Stacie Leung

Manual Perez-Tejada

English 1102: 1:30

March 12, 2009

Cultural Hybrids and the Feminist Progression

The endowed American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor, Quentin Jerome Tarantino has created a collection of the most violent and brutal, nonlinear storytellers in the Hollywood film industry. Tarantino, an Academy, BAFTA and Palm d’Or Award winner has a talent for his unconventional method of telling a story. Known to be greatly influenced by the African American and Asian cultures, evident in much of his works, Tarantino has a pattern of culturizing his films. Whether or not he intends to integrate techniques of hybridization and culturalization in his films, Quentin’s motion pictures obliquely address social issues of the world and politics. Alongside these themes of hybridization and globalization is a native-born Chinese director, Ang Lee. Contrast to Tarantino, Lee’s films has recurring themes of alienation, marginalization, and repression. Raised with a strong emphasis on Chinese classics, his films focus on traditions and modernity. References to historical realism and martial law, Lee’s dedication to his Asian descendants have inadvertently strengthened the national identity and traditions of China. One notable characteristic in his Academy and Best Foreign Language Film picture, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is his allusion to feminism and the transition of the feminist movement in Asian culture. The two films concentrated on in this essay are Tarantino’s globalization with Kill Bill and Lee’s national view through feminism with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. My argument will revolve around the different trends seen in Lee and Tarantino’s works in hybridization and the feminist portrayal in the international film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; as well as how these traditions vary with respect to Hollywood’s misconceptions and stereotypes of female action characters.

The fourth movie of writer/director Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill is an epic long movie, requiring roughly four hours of viewing time. An action drama of bloody revenge, this film stars actress Uma Thurman, known in the film as one of many names: Beatrix Kiddo, Black Mamba, The Bride, and Mommy. Seeking revenge four years later after a coma received from a violent massacre at her wedding in an El Paso wedding chapel, Uma is on a quest to kill. One by one, crossing off her victims names from her list as she kills them, The Bride incorporates Eastern Asian tactics during confrontation with the enemies. Director, Tarantino, used plenty of globalization techniques in composing this film. Homage to: Hong Kong martial arts movies, Japanese samurai films, and Italian spaghetti westerns, Quentin Tarantino displayed a flawless integration of cultural backgrounds compressed in one film.

Homage to kung-fu and spaghetti westerns, Kill Bill intrinsically intertwines cultures from Hong Kong and other East Asian countries with Italian trends and even a Mexican backdrop. Lately, hybridization of cultures has become an ongoing trend in cultural production; globalizing and localizing the culture industry. Hybridization of culture becomes more than combining, mixing, and blending multiple elements of different sources. The culture hybridization done by Tarantino creates connections with the different elements. Instead of a faceless whole of cultures, this type of hybridization creates new forms of “indie” culture (Wang, Yeh 1). This mix and blend of cultures is more intrinsic than a stir fry of a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. This independent creation of something completely new highlights the talent behind Tarantino in making this film.

Directed by Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a martial arts style movie with similar choreography of The Matrix. Highlighting similar fighting techniques from Kill Bill and vice versa, Crouching Tiger illustrates the difficulty in making hybrids of and globalizing culture. Nationalizing their traditions and alluding to popular Chinese and Asian cultures, this film strikes the idea of “reculturalization,” closely related to the background of the producer’s style of play, moreover his past and current inspirations (Wang, Yeh 1).

Released across seas, the independent, international new line cinema, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon also has a transparent focus on Asian female roles in Hong Kong and Chinese martial arts films (Kim 1). As a primary focus of this essay, Lee’s film illustrates female action stars playing heroic roles; taking control, charge, and containing leadership qualities, Shanghai cinema shows a greater appreciation toward the roles and positions women partake into the society. In this society, women are more respected. They are not just supple and submissive females awaiting to be saved by their “knight and shining armor.” Developed from the Peking Opera traditions as well as Chinese martial arts, Asian women are very active in action films and take many leading roles in film (Kim 3; Zhu 1).

