This past Tuesday a few friends, along with myself, happened to catch a twilight-hour flick. Naturally, Shutter Island seemed encouraging; We joined its audience. The post-two hour movie passes along with the corresponding time, then ends. Our group exits the theater with intent to interrogate others' developing opinions and theories. For the sake of simplicity, Spencer's score: 8.5/10.
My next goal was to surf the wavelengths of the interweb to research some background information. The main reason is because Shutter Island was especially solid in the "writing" category of film critique. Dennis Lehane is the adapted novelist; his other screenplay work consists of the human drama Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and three episodes of the most sophisticated contemporary television show The Wire. I see this, and I'm thinking I don't know what I'm thinking. This Lehane guy is a contributor to for my personal favorite television show, The Wire, and he is the original writer of one of the most heart-felt, unjust films of the past decade. All in all, at least I know to look for this guy from now on.
As for Araby, it's one of those simple, yet complex stories because, on any day, the reader misses something, yet gets something. I understood the whole story as using one of those "Blinded by Love"/"Broken Heart" themes. Why? The guy tries to do something nice for a girl, but the girl asks too much of him. It's like hitting a dartboard bullseye from fifty feet, it's a near impossible task when it comes down to the wire. That's when he turns back because he doesn't belong at the bazaar.
On another note, I liked the part with Mrs Mercer, a woman "who collected used stamps for some pious purpose." Can stamps enchant spiritual awakening. My theory is that this woman believes that her hobby, collecting stamps, collects history. This here stamp collection seems to refer to another important compilation of history, The Bible.
I'm going to assume that James Joyce is a Caltholic/Christian, considering he's definitely from Scotland or Ireland, fallaciously speaking. A writer most likely writes with strong consideration of their family granted religion, their ancestral religious context. Naturally, Joyce's written characters are of his religion. If it's the case that the main character in Araby is Catholic, then it would make some sense of why he was blinded by love. Assuming there was some church-related, personal, or cultural beef between the Jewish church and the Catholic church in Joyce's personal pretext before writing this story, it would make sense that the main character feels blinded in the end. He chose the wrong girl. She's a tease. She thinks he's the wrong religion. She's Jewish, and he's Catholic. This may be a motive for the girl ending up with the guy. On the contrary, I caught a fun fact from the most reliable Wikipedia; James Joyce, at the tender age of 16, rejected the Catholic Church. Did religious affiliation have anything to do with the characters' choices? I don't know where or how to analyze with all of these possible motives for Joyce's writing choices.
In Shutter Island, the island's hospital is Araby's bazaar. By the end, both main characters are looking for belonging, and they're looking for some meaning or another (with them girls always in mind). With both stories coming to conclude, the characters have had the tables turned on them, and they're still searching for something, a deeper side of things.
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