Understanding Movies

                      Film #5 Final Essay: Narrative Structure and Character Development
                               

Choice #1 Amazon Prime                    Choice #2 Netflix           
Roman Holiday (1953)                    The Theory of Everything (2014)
directed by William Wyler                    directed by James Marsh
118 minutes (romantic comedy)                123 minutes (biography/drama)

Choice #3 Amazon Prime                    Choice #4 Netflix
The Farewell (2019)                        Shutter Island (2010)
directed by Lulu Wang                    directed by Martin Scorsese
99 minutes (comedy/drama)                    138 minutes (thriller/mystery)

This essay should focus on the idea of narrative structure and/or character development.

DO NOT try to answer all of these. These are prompts to help you if you are stuck and need a direction for your paper.

How does the protagonist and/or those around them change over time? Is there external and internal progression as a character or regression?  How so?

What is the narrative space like and why is that important? 

Are there specific devices (for example things like parallel plots, a narrative frame, first person or third person narration) utilized?

Remember the papers should be a minimum of three full pages in length, typed, and double spaced with 12 size font Arial or Times New Roman and must provide a thesis statement or focus in the introduction.

Please email me the digital copy by midnight on the due date. Each day the paper is late there will be a letter grade marked off as final grades are due to the registrar the following week. 

Make sure to provide clear examples within the film to support your ideas and link them to the larger themes/ideas within the film whenever possible. Avoid the first-person subjective point of view in your writing as well (omitting statements that include I, me, or my). I will also take off a letter grade for excessive spelling and grammatical errors.