These Oriental views and Asian reception of female roles vary enormously in comparison to the Western perception. Giving vivid context and meaningful roles as action figures without the erroneous and exotic appeal of the female figure, the cultural context of Chinese cinema on women keeps their dignity and in some views, their pride and respect. Cleaving the body and intensity of skin shown, Hollywood tends to rely on making something out of a female character by somehow showing some exoticism in their self-image. It is too often in Hollywood for a major female role to surpass some sexual content in attire, or lack thereof (Kim 4).

A great allusion of Hollywood’s partake in this biased view of women would be Angelina Jolie. Playing major roles such as Lara croft in Tomb Raider, through the use of mise-en-scene, Jolie’s character is dressed in some sort of skin-tight black sheer fabric hugged snugly around her curves. From the multiple outfits designed for the role of Lara Croft, they all seem to stress and extenuate her body for larger sex appeals to the audience. Another example of Jolie’s provocative “badass” action roles in Hollywood is seen in Timur Bekmambetov’s, Wanted. Angelina Jolie plays the role of Fox, a Fraternity assassin who is screened as tough, distant and unattainable. Publicized through media as a memorable scene of the movie is the moment Jolie emerges from a steaming bath and walks by with camera panning on the tattoos imprinted on her back. In contrast to the roles Jolie has played throughout Hollywood, Uma Thurman’s role in Kill Bill shows more of the traditional qualities of Asian cinema.

Grasping techniques from Asian films, scenes throughout Kill Bill show a lot of hybridization techniques of Director Tarantino. Straying from the typical depiction of femininity in Hollywood, Beatrix Kiddo, the vengeful bride, is tailored in a full, yellow body suit; completely concealing her skin, yet giving the suit the appearance of an action fighter. Unlike movies such as Charlie’s Angels, this movie doesn’t make a mockery out of female roles and takes a more serious approach to things. In Charlie’s Angels, the three women are presented as cute, attractive, sassy babes (Kim 5). As reflected by the cover of the special edition DVD, it is noticeable in how the three “Angels” strike a pose as they would for the cover of a glamorous magazine, in comparison to the image of Uma, sculpted with a face of confidence and strength. Parallel to Uma, the stances of the two women on the cover of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s DVD strike fear in their enemies eyes.

Strong approaches stemmed from the Asian tactics of cinema seen in Crouching Tiger, the production of Kill Bill has gained cinematic values by hybridizing its plot and transforming its Hollywood view of female action stars. The majority of the action scenes throughout this film consist of two stiff, fearless women ready to take each other on. With its use of Asian warrior swords, this Hollywood budgeted movie depicts tools of hybridization with a cultural crossover to the Asian traditional approach of characterizing female action figures. A specific scene which portrays all of these qualities is the final duel between Lucy Liu’s character, O-Ren Ishii, and The Bride. The setting is located outside the House of Blue Leaves, which gives the audience an instant feel of the Asian culture. Presented face to face, ready to battle, the camera shows the two approaching each other with envy. Crossing swords multiple times, the martial arts tactics come into play once again; while the two women are represented as powerful, well respected leaders.

Two movies closely related yet produced thousands of miles away, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2 display many similar qualities and techniques in production in comparison to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. One movie, filmed largely in the western coast of America and the other predominately filmed in Eastern Asia, the two pictures had large impacts on both countries’ movie audience. Films with such appeal to two different worlds, the directors of the two movies have showed how globalization, nationalization, and hybridization have such large impacts in film. Combining cinematic techniques from Italy to the Asian roots, Kill Bill is a creation of an absolute hybrid of cultures. Within this fusion of cultural aspects is Tarantino’s feminist portrayal of female action roles. Alongside Tarantino’s work comes Ang Lee’s embodiment of Asian cultural representations and influences of women in Crouching Tiger, released world-wide. With a notable focus on the effect of female characters in his film, the portrayal of Ang Lee globalizes the equality of women with men in Asian cultures through film. Chinese cinema has widened the media’s representation of passive dependent women, to strong leaders of heuristic qualities. Lee’s more traditional approach in comparison to Tarantino’s globalized draw outline some differences in cinematic approach of Hollywood and Shanghai film (Zhu 2).

