english@kkc

BBC - GCSE Bitesize - English Literature | Wilfred Owen: Dulce Et Decorum Est 

Another link to the BBC Bitesize site - this time it is resources for Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce Et Decorum Est.

This post is for Year 12. As we have finished our creative writing and presentation preparation it is time to move on to a new activity. Here is advance notice of your next group task. You are to write an essay in a format I will discuss with you in class on one of the following topics.

1. Schindler’s List examines man’s capacity for good and his capacity for evil. Discuss.
2. Schindler is nothing more than a charming opportunist. Do you agree?
3. How is power used and abused in Schindler’s List?
4. Schindler says to Stern: War brings out the bad in people, always the bad. Is this the message that the film conveys?
5. How is life valued in Schindler’s List?

This week Year 12 students will start to write longer responses about the film. What should you be writing about? I have put a few ideas below.

Characters and characterisation

The people in the story are the characters. When you first mention them you should give the name of the actor who plays the part, in brackets, after the character’s name, in this way: Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson). You should write about the main characters, commenting on such things as their circumstances and situation, their personality and anything else which engages our sympathy or disapproval. Characterisation refers to what the actor or writer does to establish what the character is like: this means such things as physical actions or gestures, habits of speech or favourite sayings.

Setting

The setting is ss important as the human characters in many cases, and often more so, are places where the action occurs both as identifiable locations and for what they represent or the feelings associated with them. In some kinds of film (eg.Westerns) the setting is grand and panoramic while in others (eg. horror films) it may be narrow and claustrophobic.

In Edward Scissorhands Tim Burton depicts a caricature of small-town America, with elements from the 1950s to the 1980s, with identikit manicured lawns and suburban tidiness; but at the end of the town is a Gothic castle, complete with manic inventor - the effect of this juxtaposition (mixing) of details is surreal and unsettling. At the start of the film an Avon lady, doing her rounds, calls at the castle - and this is presented as perfectly normal.

Cinematography and artistic design

This refers to the “look” of the film and the way this contributes to its total artistic effect. Look at the lighting of particular scenes; look at use of colour; consider camera technique - steadicam or hand-held, long tracking shots, reaction shots and cutaways. Directors sometimes deliberately make films in black and white (e.g. Peter Brooke, Lord of the Flies; Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List). Why do they do this? Among many films remarkable for their artistic design or cinematography are Ridley Scott’s Alien, Bladerunner and Thelma and Louise; Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands and Sam Mendes’ American Beauty.

Music and soundtrack

Accompanying music is important for the mood of a film. This may be achieved by playing well-chosen popular music, to establish a sense of place and time or evoke nostalgia; or it may be done by original composition. Try to comment on the effect of any musical accompaniment in films you watch.

An interesting video by an American teacher to show how important it is to prepare you all for the world in which you will live and learn.

As a teacher I wouldn’t put it as bluntly as Bob the Angry Flower, but please remember the ‘it’s’ and ‘its’ rule. We have just graded quite a few of the Creative Writing scripts and we found that many of you still struggled with when to use ‘its’ and ‘it’s’.

I have put a review of Schindler’s List by Scott Renshaw below. The review was written in 1993.

Back in August, I wrote the following: “If Schindler’s List is even halfway decent, Steven Spielberg will be nominated for Best Director, and probably win.” That statement was based on the assumption that such an award would basically be a lifetime achievement recognition, like Al Pacino’s Best Actor win last year, as well as an industry-wide “thank you” for the coat-tails business provided by Jurassic Park. I didn’t expect that if he did win, he would actually deserve it. But with Schindler’s List, Spielberg has crafted a nearly perfect film, a gripping and brilliantly acted epic which is not only the best film of 1993, but probably the best film of the decade thus far.

Schindler’s List is the true story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German businessman and Nazi sympathiser who decides to turn the 1939 invasion of Poland into a personal windfall. Cashing in on carefully established Party contacts, Schindler sets up an enamelware factory in Krakow to make pots and pans for the German army. His start-up capital is provided by wealthy Jews with few other options, among them accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley). Schindler makes a fortune utilising Jewish slave labour, until his business and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews collide with the March 1943 liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, and the subsequent relocation of Jews to Plaszow labour camp. There Schindler establishes a friendship with Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), and attempts to use his money and influence to save the lives of his workers.

Longtime viewers of Spielberg films will scarcely recognise his hand in Schindler’s List. Gone are the swooping crane shots; gone are the zoom-ins on awestruck faces. With the exception of a risky epilogue, gone too is the cloying manipulation of emotion. This is a mature, restrained Spielberg, and his narrative decisions are right on the money. He casts a glossy sheen on early scenes showing Schindler wining and dining highly placed SS officers, playing up the “panache” which Schindler later describes as his strong suit. Another sequence juxtaposes a wealthy Jewish family leaving their home for the ghetto with a smug Schindler moving into the very same house. One scene after another is expertly staged, too many individual moments to mention but each and every one liable to leave an indelible mark on your memory.

What allows Schindler’s List to work both as fine drama and vivid historical document is screenwriter Steven Zaillian’s decision to make the characters as memorable as the images. Oskar Schindler is a marvelously intricate study, a slimy and self-serving profiteer who finds himself becoming an unlikely saviour before he even realises what he’s doing. Liam Neeson manages both sides of Schindler skillfully, making the transition seamlessly. Ben Kingsley turns in a typically understated performance as Stern, the “good angel” who must walk a delicate line while encouraging Schindler’s magnanimity. The finest performance is also the most disturbing, Ralph Fiennes’ perfectly amoral Amon Goeth. As a creature of pure random destruction, it would have been easy for Goeth to become another stereotypical Nazi, but Fiennes gives him surprising depth and complexity, particularly in a tense scene with his Jewish housekeeper (Embeth Davidtz). All three performances are among the finest of the year, and they give Schindler’s List a personal quality that transcends the subject matter.

There will be some discussion about Spielberg’s use of colour in the depiction of a young girl in a red coat who catches Schindler’s eye. My feeling is that this is part of a larger attempt to make the Holocaust a tragedy of individuals rather than of a faceless mass. Spielberg includes several scenes of SS troops and the Jews themselves announcing their names as they are registered, given work assignments, or separated into “essential” and “non-essential.” In this way, he assaults the viewer both with staggering numbers and with individual lives. There are many disturbing images of arbitrary murder, of death without pattern or meaning, and in the midst of such arbitrariness one act of mercy could mean everything. “The list is life,” Stern tells Schindler when their work is complete, and Schindler’s List is a testimony to the individuals whose lives were changed forever by the Holocaust.

Lest we forget.