Cast Away

This post contains spoilers.

Earlier this week, I watched Cast Away for the second time, and I noticed how two scenes from different points in the movie illustrate a change in Chuck's character.

(For context: in the scene immediately preceding the first conversation, a flight attendant asks Chuck's friend Stan about his [Stan's] wife's cancer diagnosis.)

In the first conversation, Chuck and Stan sit on opposite sides of a transport vehicle (at times facing nearly opposite directions), and Chuck tries to offer a helpful word regarding Stan's wife's cancer.

Speaking haltingly and veering off on an unrelated tangent, he tells Stan about a renowned doctor whom he's going to try to get Stan and his wife in touch with.  Stan's reaction is polite yet disappointed, and his posture is one of defeat.

After Chuck's isolation on the deserted island, he has an-other conversation with Stan while in an airplane travelling to a press conference.

After realizing that Stan went through Chuck's funeral and then his wife Mary's funeral, Chuck offers heartfelt words:

Stan, I'm so sorry I wasn't around when Mary died.  I should've been there for you, and I wasn't.  I'm so sorry.

While Stan still seems sad about his wife's death, he smiles at Chuck's expression of compassion.

There are four significant differences between these conversations.  First, the settings:  the first conversation is static; while Chuck and Stan are sitting on a transport vehicle, it's not moving.  The second conversation takes place within a moving plane and is dynamic.  Second, the characters' positions:  Chuck and Stan are almost facing away from each other in the first conversation, but the second is more face-to-face.  Third, Chuck's comments:  in the first conversation, he's trying to show his compassion for his friend, but he does so by trying to fix Stan's problem for him.  In the second conversation, he simply expresses his feelings.  And fourth, Stan's reactions:  after the first conversation, he almost seems to resent Chuck's suggestion of an-other doctor, but after the second, he's clearly glad to have his friend back.

Obviously, the cause of these differences is the time that Chuck spent on the island.  Being isolated led him to reëvaluate his personal connections, and now he holds them in greater esteem.

[Here's a post I wrote after I watched Cast Away for the first time.]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - S6E6 - "The Rise of Clovis"

About a year ago, I watched the Banking Clan arc of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (episodes 5 through 7 of season 6), and the following month, I realized some implications of a grammatical error that Padmé makes in episode 6, "The Rise of Clovis."

After Clovis repeatedly asks about the relationship between Padmé and Anakin, Padmé asserts that "there is nothing romantic between he and I."  The pronouns "he" and "I" are in the wrong grammatical case here; they should be "him" and "me."  Padmé's misuse of these pronouns illustrates that she's flustered because of Clovis' suspicion - or perhaps even discernment - of the romantic relationship that does indeed exist between the two.  It's also significant that Padmé separates herself from Anakin here; she says, "he and I" and not "us."

I should note that by no means do I expect characters' grammar to be perfect all of the time.  After all, some looseness in language is what makes dialogue seem realistic.  Since Padmé is a senator, however, and presumably has a high quality education, this is out of character.  The above is my in-world explanation, but it's likely that this error is simply the fault of the writer (Christian Taylor).  Earlier in this scene, Clovis makes the same error:  while searching through files in order to find out where missing funds have gone, he tells Padmé, "Whatever we find must remain between only you and I" (rather than "between only you and me").

For what it's worth, Obi-Wan Kenobi makes a similar error in "Hunt for Ziro" (S3E9, written by Steve Mitchell & Craig Van Sickle) when he tells Quinlan Vos, "As for this bounty hunter, Cad Bane, we must capture and return both he and his quarry Ziro to the courts."  "He" should be "him."

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I've also written about the other two episodes in this arc:  "An Old Friend" and "Crisis at the Heart."

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

I recently watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade again and noticed a small but significant detail.

I'd noticed before that there's something of an echo between the beginning and end of the film.  At the beginning, as he's copying an image from an illuminated manuscript, Dr. Jones, Sr. says, "May he who illuminated this illuminate me."  (With a double meaning on illuminate, which is where I got the name of this blog.)  At the end, when the adventure is all but over, Indiana Jones asks his father, "What did you find, dad?" and Dr. Jones, Sr. replies, "Illumination."

Watching the film this time, I noticed a third instance of this illumination.  During the chase through the catacombs under the library and through the canals of Venice, Indiana Jones and Dr. Elsa Schneider run past a sign that reads:  "Calle di S.ta Lucia."

Here are two frames (one is more legible, and one shows the characters a bit better):

"Calle di S.ta Lucia" means "St. Lucia's Lane."  St. Lucia is the patron saint of sight, and her name is related to words for light (such as luce in Italian and lux in Latin).  Taken with "lane," this seems to indicate that the characters are on their way - travelling along the path, as it were - to the illumination that occurs at the end of the film.  Since, however, Elsa certainly doesn't find illumination and Indiana Jones doesn't answer what he's found (instead, he quibbles about being called "Junior" again), the sign actually seems to apply more to Dr. Jones, Sr. or even to the audience.

