Strictly Ballroom~

Strictly Ballroom is a combination of romantic and comedy Australian film that released in 1992. It was directed and co-written by a local film director, Baz Luhrmann. Strictly Ballroom has won many awards during 1992 to 1994, and was being nominated in several high ranked awards such as AFI Award (1992), BAFTA Film Award (1993), Golden Globe Award (1993) and Bagota Film Festival (1994). Both the main characters in the movie, Paul Mercurio and Tara Morice were being nominated as best actor and best actress. In my personal point of view, I think the movie has chosen a great idea by using ballroom dancing as an illustration of restriction.

Strictly Ballroom was telling a story on a young talented Australian ballroom dancer, Scott Hastings (Paul Mercurio) who always thinking of trying out new dancing styles that are different from those restrictive dance pattern in the ballroom and was dream to win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship with his own established dancing pattern. However, his great ambition was strongly disagree by his mother and the people around him, including his all-time dancing partner. Scott was thinking of giving up until he met Fran (Tara Morice), a newbie dancer in his parents’ dancing studio. Scott then learned the authentic Spanish pasodoble dancing from Fran’s family and was eventually able to perform the dance in the final Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship.

Scott was came from a family with the great history of dancing where he has received formal dancing training since he was young and his ultimate achievement is to win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship, in where this was also his parents’ dream when they were young. Scott works so hard in order to fulfill his mother, Shirley’s expectation and keep working hard under her selfish planning. In my point of view, the mother was just taking his son as a dancing machine that used to help her to achieve glory and her dream in the past. Moreover, Shirley tried to humiliate Fran at the backstage just to stop her from becoming Scott’s dancing partner. Besides, the way on how she disrespects and looking down on her husband has served as a negative role model for the son where she scolded the husband in front of Scott. Scott was hence never respects the father and always think that his father was just too useless to do anything. Shirley was being portrayed as a mother who using authoritarian parenting style in the family where she was the one who will be doing any decision and everyone in the family must follows the game rules that was established by her.

By having an autocratic mother in the house, Scott tried his best to follow every of his mother’s selfish planning and he finally realized that he could live up his own life after he met with Fran. The most interesting moment in the movie is where Scott and Fran were finally able to dance a dancing that was belongs to them. The scene can be seen as Scott was eventually able to make his own decision and the clapping from the spectators has proven that he had made a right decision. In my opinion, we followed what our parents said when we were young and nonetheless, we shall learn to make decision when we grow older and try to be independent in making our own decision. Likewise, parents should have also willing to accept the changes from the children and allows more freedom on the child to decide their life by themselves.

In conclusion, it is no longer a matter of importance for me whether Scott  will win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship or not toward the end of the movie. I can feel the sense freedom from Scott that has been repressed since the time when he had started to learn ballroom dancing. Parents should not impose their own unfinished dream on their children. Instead, parents should allow more freedom on their children to choose what really suitable for them and I believe that it would be more beneficial than asking the child to follow their old footsteps. Besides, people who refuse to change would only remain at the same place and no further improvement would happen on them, just like Shirley and Barry, the president of the Australian Dancing Federation who both refused to accept the new dancing patterns.

Constantly remain in the comfort zone could not always be a good thing for us.

Awakenings~!!

Awakenings (1990), a film that based on a true story written by a British neurologist Oliver Sacks in one of his bestselling book named “Awakenings”. The film was being nominated in three Academy Awards, starring with two famous actors, Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

The movie was basically a story on how Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams), a dedicated and responsible physician tried his best to help his catatonic patients in one of the local hospitals in New York City. In order to find a cure for all these “mysterious” patients, Dr. Sayer has put all his effort in doing research, looking for antidote and eventually, his effortful work has been paid off by a temporary period of “awakening” from the patients. Although that was not a happy ending, nonetheless Sayer’s hard works were being appreciated by every of his patients.

One part of the movie that primed me deeply was the scene where all the patients were completely “awaken” from their catatonic state. I could not either experience or understand the feeling after such a long deep sleep that has been last for more than 20 years, just like the situation faced by Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro) when he looked into the mirror and saw an unfamiliar face of him.  Besides, I was impressed by the professional class acting by Robert De Niro, the way on how he acted as a catatonic patient; the way he shuffled his uncontrollable muscle and how he brushed his teeth when the catatonic symptoms relapse. Personally, I think he should, and deserved to receive the best actor award.

Besides, Dr. Sayer has shown his risk taking behavior when he has decided to try on the new L-Dopa drug that was used to cure Parkinson’s disease on the catatonic patients. Furthermore, he was also willing to take the risk by increased the amount of L-Dopa usage on Leonard to examine the drug effectiveness. The risk taking behaviors that displayed by him in the movie inspires me that sometime we should learn to take certain of risk in order to achieve something, regardless of in our daily life problem or career issues.

In my opinion, Leonard has portrayed one of the common needs in human throughout our daily life, which is the sense of freedom. Leonard requested to be dismissed from the hospital when he thinks that he is capable to handle his daily life without any assistance. I can understand the feeling of hoping to gain more autonomy in ourselves and this has reminds me of the time when I was still in the secondary school and always demand for more freedom and autonomy. When the request was not been granted, rebellious action would hence be taken, just like what Leonard did in the movie when his request was being rejected by the hospital board members. The same phenomena happen in majority of the teenagers during their “rebellion” period.

However, there were some discrepancies storyline in the movie. Dr. Sayer’s personality has confused me as where his risk taking behaviors are contradicted with his introvert personality. Sayer was being portrayed as what we so called “nerd” in the movie, with his clumsy movement; too introversive to date a girl but he dared to risk his patient life by providing over dose of drug usage on them. Besides, Leonard was adapted perfectly after he woke up from his long deep sleep. He had fall into the catatonic state when he was a boy and it is a little bit unacceptable for me when he can functioning well as a normal adult even though he had never been through his teenage-adult transformation period.

In conclusion, the movie had touched deeply into my heart and I really feel grateful that we can live with a healthy condition.