Pleasure Over Pain

Justin Migliaccio
Dr. Tejada
English 1102
12 March 2009

Pleasure over Pain

When making an argument, or take a side, people tend to lose a perspective of the other. In comparing international cinema many perspectives on many events can be seen that take place. My paper is going to run on the World War II medium. In my argument, I want to describe the Italian cinematic view on Fascism and Life using the two contemporary films: Life Is Beautiful and Mediterraneo. Both of these films are Italian, and give the audience the themes of Fascism and Life because they take place during World War II.

In the American cinema, the stories and cinematic elements describing World War II were of a gruesome element. Fascism became such an enemy in war films after WWII that the ideology behind Fascism depicted it as horror, oppression, Nazism. It was given such a tag that pretty much any cinematic approach, by any country’s film industry, was one to take the opposite side, and describe it through what their own country suffered by it and hack out the Fascist Germany that was. However, members of one country, who had close ties with Germany during WWII, did not take the same perspectives or sides as their other counterparts, but instead embraced the ideology that was behind the veil.

Italian cinema looked passed Fascism and embraced it into their community. Truly, it was a part of their community for some time during Benito Mussolini’s reign during WWII. And after all a majority of Italy’s populus took the Fascist route to side with Germany. In Italy’s contemporary cinema, the two films Life is Beautiful and Mediterraneo, take a more comedic and fictional approach toward Fascism. In Life Is Beautiful, the main character, Gudio, and his son who are of Jewish-Italian dissent, are sent to a concentration camp to work and labor. By watching the film and reading the reviews, Guido is a surprisingly odd character, who takes very comedic approaches to very gloomy, tough situations, “Even while giving vent to his natural propensity for comic mugging, Benigni brings surprising depth and poignancy to the desperate father trying to mask his own fear.” (Variety Life Is Beautiful). From the perspective of Guido, the fascism and politics that is taking place in his own country seems to be more of comedic relief to him than anything. This medium of relief, can be displayed by how the director wants Guido to act. In essence, the Italian director wants Guido to be comical about the fascist regime who has taken over his country and implemented the Holocaust situation that has occurred during WWII, “The father's gentle buffoonery and quick-witted fibs are perfectly suited to the child and also to the film's way of reducing the Holocaust to its essential absurdity.” (NY Times 1).





This convention of comedic relief is one view that Italian cinema seems to show about their country’s wrong doing in alliance with Germany during the war. Instead of the director conveying bloodshed, horror, anger and hatred like most other International films take on Fascism, the Fascist view of the Italian film is one to simply ignore these gruesome themes, and take their own stance to the matter, distancing themselves from the mistake their country’s government made to side with Germany, comedy. Take Mediterraneo for instance; it is a film about stranded Italian soldiers on an Island where from a very far view, are able to see battle and gun fire from the island. Throughout the film, the villagers who live on the island accept the soldiers into their homes, the soldiers become so encompassed into the villagers lives and forget about their duty in the war. “One night they see a terrible explosion on the horizon… the men lose all touch with the world outside.” (NY Times Mediterraneo). Although there are minor dramatic elements in the film, it clearly shows the director that he is not afraid to take an approach of what his own country wants to see and fights back the international take on fascism. So this is the kind of distance approach that contemporary Italian cinema is taking toward Fascism in relation to the rest of the world’s contemporary take on it.


With the comedic relief, comes the “Life” lesson, what is the Italian view on Life? When I was watching both Life Is Beautiful and Mediterraneo, the film juxtaposes between the comedic elements, social issues, and plot of film from these two films to the rest of the world. The Italian cinema truly has it’s on take on life, rather than depressing films that describe versions on people in horrible situations, Italian cinema takes a left, telling people that the fruits of “Life” should be the simple outer shell of it all, rather than picking to the core. Guido is a hotel servant, which he doesn’t make a lot of money, but see’s nothing of it, and continues himself past it, “While charmed by her clownish suitor and his comical ruses to keep popping up in her path… learning of the impending marriage as he waits tables at their official engagement reception.” (Variety). Rather than making himself stand short of possibilities, Guido stands high with his personality. Same kind of characteristics occur in Mediterraneo where the soldiers, instead of fighting in what they deem a meaningless war, take on suit with the villagers, “The pic is rich in affectionate new slants on old Italo emblems… give this pic much of its buoyancy.” (Variety Mediterraneo). It is possible that Italian film, social status or situation people are in, shows people can be so simple and pick apart life enjoyably with little they have. It this distancing method that I believe makes the Italian films so successful revealing the comedic and fruitful balance of life that Guido, the soldiers, and characters in both films take with them.



