Removed from Paradise

In reading many of my classmates blogs on Cinema Paradiso I have noticed that many people seem to be concentrating on the effect the film had for them, and the interesting non mainstream plot line the film employees. As Tyler pointed out in his blog Cinema Paradiso it is very interesting that Alfredo points out that " life is not like the movies, and that the real world doesn't function like the fictional world of film." This is interesting because Alfredo is in a movie and is pointing out to his audience that movies are not real. Yet i would argue that what makes cinema Paridiso so interesting is its use of realism in the story.

As many of my classmates pointed out Cinema Paradiso does not follow the standard Hollywood narrative structure. Alex said it very well in his blog Cinema Paradiso vs Hollywood when he pointed out that it does not contain any real "clear-cut problem" or "specific goals." It also lacks the happy ending and resolution that people have come to expect from Hollywood films. Some people might point out that this is probably because it is not from Hollywood, but I would like to think that the makers of this movie did this on purpose as it gives the movie a more realistic feel.

I argued in my last blog that realism in movies is a bad thing because people don't want to watch something they could easily see out there front door. I am think now that I was wrong to make that such an absolute. In my opinion the realism in Cinema Paradiso works for us in America for two reasons. The first is that we in America do not see the culture of the Italian people from day to day. So it is very interesting to watch them. Now obviously this movie is not entirely realistic in its portrayal of Italian culture. Having lived in Italy myself for a year I know that this movie is exaggerating the Italian culture so that Italian people can laugh at themselves. This makes it even more funny for us as Americans. Secondly, the realism in Cinema Paradiso works so well because it is constantly compared threw the plot line to many other non realistic movies. this shows that the movie is more of an oddity then a norm which makes it interesting.

I feel that the realism of Cinema Paradiso also has an influence on its effect on the audiences emotions. As many people have said it allows us to relate to the character of Toto in many ways. I found myself not necessarily relating to Toto on a personal level but still feeling some emotional responses to his hardships and life. I however like others found older Toto to be much more difficult to sympathize with and felt that that left a few lose ends to the story.