Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Write a review of Jordan Peele's movie Us: Is this a good film or not such a great film? For example, is it more plot-driven or more character-driven? Does it have a strong theme? Is the theme obvious, or is it a bit more subtle?

So, the first part of this prompt is very much based on opinion, but I will give you my opinion with some explanation to help you formulate your own. I think the movie is mostly misunderstood by people who are unwilling to suspend their disbelief. The movie can seem like an all-out slash-flick, but I believe some more profound metaphors and messages definitely make it a quality film. I think if you can enjoy how the violence plays into the film, and you can look deeply into what is happening in the plot of the movie, you can see how it is driven and how many meanings might come out of it.
The characters drive the movie—the plot can’t drive the film, because it doesn’t always make a lot of literal sense. The characters, who they are, their problems, and what they stand for are a huge part of driving the movie forward. Adelaide’s interaction with her doppelganger, Red, is essential to the meaning of the film, and the twist ending of their switch brings up several thematic elements. The characters develop based on their interactions with the tethered, but it is the development of our understanding of the tethered themselves that makes this film excellent.
The tethered are the doppelgangers, created in a failed experiment by the US government in an attempt to control the citizens of the country. The tethered live below ground in a vast network of tunnels stretching all across the US. Their leader, Red, is revealed in the final act of the movie to be the real Adelaide—switched when she went into the funhouse at age eleven. Red (the new one) can unite the tethered and have them follow her onto the surface to stage a revolution because she shows them that life doesn’t have to be dull and weary. The other tethered are presented as monsters—shadows of people who can’t do anything apart from the people they are cloned from, but we learn from the twist that this explanation of their existence isn’t true. If young Red could pretend to be Adelaide and take her life, then the only real difference between the tethered and the people above ground is the level of privilege they have experienced in life.
While you think about possible themes, you should consider the symbolic and metaphorical nature of the movie. The tethered are a stand-in for forgotten people, people who are left to fend for themselves while other people get to enjoy their existence. Something else you should think about its the idea Peele expressed in a question and answer panel at SXSW:

We’re in a time where we fear the other, whether it’s the mysterious invader that we think is going to come and kill us and take our jobs, or the faction we don’t live near, who voted a different way than us. We’re all about pointing the finger. And I wanted to suggest that maybe the monster we really need to look at has our face. Maybe the evil, it’s us.

Peele explains that the movie is about looking inward for the evil that we perpetrate. It's easy to point the finger and find someone else to blame, but looking for the problems within is harder. Of course the tethered will seem like monsters to those who are attacked, but at the same time, as an audience, we can empathize with them after seeing their meaningless existence.
The tethered are rightfully angry, and the ending is ripe with thematic elements. The regular, surface-dwelling people in the movie ultimately bring about their own destruction. By abandoning the tethered to live their lowly existence underground, the surface all but guaranteed a violent revolution. If the tethered had not been forgotten, if they had been offered opportunity, love, and recognition, then none of the destruction and bloodshed at the movie's climax would have happened. The people who presented as the protagonists of the film—the Wilson family—and other surface people are in fact just other villains. They are not able to point the finger at themselves and realize that they, too, have evil indwelling.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/9/18257721/us-review-jordan-peele-get-out-lupita-nyongo-winston-duke-elisabeth-moss-tim-heidecker-horror

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the theme of the chapter Lead?

Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...