By showing the comedic relief to a ruthless way of government and torture, Fascism, and how the fruits of “Life” are right at your finger tips, these Italian movies display the Italian cinematic view on these subjects. This kind of view teaches us to be more mindful of our world, that what we see as such a serious matter, shouldn’t be serious at all. If there was any good way to describe how Italian cinema has created such a comparison of these subjects, it is that Italian cinema views our illusions in life as the fundamental approach to enjoying it, while the rest of the world cinema views our reality in life as its fundamental approach to enjoying it.

Hen Pauker
Dr. Manuel A. Pérez Tejada
English 1102 D2
02/05/09

Dror Shaul’s contrast

Dror Shaul is an Israeli film maker. He was born on 1971 in Kibbutz kisufim that is in the south of Israel. Kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture; the kibbutz is a form of communal living that combines socialism and Zionism. Dror Shaul came to prominence with the release of his first film, the 50-minute Operation Grandma, a comedy with a focus on the kibbutz experience. It is considered a cult movie, especially among kibbutzniks (people who lives in the Kibbutz). He returned to the kibbutz with his second full-length feature, Sweet Mud, a drama following an unhappy childhood in the kibbutz. It won an Israeli Film Academy Best Picture Award and a Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Shaul has confirmed that both films are based on real-life events. In my essay I will first describe the plots of the movies and then I will present the differences between the movies. I will also show the similarity between them in respect to Shaul’s direction. I will show how Shaul has the same point of view in both movies but one is a comedy that most of the Israeli population liked and the other is a drama that had a lot of criticisms among the Israeli people as a whole and among the kibbutzniks in particular.

Operation Grandma is a comedy film about the Israeli military and kibbutz life. The story took place around Alon, an Israeli Army officer, Benni, a brilliant electrician, and Idan, a wimpy field trip guide. The film is told from Idan's point of view. Three brothers try to bury their grandmother in the kibbutz cemetery. Alon has a secret security operation set for the same day, so they have to work on a very tight schedule. Alon plans it like a military operation, and this is the reason for the film’s title. A series of mistakes and mishaps complicate things. The story takes place in Israel, in the fictional kibbutz "Asisim". Kibbutzim are flourishing as a social system in the 1970s in Israel. The kibbutzim were founded on principles of socialist equality -- each person giving as much as he or she was able, and taking only what he or she needed. The members of the kibbutz provided everything the kibbutz needed to survive as a whole, and in return the kibbutz as a whole took care of the individual needs of its members. (Definition) Kibbutzim were seen by many as social utopias, and many seekers, both Jewish and not, came to the various kibbutzim looking for models on which to found similar communal intentional communities. The humor in the film operation grandma is cultural, involving very specific aspects of Israeli life and culture: the kibbutz, foreign volunteers, army life, school-trips and Tel-Aviv (one of the biggest cities in Israel). In a very funny way, Shaul creates a critic’s film about the Kibbutz and the way things function.

Sweet Mud is an intense drama about a boy with a mentally ill mother. In the year 1974 Dvir, a twelve year old, lives in a Kibbutz in Israel with his mother and older brother. His father died some years earlier, but anyone from the members of the kibbutz will tell Dvir it was not an accident. Dvir's mother, Miri is mentally unstable, and Dvir is trying to do his best to take care of her during the limited time he is allowed to spend with her every day. Early in the film we learn that Miri never recovered from Dvir’s father death. The director manages to convey a child's outrage and perplexity at the way the adults around him abuse his mother and basically shows us the reason for his sadness and occasional fear. We can feel the child's loneliness and empathize with his intense and doomed wish that his troubled but loving mother would behave normally.