Flyboys

I recently watched Flyboys (I think for the third time).  While I think the movie has some problems, I did notice an interesting feature of the composition of the shots during the one sequence that shows the front (when Beagle's plane crashes and Rawlings lands in order to help him).

Aside from shots looking straight from one side to the other (that is, from the perspective of the French soldiers, across No Man's Land, to the German trench or vice versa), the shots of the Germans show them looking left:

And the shots of the French show them looking right:

Not only does this give a visual sense of opposition, but it also shows that the Germans were trying to advance to the west and that the French were trying to push them back east.

The Terminal

A couple weeks ago, I re-watched The Terminal and noticed that - in a way - Viktor Navorski's encounter with Mr. Milodragovich illustrates Navorski's chief motivation for the whole film.

Mr. Thurman's explaining the situation to Dixon summarizes the scene well: "When the 9:12 from Toronto landed, they found four prescriptions without an MPL [medicinal purchase license].  They tried to take the pills away from him, and he went nuts.  There he is.  We think they're for his father."  The interpreter is an hour away, and Thurman has the idea to use Navorski as a translator.

At first Navorski explains that Milodragovich says that the medicine is for his father, but when it seems that the medicines are going to be taken away from Milodragovich because he doesn't have the correct documentation, Viktor stops everyone and says, "I make mistake."  The medicine is actually for a goat.  Dixon is suspicious of this and accuses Viktor of cheating the system.  He says Viktor has been reading the forms, specifically "the one that says if it's an animal, he doesn't need the medicinal purchase license."  In the end, Milodragovich himself says "Medicine for goat" and is allowed to take the pills with him.

When I watched the film previously, I thought this scene simply illustrates Navorski's compassion for others.  He sees that Milodragovich is in a difficult situation, so he helps him out of it.  When I watched the film again recently, however, I realized that the scene has a deeper meaning than that.  Navorski identifies with Milodragovich's mission to procure medicine for his ailing father because Navorski made a promise to his own father that he would collect the last signature from the group of jazz musicians in the photograph.  While Navorski's compassion certainly influences his actions here, his paternal dedication - a quality that he sees in Milodragovich - is also evident.

Cars

I recently re-watched Cars.  Since the last time I saw it a number of years ago, I started learning Italian, and I wanted to see how much of the Italian in the movie I could understand.

I also noticed a few visual details that I'd missed before.  Near the beginning of the movie, as part of the in-world Racing Sports Network program, the point totals of Strip Weathers, Chick Hicks, and Lightning McQueen are shown, with lines linking the data boxes to the cars, but the line for Chick Hicks isn't as centered as those for Weathers or McQueen:

The skewed line visually represents Hicks' skewed outlook; he's focused only on himself.

I also started wondering if Hicks' number is related to the expression "to eighty-six it," meaning to throw something away.  I couldn't develop an argument for this, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

An-other small detail I noticed is the Latin motto above the door in traffic court in Radiator Springs:

Justitae via strata veritate

I translated this as: A road of justice leveled by truth.

Here's how I parsed it:
Justitae - noun, 1st declension feminine, genitive singular - "of justice"
Via - noun, 1st declension feminine, nominative singular - "road"
Strata - perfect passive participle from sterno, sternere, stavi, stratum - nominative, feminine singular - "leveled"
Veritate - noun, 3rd declension feminine, ablative singular - "by truth"

Appropriate to the world of the movie, this motto uses a road as a metaphor.

Guido's name is also something of a hidden reference.  As a regular word, guido means "I drive" in Italian; it's from the verb guidare.

Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace

This post contains spoilers.

Before I see The Last Jedi in the cinema, I want to re-watch all of the other Star Wars movies in chronological order, so I started with The Phantom Menace earlier this week.  Last year I realized something about Chancellor Valorum, but I wanted to re-watch the movie again before I wrote about it.

In The Phantom Menace, he's referred to only as "Chancellor Valorum."  I don't remember where I first came across this (maybe it was in the novelization), but in the expanded universe, his first name is Finis.  Finis valorum is the Latin phrase "the end of values."  Finis is a third declension masculine singular noun in the nominative case, and valorum is a third declension masculine plural noun in the genitive case.

Based on the little that's seen of him in The Phantom Menace, Chancellor Valorum is a chancellor "of values," as his name suggests.  (Senator Palpatine tells Queen Amidala that the "accusations of [Valorum's] corruption" are "baseless," but this might just be part of his manipulation.)  His name has more significance in light of Palpatine's replacing him as chancellor.  Valorum represents "the end of values" because once Palpatine becomes the chancellor, he uses deception to gain power and eventually turns the Republic into the Empire.