Amelie

Waking up to Amelie on a Saturday morning was an unique experience!    I could certainly see why this film was chosen in regards to the reading material.  The visual design was apparent throughout the movie.  Using color for this film was definitely the right decision as it helped to add power to many of the scenes.  Red was used throughout but I am not real clear on the reasoning other than making the main character stand out as well as other key pieces that connected the story lines, such as the red shoes on the photo shoot repair man.  The blue arrows except the one that the birdseed was on.  I didn't understand the significance of that one being different, unless it wasn't and I just overlooked it.

I think the movie was meant for wide screen based on the multiple angles used throughout and the different references in a lot of the scenes.  The production design seemed simple, yet elaborate.  Using the apartment complex to house the story of the majority of the characters.  The setting was specific and critical to understand the feeling of the movie, but it didn't upstage the characters.  I felt the temporal factors and the social structures were most important to tell this story.  It would not have had the same effect if told in a different environment. 

Costume and makeup design was again simplistic but powerful.  The use of color on Amelie made her stand out, but most everyone else had more subtle colors.  The hair style for Amelie was an interesting choice and I believe just showed her as a simple character but bold with the red and validated with the tricks she played and the well thought out way she put things together, like the letter for the one gal or how she got the two together where she worked.  She was quite a clever character.  She had a big heart and maybe that was the relation with red?

Lighting was a big part of this film, especially when she dulled the lights in the man's apartment she didn't care for due to him being so mean to his son and other people.  Also, lighting used in the beginning when they were building the character's story lines.  I thought the lighting was natural and did contribute to the overall emotional attitude of the film.

The film was cinematic in quite a few ways.  One specific example that caught my eye was when Amelie was on the bridge skipping rocks.  The angle was initially on top making it appear that the water was quite a ways beneath her, but then the angle looked toward her from afar showing she was only a couple feet above the water.  There were many close ups of people throughout the movie to bring the audience into the story.

On cinematic points of view, I think I had the objective, impersonal observer at times but was also a participant of the action in other scenes.  When he was running up the stairs, it gave me the feeling I was right there with him, but when he was running down them, I was an observer.  I'm not sure if I am appropriately classifying the talking moving pictures, lamps, animals, statues as specialized cinematic techniques but I didn't feel it would have impacted the movie dramatically if they weren't used, but it was a clever way of continuing the comical piece of the movie, while at the same time providing key pieces of the story by interpreting the mind's questions and having them answered by objects.

A couple odd symbolisms (I believe) were when she picked up the rocks in front of the one house when she was looking for the gentleman and throughout the movie and the sound of them clicking together when she put them in her pocket.  Another notable one was the use of the one gal referencing her name of Mary Wells to Mary Magdelon and how she was destined to cry with Wells meaning water.

The editing of this movie seemed choppy at first as so many pieces were thrown out rapidly with seemingly random information about people or things...like the cat.  There were editing sequences with the arrows but also how they sped the film up with the blind man as well as on the escalators and riding the bike at the end.  I think overall the editing was good and told the story appropriately.