There are many different characters in the movie, but Shaul keeps the main sight of the story on the12-year-old Dvir and his mother, Miri. Although at the beginning of the film Dvir’s mom looks charming, young and beautiful, we found out really quickly that she has a history of psychosis and hospitalization. The kibbutz was her husband's home, so they kept her because the members of the Kibbutz felt it is their duty, but they were not happy about being among a woman like her. The kibbutz members of Sweet Mud are much more than a collection of cute eccentrics, as they've been portrayed in Operation Grandma. For example, Avram, who looks and sounds like the stereotypical easy-going kibbutznik, turns out to have an unusually close relationship with the cows he takes care of. A pretty young teacher gives a humorless, ideological sex education lecture that is the film's comic high point, then goes off to continue a loveless affair with a married man. While Shaul does have a sense of humor and, very occasionally, certain affection for the kibbutz residents, it becomes clearer and clearer that they are frustrated people who often treat each other with great cruelty. When that cruelty is turned against a creature as vulnerable as the boy's mother, the results can't be anything other than tragic.

In the film Operation Grandma, Dror Shaul shows the negative side of the kibbutz with all the funny motifs related to the kibbutz. The Israeli audience did not see the negative side of the movie because of the fact that it is a comedy movie. Even though it is obvious that through the comedy movie Shaul criticizes the kibbutz characters harshly, the fact that this is a comedy movie even flattered the kibbutzniks citizens. On the other hand, Sweet Mud groups all the evil dark life of the kibbutz in a drama movie. The entire film is shades and taupe, which increase the sense of gloom. The scenes engaged with an absurd gathering of members asking the community’s permission for banal things. The figures have lack of empathy, contempt reactions in particular acts and even violence against a child just to protect a friend from the Kibbutz. The only positive characters in the film are the result of intervention of an outside person that comes from another culture. Parents are supposed to have a suitable Kibbutz child, and if anyone dares to think otherwise, this is not plausible.

I am aware of the existence of these negative and sometimes terrifying things that exist in the kibbutzim. But this negative perspective that exists in the film, along with the general neglect gray shades, takes the viewer to a dark place. Perhaps that is the director’s sharing childhood days on the kibbutz, but not in an objective way that the film Operation Grandma does. In operation grandma Dror Shaul is making fun of the kibbutz, it feels like there is something bitter in the film but the comedy is taking control and “does not” let you feel that way. I think that on his first successful movie – operation grandma, Dror Shaul was afraid of the audience’s reaction to a harsh kibbutz film so he “examines us” by combining funny aspects of a film that worked. After his success he got more confidence from his audience’s fans and made a more critical movie and maybe allowed himself to expose his real feeling about the kibbutz from when he was a child. In my opinion, Dror Shaul made two great movies that both give the audience a bitter perspective about the kibbutz but in the same time gives us different moods and different levels of seriousness.



Work Cited
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969323.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&query=sweet+mud
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117969323.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&query=sweet+mud
http://www.kibbutz.org.il/itonut/kibbutzim/061012_adama.htm?nojump (interview with Dror Shaul in one of the famous newspapers in Israel 02/27/2007).

More…
http://boxoffice.com/reviews/2008/08/sweet-mud.php
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/5/ART1/703/183.html
http://www.movingpicturesmagazine.com/reviews/movies/sweetmud

"Pan's Labyrinth vs. "The Devil's Backbone": Does Production Value Truly Matter?

While acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro has directed such cinematic blockbusters as “Hellboy” and “Blade II,” the two works that continue to define his career are “El Laberinto del Fauno” (Pan’s Labyrinth) and “El Espinazo del Diablo” (The Devil’s Backbone). These two films, while parallel in many aspects, contain several large differences which allow the two films to be weighed against one another in a critical manner. Due to the high level of similarity between the two motion pictures, “Pan’s Labyrinth” is sometimes viewed as a relative sequel to “The Devil’s Backbone.” In my argument, I will elaborate on this theory, along with the general corresponding aspects of the two films and how they affect how the movies are viewed as a pair versus how they are viewed individually. The large gap in production value between “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Devil’s Backbone” is a huge contributor to the differences in the two movies. This further pushes the films apart in terms of general cinematic potential and marketability, which creates an inconsistency between the two with respect to the global marketplace.
“The Devil’s Backbone” involves a young boy named Carlos whose father has died in the Spanish Civil War. A man named Ayala drives him to an orphanage, where he deserts Carlos due to his desire to go into dangerous territory to help the war effort. Dr. Casares, the assistant administrator of the orphanage, befriends Carlos due to his sympathizing with the boy’s situation. Once he becomes settled, Carlos begins to see the ghost of a young boy named Santi who once lived at the orphanage.

