Heritage Films Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Heritage Films - Essay ExampleThe exact Orlando is based on the novel by Virginia Woolf of the same name scripted in 1928 and Brideshead Revisited is based on a novel by Evelyn Waugh written in 1945. Both were influential sacred scriptures in their time by respected authors. Of the two, Woolf is the more radical in terms of structure, exploring techniques like stream of consciousness. Writing in an aristocratic electrical circuit of writers and artists in the Bloomsbury area of London, Woolf and her circle of friends represented a rather radical upper class social group which experimented with socialism and bounteous views on marriage and sexuality. Although writing well before the liberalisation of laws against homosexuality and the permissive society, Woolf anticipated the freedoms that would have later in the century with her depiction of Orlando, who starts out a man and ends the book four degree Celsius years later as a woman, breaking all usual limitations of a normal so meones lifespan and sexual identity. Turning such a quirky book into film is no easy task. The book is written in seven sections but Potter breaks the story up into the book into short episodes which are given one-word titles like sex or birth which crystallize life events and song the unity of the persona, despite the changing historical periods and the shift from male to female. At various points in the film Orlando turns to the camera and addresses the viewer directly, which at first is somewhat disconcerting, but as the film develops, it becomes a variant which invites the viewer to look again at the screen and re-evaluate the surface images to reflect particularly about how the sex and identity of the people in the film is being portrayed. The camera dwells on Tilda Swintons oval face, transcription many impassive scenes where she/he lets the chatter of other characters wash everywhere her, until she suddenly turns to the camera with an wicked look. Ferris explains this te chnique the film highlights instability of identity in its use of direct address, non-linear narrative, and parodic framing, reconstructing Woolfs novel as a postmodern text. (Ferris, p. 110) Other techniques are used to jolt the audience out of a surface reading material of the film. In the scene where Orlando meets Queen Elizabeth the first, for example, there is interference from modern society because the elderly monarch is compete by famously flamboyant male homosexual Quentin Crisp. Orlando approaches the throne and kneels and the wide angle of the camera captures the unbalanced costumes but above all the striking red hair of two Orlando and the Queen. As Ferris notes The scene highlights both the construction of the narrative and of sexuality, for the male Orlando is played by a female actress, Tilda Swinton, who addresses the female queen, played by a male homosexual. (Ferris, p. 113) This playful treatment celebrates a diversity of genders, and sexual orientations, draw ing parallels and contrasts which cross over the normal male/female and gay/straight divides. Modern feminist readings of the film appreciate the blurring of these binary program divides and the exploration of how gender is culturally constructed. The persona and languid narrative voice of Orlando remain intact, whether in a male or