FINAL PROJECT

Shereen Alkhadrawi

1. An introductory paragraph with a thesis statement

"Losses and gains are part of life, but life becomes great when it ends well." The two

movies that have been selected for the final project are by and large nodding towards the same

facts. One documentary film is Inversion by an Iranian director, and the other is Father &

Daughters by an Italian director. Both movies are on different tracks, situations, and issues.

However, the agenda is to have inner peace and love through various sacrifices. Inversion, as an

Iranian film has also depicted some cultural colors and kind of blend of moving towards the

attainment of inner peace and follow their pathways when everyone demands sacrifices from a

single person. Whether situations become unbearable for your existence might due to natural

changes, then mutation comes to defend the survival.

Similarly, when a person has lost something, then migration, even from a favorite place,

might lead to having a great life and an urge for the desire to live for themself. In contrast to it,

Father & Daughters is on a different subject: how an accident could influence people's lives.

Merely, it seems that men are nothing without women, whether they are wife, mother, or

daughter. Both movies are on healthy subjects and are perfectly conveying the subjective

material with beautiful and skilled camera work to its viewers. The locations, scenes, scenery,

and camera frames are aligned in such a way that they make viewers enjoy nature and mesmerize

themselves in the story.

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 In the following part of the paper, the synopsis of both selected movies has been

discussed in detail.

2. Synopsis of each film

Synopsis of Inversion

Inversion is direct by Behnam Behzadi, an Iranian film director. It was a screen in the

Canned Film Festival in the year 2016. The movie title that is Inversion refers to the "thermal

Inversion." Tehran is a highly polluted city of Iran after Beijing, China. The movie screen that

one day the level of poison in Tehran's atmosphere has goes up to its maximum density. It was a

challenging situation for the citizen. They only have two options at that time, one is to live with

it or government crackdown to reduce the level of pollution in the air. However, in the movie, it

has been shown that a familial discord of chain reaction has been set off due to atmospheric

pollution in the closes of the heroine. That inclined the heroine to find a new place for living for

having fresh air and leaving everything sets behind.

Niloofer, a successful businesswoman, is the heroine in the movies. She has forced to

leave everything and search for a new source of air required for caring for her mother. She was

single, and her elder siblings were married. Instead of having settled business in Tehran and a

particular affiliation due to birthplace, she has selected for a caring mother suffering from a

pulmonary infection. Meteorologically speaking, "Thermal Inversion" is a condition that blanket

the Tehran with a thick layer of smog. It is the smog that kick-off movie and put the elderly

mother in hospital and doctor orders to move from the city for fresh and clean clime. She was an

entrepreneur, and due to her business, she relishes her freedom in the city. Her siblings ignored

it, and the director is detailing how her siblings use traditions to push her around and to mask

their self-interest.

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 The story is about Tehran's middle class and illuminated the different layers of conflicts

that evolve out of seemingly ordinary circumstances. However, the investment of plight for

acquiring the self-determination made the movie distinct among the other Iranian film. It

devolves into the social mores of Iran and delicately screened the different ways women mark

their emotional space.

Inversion has emerged from the new wave of Iranian Cinema of the 90s. That has

correctly told the story of women's subjugation happening in Iranian society. The movie has

depicted the emotional crisis in the vivid format that occurs in the movement of eager, baby-step

transition and precarious. Third world countries are mothership of marriages. A woman without

marriage is nothing to complete their ambitions and enjoy life with enough emotional space and

freedom. She was a free bird, but the movie encircles around the idea of how unmarried women

learn to seek her ways, and her desired is nothing to do even to their family members. Her

established business that she is caring for over a decade has lost overnight. There is nobody in

her family who thinks about her passion and monasteries of her life. It all appeared in the form of

a storm cloud that has gathered around the Niloofar face throughout the movie.

Synopsis of Fathers & Daughters

Fathers & Daughters is a movie about a family that comprises upon father, mother, and

daughter. The father is an award-winning novelist who dearly loves with his wife and daughter.

However, one night on driving back from a party, he gets angered. He argued about the

misunderstanding of his wife. She felt that his husband is filtering with some other women.