Carlos, frightened, continually runs away from the ghost.
Meanwhile, Jacinto, a former orphan who now works at the orphanage, continually plots to steal gold that is thought to be contained in a safe in the kitchen of the orphanage. As the war escalates and tensions run high, Jacinto lights gasoline on fire in an attempt to clear the orphanage out and obtain entry into the safe to acquire the gold. Dr. Casares is heavily injured and several children are killed in the blast, but the remaining orphans realize that the only way to stop Jacinto is to fight. During this time, Carlos speaks to Santi rather than running away from him, and a revelation occurs. Jacinto is shown to have murdered Santi due to Santi witnessing him attempting to break into the safe. Santi expresses a desire to kill Jacinto to Carlos. Dr. Casares eventually dies from his wounds, but when Jacinto returns to the orphanage, the remaining orphans repeatedly stab him with blunt sticks and he is thrown into the pool where he disposed of Santi’s body, and the ghost of Santi drags him to the bottom, where he dies.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” begins by showing a young girl named Ofelia lying on the ground, injured. It is then explained that Princess Moanna of the Underground Realm (believed to be Ofelia) once ventured to the outside world and eventually died. The story then cuts to the present, and Ofelia is at a Spanish military post during the period right after the Spanish Civil War. Her father is deceased, and her mother has since remarried. Her new husband, Captain Vidal, is a tyrannical leader who is seeking out rebels and exterminating them for the new fascist regime.

A small fairy appears to Ofelia and leads her into a strange labyrinth near the post, where she encounters a faun who claims that she is Princess Moanna. The faun then gives Ofelia three missions to accomplish before she can return to the Underground Realm. These tasks vary widely, from retrieving a key from the belly of a giant toad to obtaining a dagger from a baby-eating monster.

Meanwhile, Ofelia’s mother, Captain Vidal’s wife, is pregnant and becoming very ill.
Captain Vidal’s housekeeper, Mercedes, and the local doctor are shown to be aiding the rebels with food and medicine. Vidal eventually discovers that Mercedes and the doctor are conspiring against him and he kills the doctor and captures Mercedes as she attempts to escape. Ofelia’s mother dies during childbirth but gives birth to a son. Ofelia kidnaps her brother from Captain Vidal and ventures into the labyrinth, as Captain Vidal gives chase. The faun then appears and informs Ofelia that she can only gain entry into the Underground Realm by spilling the blood of an innocent, in this case her brother. Despite this warning, she refuses to allow her brother to be harmed and is fatally shot by Captain Vidal. Captain Vidal then exits the labyrinth, baby in hand, and is promptly killed by the rebels. It is then revealed that the true final task that Ofelia had to complete was refusing to allow her brother to be harmed, which gave her entry into the Underground Realm and allowed her to once again take her proper place as Princess.
The similarities between “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” are inherent. The setting for both is in the early-to-mid 1940s, during the time of the Spanish Civil War and subsequent dictatorship that exists in the country. In each film, the protagonist is a young child who either starts with or eventually has no living parents over the course of the story. The totalitarian rule in Spain during the time period also plays a major role throughout both films, as does the underlying factor of the ongoing war. There are consistent themes of child abuse and oppression throughout both films. In both films, a group of innocents are driven to rise up against some sort of ruthless authority figure and to overcome a series of obstacles in order to accomplish the goal of total freedom.
While “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” follow a parallel path in many aspects, there are also large factors surrounding the films which cause them to deviate greatly. The budget for “The Devil’s Backbone” was a relatively paltry 4.5 million dollars, and it only grossed a total of just over $750,000. Thus, the film was never given a wide release, and was only released on a limited basis in selected cities around the world. The marketing of the film was also very slight due to the inadequate nature of the budget, and caused the film to make significantly less money than would have been possible given greater funding.

