Phantom Limb

Phantom Limb is an exercise in grief by the filmmaker. I feel he’s coping with his grief with every step of the film. The title itself expresses the deep grief he feels like he is missing a limb without his brother with him. It's heart wrenching to think of this child feeling responsible for the death of his brother. Each segment expresses the loss and pain he feels using unrelated images to show that grief can be all encompassing. The interesting thing is that the film maker is never seen nor heard during this extremely personal story, only through very plain text in the opening story. The virtual omission of himself in the film makes it able for people to relate their own experiences with grief while watching. It was very hard to not be affected by the compelling images shown.

phantom limb

the movie phantom limb went through the process everyone goes through when losing a loved one. He describes the guilt he felt after his brothers death and how his family handled it. He uses pictures and clips from other movies to describe the words he gives us about the process of death. I liked how he did not use the normal 5 steps to grief. He showed that it was way more than that. He wants to describe the pain and anger he felt with the loss of his brother but didn't want to only use himself as an example. When Timmy ( I think that is the little boy's name) loses his bird the narrator goes on to tell us this is his first experience of death. Timmy may not of understood exactly what death meant but he knows it's different than his bird just flying away. i think this documentary is saying you have a choice on how you grieve but it is impossible to do it a wrong way. No persons grief is greater than anyone else's when they deal with death. It all depends on how you deal with it.

Phantom Limb

The documentary was a good one and I really enjoyed watching this during our class period. The film was a pretty sad one and really pulled me in because of how smooth it went though. The story was good because it told us how not to deal with grief and that is a tough subject to talk about especially when it happens to a young family member. The scene though that really stuck out to me was when the sheep was being sheared. That was a very different scene and at first I wondered why it was even in there in the first place. The scene just showed how smooth and easy going the hair came off and stood for a metaphor. This was overall a great film.

Phantom Limb

I really enjoyed watching the documentary, Phantom Limb. It was so interesting to see all of the steps of dealing with loss. The part of the film that caught my attention most was the first scene on separation. This section was about his brothers death and how his family dealt with it. I found it so interesting that he chose not to use any voice overs and instead used text in between home video clips. The fact that his family still to this day doesn't talk about the death of his brother was shown by not having any voices in that section. I think he included his personal experience with the death of a loved one to show his credibility on the topic and also to show the wrong way of dealing with death. He knew that he and his family didn't deal with the death of his brother in a healthy way, and through the rest of the film he shows all the ways that are healthiest in dealing with the loss. Seeing the home videos of his family really made me feel for his family's loss. I think this section of the documentary was imperative to the film because it caught the audiences attention and had them emotionally involved from the very beginning.

Phantom Limb

This documentary illustrates a series of steps that takes the viewer on a trip through the grieving process. I thought it was interesting how the documentor never actually appeared or spoke in his film, but still presented himself as an example of his theme. He used visual metaphors along with the written narration to help get the point across (the collapsing buidlings and sheared sheep). The majority of the documentary takes on a depressing tone but at the end reverses it by repesenting the final step of grief with a birth, showing that the end can sometimes beget a beginning.

Phatom Limb

From the very beginning of the movie I was very interested. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. Whether it was simply about the death of the directors brother or plainly about death. In reality the movie was about both. The movie was very relateable for everyone. The fact of death is a topic that most people have encountered and experienced in some point. The movie didn't hide anything. What was really interesting to me were the steps after death. They may not have gone in an order that works for everyone but the creators of the movie weren't scared to jump into that topic and touch upon things that people aren't used to hearing about. Death is something that physically and emotionally hurts and people don't usually want to bring that kind of pain up or resurface old emotions and feelings. Another thing that was very interesting to me were the pictures and examples that went along with the steps. For example the stage of shock gave an example of rats being shocked. I really never thought about how rats being shocked could relate to death in any form. Everything connected and built a real meaning. It was for the viewer to interpret those meanings and form them into something that related to their life in the past or currently.

"Third Bank Of the River"

The title was the first thing to perplex me from the Third Bank. A river only has two banks, I suppose the implication here is that her father becomes the third bank of the river during his term spent on it. I also began thinking of the boat, the vessel, that contains the father’s body. I feel like this is symbolic for not crossing over...as in stuck between banks, becoming the third bank. Through the writing, I feel the abandonment of the speaker, but I also feel the strong undercurrent of his obvious love and confusion at the behavior of his father. The oddest part for me is when their father won’t come to the shore of the presentation of the granddaughter. Then everyone really gives up on the father and moreover, they move on with their lives expect for the speaker who cannot. Even in rereads I haven’t the faintest thought of why or what is the compelling reason for this father to leave his family, the river means something other than how I’m reading it. The ending made me recall “The Storyteller” in that he offers to take up the mission of his father and stay on the boat and how the Storyteller took up the telling of the stories.

The Third Bank of the RiverIn

In "The Third Bank of the River," João Guimarães Rosa does explore these separate, symbolic opposites in the lives of members of the narrator’s family. He then crafts, out of the conflict, a third position which can be, at best, described as a treaty between two very unlike things. Often times, these extremes are the very definitions of characterization we come to expect in a short story, and, by reading between these lines, Rosa was able to jumble these words up "The Third Bank of the River" into a work of unclear and allegorical by nature. By never exactly defining the third part that is created, the author is able to explore this clearly important topic in greater depth. The importance of the crossing is that, in every case the author presents, it represents the journey from one position to its opposite, continuing until the characters reach their final destination, the third, middle situation. It is in this way that father’s crossing has a profound effect on the family and the way they play out the rest of their lives.

Caillebotte's "Young Man"

I have posted a large image of this painting so you can see the details (unlike in the book).
Dr R