Comments on: 8 Movie Metaphors Worth Puzzling Over

By: mandy kavanagh

mandy kavanagh — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:41:48 +0000

would you consider the piano scene in Betty blue to be a metaphor when zorg starts to play the piano it sounds beautiful but then Betty sits down and sort of stabs at the piano keys but it makes it sound even better and then the two of them play and the music is much more beautiful than either one’s on their own its like its showing you how they fit together as a couple

By: JSimm

JSimm — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:58:35 +0000

Bravo to the reel of kisses in Cinema Paradiso. Always the one of the introductory viewings in my high school film class.

By: Tysto

Tysto — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:03:26 +0000

The reel of kisses in Cinema Paradiso. It’s all the passion of life, suppressed by the church, encapsulated in one reel of film and at last released. Emotionally stunning.

By: Icebox

Icebox — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:31:50 +0000

Cool Beans, Man. Always in search of a few good metaphors.
My personal favorite is at the end of “The Big Lebowski”, when Walter scatters Donny’s Ashes over the Ocean, only to have it fly back into the Dude’s face, symbolizing the impossibility of man to escape the legacy of those who have gone before, and the responsibility for Donny’s death that rests upon the Dude’s shoulders, a memory he is forced to live with.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:36:23 +0000

Barton Fink is one of my personal favorites. I think that the whole film is chock full of metaphors (and by not explaining them, the gammit of explanations are near endless). I always took the painting to represent absolute beauty (intellectual, philosophical, actual). Barton, in his own words, creates beauty. He is all about the beauty and poetry of the common man. The problem with seeing the beauty in something (in your mind)is that the further into your own head you go, the more detached from reality you become. The hotel scene/Charlie vs. Muntz/the loss of his family/ being fired all culminate with the beach scene. He has had his illusions about man come crashing down around his head, and is left with only his mind (and more than likely someone elses in a conveniant little package…whose arrival allowed him to finish writing)and his idea of perfect serene beauty (the girl).

BARTON:
…You’re very beautiful. Are you in
pictures?

She laughs.

BEAUTY:
Don’t be silly.

his final illusion (that he understands what beauty/art/humanity is) comes crashing down just as the bird plummits into the sea.

By: Joel

Joel — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:10:21 +0000

not sure if anyone’s still checking this thread, but i read somewhere (though i can’t find the source at the instant) a fairly convincing argument that in ‘barton fink,’ john goodman represents the germans before and during wwii, gradually incroaching on civilized europe (rep. by the v. jew-y john turturro), ultimately ending in a holocaust.

it’s kinda cool, though i’m not entirely sure i buy it.

By: Tyler Durden

Tyler Durden — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:14:47 +0000

Recently saw “The Fountain” and was intrigued by the ring that Rachel Weisz gives to Hugh Jackman and it’s allusions to his acceptance of death. “The Fountain” is chock full of metaphors but, as reflected in the majority of other posts, 2001: A Space Odyssey’s bone/station is the best… XD

By: Suza

Suza — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:56:57 +0000

Barton Fink: I think one the things the movie talks about is the creative process, and how it defies the logic of art imitating life (in the case of an abnormal experience as the one Barton had being the inspiration for him doing his own masterpiece). In the end, one of the things that the film is trying to say is that it comes the other way; life imitates art as well, so we see the random girl doing the exact same pose as the painting in the hotel room.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:00:44 +0000

@Salvius: I think that’s what I was trying to say all along. Kudos.

By: Marc Savoy

Marc Savoy — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:25:26 +0000

On Blade Runner: one question I can’t answer when asked is, if Deckard and the cops know the Nexus 6 units were scheduled to shut down and die anyway, why the need to send him after them?

It seems obvious to me to say that while they were scheduled to shut down it wasn’t scheduled to happen for quite some time and Deckard was sent to terminate them to prevent them from committing crimes, hurting anyone as portrayed by
gruesome death of Tyrell.

Deckard getting to the errant Nexus unit
early enough would have saved Tyrell.