This was all due to the film being financed independently, as a major film studio could’ve provided enough cash to propel the movie to the outer limits of what could have been achieved on a financial level. The general lack of money also caused the film’s sets to be unable to achieve the grandiose of those in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which caused the movie to develop a more amateur sort of tone. This further contributed to the film’s lack of success at the box office.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” had a comparatively large budget of 19 million dollars and managed to gross a staggering $83 million at the worldwide box office. This was highly due to the marketing of the film, which was only possible through the larger budget it was given. This budget was attained through the funding of a film company, Esperanto Films, which operates out of Mexico. The wide release the film was given also caused a jump in the film’s gross, as it ran in more theatres for a longer period of time than “The Devil’s Backbone” was able to. “Pan’s Labyrinth” also has substantially superior sets and lighting due to the increased budget of the film. All of these things allowed the movie to far exceed both “The Devil’s Backbone” and the relatively modest expectations that any non-English movie is given upon release.
The general monetary difference between the two films causes them to be viewed in different lights by any avid movie-goer. “Pan’s Labyrinth” is the quintessential globalized national film, with the more viewer-accepted fantasy theme attached to the Spanish Civil War setting rather than the horror aspect that “The Devil’s Backbone” utilizes. This probably contributed to the ability of the film to gain funding from a production studio, as they knew that the fantasy portion of the film would cause more people to see the movie than would see a horror movie. As stated on NYTimes.com, “Pan’s Labyrinth is swift and accessible entertainment” (Scott 1). The increased budget also lends to the globalized makeup of the film.
On the other hand, “The Devil’s Backbone” is definitely a strictly national film, as it was independently funded and was never given a wide release. However, the film gained critical acclaim and many awards around the world through film festival appearances. This gives a level of glory to Mexican film that isn’t as easily attained through a film that is released commercially and pushed hard from a marketing standpoint. This lends itself to the nationality of the movie, as Mexican viewers can take pride in the movie as strictly their own.
Though “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” share a common director and theme, the differences between the movies are vast.

The two films are inherently parallel in some aspects, but the massive difference in production value between the films causes them to deviate in many ways. Through this budget difference, “Pan’s Labyrinth” was able to outgross “The Devil’s Backbone” by over $82 million. This difference, despite the similar nature of the acting and directing in the movies, shows just how important commercialization is in cinema today. The truth is, with movies, it really is all about the money.

No Man's Land

Set in the war between Bosnia and Herzegovina during 1993, "No Man's Land" is the story of the interactions between three soldiers and the highly unfortunate situation that they are involved in. The soldiers include a Bosnian Serb and a Bosniak Muslim caught in the dead zone between the two warring sides find themselves trapped together with another Bosniak Muslim who comes to consciousness trapped laying on a land mine. The general concept of the film is a generally ridiculous yet interestingly frightening possibility in times of war. While conventional wisdom would lead one to believe the soldiers to be entirely malicious in their intentions, that does not turn out to be the case. In order to dispel the expected stereotype of Eastern European savagery, Danis Tanovic shows the soldiers interacting humanely despite their perilous circumstances. Yet, when the trapped Bosniak Muslim is introduced to the situation, the focus of the movie seems to shift completely to the disregard that the United Nations shows for the dire nature of these individuals' situation. In addition, the comparing and contrasting of these two enemies in this absurd situation stresses the shared humanity despite different beliefs. Using humor, Tanovic employs it as a means to exaggerate the ridiculousness of the situation they are trapped in as well as the dialogue being exchanged. While this has some effect on the tone of the film, the general horridity of the plight of the soldiers takes a sort of precedence over that throughout the majority of the movie. This causes for a slightly comedic tone, yet the knowledge of the impending doom of the soldiers provides for a mixing of genres. This melting pot is successful at points and inadequate at others, but ultimately provides enough punch to get the general point across.