Drama

 "The Hate U Give" - an important life lesson

 I stumbled upon this movie in high school and couldn't get it out of my head ever since, that´s why I´d like to introduce it here. In my opinion this movie points out some issues in our society we may not even be aware of.

Some of the main topics this drama talks about are: gun violence, police brutality and social inequality. The title itself was inspired by the rapper Tupac, he has a tattoo that says ‘THUG LIFE’. This term is often misinterpreted. While many people think it´s a criminal expression, Tupac says that it´s actually an acronym for “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody”. What does it mean? “Children are the future, and so filling children´s minds with hate, raising them in an oppressive political system, and asking them to accept horrendous things like racism, sexism, and police brutality, has a snowball effect, which eventually destroys life for everyone, even the oppressors.” - Tupac

 

What is the movie about?

The movie is about a 16-year-old girl called Starr who is caught up between two extremely different worlds. On one hand she lives in poor, black neighborhood with her parents and two brothers, on the other hand she attends a school outside her community where only rich and white people go to. It´s everything but easy for her to keep the balance, but she holds up with it, until one incident changes everything. She witnesses how her childhood best friend gets shoot by a white police officer right in front of her eyes. Obviously she's traumatized and doesn't want people to know she´s been a witness, but she somehow finds the courage to reveal herself and decides to make a statement in front of the grand jury, who try to sweep the events under the rugs. Starr doesn't accept that and sees it as an additional incentive - she´s more determined than ever to fight for justice.

 

When ‘THUG LIFE’ suddenly hits:

A very crucial scene from the movie is definitely one of the last scenes. At this point the movie reaches his climax and all the attention goes to Starr´s little brother Sekani. The 8-year-old boy maintains his innocence throughout the whole story even though hate, violence and injustice surround him. While everyone gets fooled by thinking this little boy has no clue of what´s going on anyway, he secretly takes his dad´s gun and points it at the drug lord of the neighborhood who´s fighting with his dad.
The fighting stops, all eyes are on Sekani and realization suddenly hits them all: they were thinking he is too young to understand what´s happening, didn't think it would affect him in any way, but they were wrong.
What follows are close-ups of all people watching this scene with shocking expressions painted all over their faces while you can hear Starr´s monologue: “Look at Sekani, he is the little infant, the result of hate, and he is about to f*** everybody. It´s not the hate you give, it´s the hate we give. But we can break the cycle.”

 

Why is “The Hate U Give” a good movie?

The topics in this movie were not just pointing out issues back in 2017/18 when the movie was released, they stayed relevant up to now and became more prominent again through the death of George Floyd. Issues such as racism and police brutality regained importance and triggered a worldwide wave of protest.
In any case you can say that the story-line is very good and the actors bring the characters of the movie to live. They´re doing an excellent job and are able to capture the viewers’ attention, draw them into the story and take them on a roller-coaster ride of emotions. The audience experiences sadness, anger, bewilderment and finally relieve.

The movie clearly showed that people of color have less ‘rights’ and are treated differently than white people. The movie pictures black people as dangerous and criminal, many of the characters in the poor neighborhood deal with drugs. They fear the police, because they know the officers won´t have as much mercy with them as they have with white people. Starr´s father even teaches his children all the rights black people have. They have to know them by heart and follow them strictly in order to “to survive”. What´s even more sad is that things like these do not just occur in the movie, but are reality. The movie intents to raise more awareness of the situation, the problems that especially people of color are facing in their lives. The film wants to draw attention to social, political and economic injustice and it appeals that a change is urgently needed in order to break this “cycle”.
The movie is guaranteed to be stuck in your head once you watch it. It makes you start thinking and reflecting on your own behavior. In my opinion that´s exactly what a good movie should be about -  you watch, you realize, you learn and eventually start acting. 

 

 

 

 

"Knives Out" - murder is a family matter

A drama full intrigues, greed and betrayal are awaiting you. An innocent nurse gets dragged into a family drama and faster than expected she finds herself in a difficult situation.

The plot of the movie?

The family members of Harlan Thrombey, an 85-year-old mystery novelist, gather in his mansion to celebrate his birthday. However, the next morning Harlan´s housekeeper is about to serve him his breakfast as usual, when she finds him dead on a sofa, his throat slit.

The police assume he committed suicide until Benoit Blanc, a private detective, all of a sudden shows up after being hired by someone anonymously to investigate Harlan´s death. Anyone could have been the culprit. Every single member of the family would have had a motive because they all got cut off by their father/grandfather at his birthday since all of them were only able to reach success through their fathers support and money. After his death all of them were eyeing his fortune, but they did not know that Harlan changed his testament shortly before his death and gave everything he owned to his nurse Marta. Certainly the whole family is beyond shock after hearing this bad news.

What nobody knows is that Marta accidentally mixed up Harlan´s medication and gave him way too much morphine. After realizing it she desperately looks for the antidote, but cannot find it in her bag. Harlan has only 10 minutes left until he dies of the overdose, so to cover up Marta´s mistake and not get her into trouble, he comes up with a fake alibi for her and tells her exactly what to do before he cuts his throat to make it look like suicide.

 

Why is it an enjoyable movie?

Although the concept is nothing new: a murder happens and a detective starts investigating; the script is well thought-out, the movie entertaining and easy to watch. Even though the movie captures your attention and the characters are quite relatable, once the movie ends there´s not much left to think or reflect. Despite the fact that the movie is kind of predictable in some situations it´s still very amusing and by no means boring. The movie has what it takes to cast a spell on its audience, so that they keep questioning everyone and everything they see until the very end. “Knives Out” gets the viewers excited. Once they think they have finally figured out what happened after Harlan´s birthday party another plot twist is awaiting them, so that they can hardly wait for the real story to be revealed in the end. However, the story ends with an even greater plot twist and it turns out that Harlan would not have died at all because of Marta, actually he would have been just fine thanks to Marta´s intuition if he did not slit his own throat.

In my opinion the movie is fun and interesting to watch because you can see the situation from more than one point of view. Each family member gets interrogated separately by the detective, so as soon as someone else takes the lead in telling the story from his perspective something new gets revealed.
In addition to the amazing story-line and the excellent cinematography the movie features a cast of top-class actors, such as Daniel Craig and Chris Evans, to make the film even more engaging to its audience. Many people claim that “Knives Out” was one of the best movies released in 2019, therefore a sequel is on its way to be released in 2022 on Netflix.

 

Some hidden things you may not notice in the movie…

In Harlan´s mansion there is a portrait of him in the living room over the fireplace. A fun fact about that picture: it changes facial expression! If you look closely you can see that Harlan´s portrait is quite serious at the beginning and towards the end, after the murder is solved, he´s slightly smirking.

Another thing I noticed in the movie is that some characters are wearing glasses, which is not something special but as I´m also wearing glasses myself I know that they usually reflect what is opposite of them with certain lightning.
Especially when you see close-ups from characters with glasses you can see the reflection in their glasses very clearly, but you can´t see the cameras nor the production team who you´re supposed to see, since they are just opposite the actor. The production crew uses a special technique to cover that up. They use mattes to avoid their reflections and are able to ad different scenery instead.

 

written by Anna Pescoller