in its audience. Music, especially, plays a big role in creating the unique atmosphere for different scenes in this movie.

In the first half of the movie Elio and Oliver tumble in their own feelings for each other; in the background the music is light-footed, with no lyric. The climax comes when Elio reveals his feelings for Oliver; while they finally engage in a relationship, separation also approaches. At this stage of the movie, Sufjan Steven’s songs became the background music. As a gifted songwriter, Sufjan’s writing style is incredibly consistent with the features of the movie – direct in his lyric but complex in melody, just as the movie is, with a simple plot but complex emotion expressions.

The audience would encounter an emotional burst when Oliver told Elio about his marriage to another woman. “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver…” In the phone, Oliver called Elio by his name, as they used to do. “Elio…” Elio called Oliver back, with also his own name. This was very probably their last phone call, the last moment of their intersection in life, but something that tied them together still remains, secretly, in their own minds. The creation of this last scene was facilitated by Sufjan’s song, Vision of Gideon, when Elio looked into the furnace fire with tears dripping down from his face. “Is it a video…vision of Gideon…” All those that had changed his life in the past summer seemed now to be only a mirage.

The 1994 film Forrest Gump tells the story of a mentally slow, yet kind and compassionate, Alabama boy as he lives through defining moments in American history.  His journey ultimately ends in tragedy however, when his life-long love interests Jenny dies shortly after their marriage. Jenny’s death strikes as particularly disturbing, because Forrest doesn’t understand exactly how to react to it.  All his life, he was slow to understand complicated social interactions and complications. Then, faced with the death of his wife, that struggle to understand and cope is portrayed on screen with the deep sobs that slowly bubble to Gumps face.  

This reaction struck home with me, because at that age I also had difficulty reading social cues, and understanding the correct emotional responses for given situations. I had frustrations and sad thoughts that I also didn’t know how to deal with or express.  For example, the first time I watched the movie was shortly after the death of one of our family dogs, Mogly. I was incredibly sad about his death, but I didn’t know how to deal with that, or what the correct response would even look like. I remember asking my Dad why he was crying, and being genuinely confused and concerned. The movie has stuck with me ever since, and I think about it whenever I am presented with a loss or a defining moment in my life.

After an unfortunate turn, Joy and Bing Bong find themselves where memories are sent to be forgotten—the Memory Dump. The tears staining Joy’s hopeless face disheartens the audience, but the light radiating from Joy’s body evokes a different emotion—hope. This visual imagery of hope persists through the scene; however, it takes the characters a while to realize that even in their predicament, there is hope.

Once they do, the score transitions from melancholic to adventurous and revisits the main theme along the way. At this point, two pieces of contrasting imagery are presented to the audience: the dark, towering cliff face and the rainbow-colored exhaust of the Rocket Wagon. This imagery further emphasizes the dichotomy of hopelessness and hope.

After a few attempts at escape fail, the music returns to a subdued texture as, unbeknownst to Joy, Bing Bong starts to dematerialize. Perhaps acknowledging the inevitability of his fate and the light of hope that always surrounds Joy, Bing Bong suggests, “One more time. I got a feeling about this one. Sing louder!” In this suggestion, Bing Bong refers to a previously established detail that his Rocket Wagon runs on “Song Power.”

Some audience members recognize the change of music or Bing Bong’s facial expressions as a hint that something heartbreaking is about to happen. Others—who naively and wholeheartedly believe in the power of hope and “Song Power,” like Elija Balanga—are taken aback when Bing Bong jumps out of the Rocket Wagon so that Joy can escape the Memory Dump and fulfill her mission. As Bing Bong dematerializes completely, he requests Joy to take Riley to the moon for him. This adds to the emotional impact of the scene by illustrating how much he cares for Riley even after several years of separation.

Although Bing Bong disappears from Riley’s memory, he etches a tearful moment into the memories of the audience.

Lion is a movie about a boy, Saroo, who is separated from his family at a young age and gets adopted, but desires to go back to where he came from and see how his original family is doing. The parts that provoked Lumbini’s sadness were all the elements which the movie touched base on, not necessarily the heart-breaking plot. Saroo’s family is incredibly poor and there was a scene where Saroo and his older brother were stealing coal from a moving train only to get two handful-sized servings of milk. When Saroo accidentally falls asleep on a train while his brother leaves him to work a night shift he tries to seek help from adults along all the stops but no one helps him. This is because everybody is too poor themselves, since the setting is throughout India which is a third world country, so everybody is trying to survive and are apathetic to this poor 5-year old boy who is lost. When he gets off the train alone, a crowd of adults stampede nearly trampling him, giving no care to the fact that he is a small, fragile child. This is how it is in other countries: people don’t have room in their heart for a child that isn’t theirs because they have their own very severe problems. When he tries to talk to the adults working at the ticket station for the train he struggles to get any help as people in every line for every window push him out of the way and even hit him because they do not take him seriously. He resorts to a group of homeless children and the audience realizes that he is not the only one. In fact there are plenty of homeless kids no one is willing to help. When these kids go to sleep, they get kidnapped by men and the police only watch and don’t do anything about it. Throughout the movie there are also suggestions of rape. Even when the children manage to get put into an orphanage, a relieving point in the movie, their caretakers “spend the night” with them. All these elements in this movie together make Lumbini realize that the things people in other countries go through are beyond what one had ever assumed and this movie does an amazing job at painting this. This has inspired Lumbini to potentially set up an orphanage in a third world country when she has the money.

I’m looking forward to the term as we set off into the unknown together!