Although, the situation was not like that, and he was just clearing his position in front of his

wife. The novelist becomes specious because he cheated on her in the past. The argument made

his distress, and meanwhile, the collusion of their car with a truck has happened. Jake, the

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husband, has poorly got injured due to collusion, but his wife has died on the spot. The nature of

the accident was severe, and he got brain damage and causing him seizures. As per doctor

advised, any delay or missing in treatment might lead him towards psychotic episodes. Jake took

treatment regularly for seven months, and during this period, their daughter named Katie in the

movie has stayed with her aunt and uncle.

During these brief periods of these seven months, Katie's aunt and uncle developed a

deep bond with her. They requested Jake to allow them to adopt his daughter Katie, which he

flatly rejected. As a result of it, he became a single and struggling father. He also hides about his

returning seizure. His brain damage injury brutally affects his writing. His next book badly

panned by the critics. In addition to it, the situation has become so fierce that his own company

refused to publish his panned book in the broad market.

As Jake was suffering from these issues, Katie's aunt and uncle sued him for his

daughter's custody. Based on his financial, mental, and domestic condition, he feared to lose the

case. In these circumstances, he started writing a book with a burst of emotions. His busy routine

and consistent ignoring of Katie made her angry. The suit against Jake dropped when Katie's

aunt revealed about impregnated of Katie's uncle with his secretary. As a result of it, Katie's aunt

named Elizabeth in the movie got divorced. Jake's seizures led him towards his accidental death

when he feels in the bathroom after his last book, Fathers & Daughters.

In the 25 years later, Katie studying psychology in her college. Her parent conflict at the

night of the accident, ignorance from her father, and her uncle illegal affair made her quite

promiscuous. She took a guy in the bathroom and had sexed with him. After that, she rejected an

intimate relationship and became a social worker and met a girl named Lucy, who also lost her

mother. Lucy was quiet since her mother's death and helped her to improve a dignified person

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 and get out of the trauma of her adopted daughter. Katie followed her one-night stand pattern of

life before meeting a guy who idealized her father's work. Katie develops a relationship with

him. She suffers from an intimacy issue, cheats, and eventually, Cameron break with her when it

was revealed to him. She then visited her department for her love, but after seeing a woman, she

runs away. However, Cameron came to her home and kiss and hugged her.

The movie seems to comprise upon the alternating past, current, and future segments.

Overall, the message appears to convey that men cannot live without having an intimate

relationship with women. But eventually, it was revealed that all men and not the same.

Sometimes, misunderstandings and inner fear made life difficult.

3. An analysis that reviews and compares the films

a. Who is being represented in the film?

In Inversion, a metropolitan ant landscape with a thick smog was

presented. The layer of smog was so thick that skyscrapers seem to be melting

into chalky white air. It looks like the movie was shot in downtown, but it was

Tehran, not Los Angeles.

In contrast to it, another movie that is Fathers & Daughters is peculiarly

representing active sexuality. That has predates for several decades.

b. How are they represented?

The Iranian version of the feminist dream of single women was

esthetically presented in the movie Inversion. It was presented with stormed faced

women who abundant her freedom, city, business, and claustrophobic realization

of planning of her life by others. In comparison to Fathers & Daughters, the editor

successfully maintains a dual-track narrative and does not make things

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 emotionally complicated. It was a psychological battle, from custody,

conversational conflicts, cutting scenes, and entire character shorts with the least

resistance path.

I. Do you think an audience could develop ethnocentric bias?

c. Who is doing the representing?

In Inversion, ethnocentric bias was presented by Niloofer. Her attire, daily life

routine, and her way of tackling the things made the viewers think about the strict

social norms in third-world countries. Jake and especially Katie of Fathers &

Daughters are powerful enough to make the audience think about the existence of

bias.

d. Would you categorize the films as "standard" documentary format, or is

there a bit of experimentation going on there?

Fathers & Daughters is a standard documentary movie, but Inversion

experimentation format has been seen in the film. The thermal Inversion in the

form of chalk-white smog was extremely appealing visually due to the use of

technology. Fathers & Daughter's accidental scenes and bathroom scenes were

some kind of experimentation but not inversion.

e. Please discuss the use of audio and visuals. How do they enhance or take

away from the films and the representations therein?

The audio and visual of both films were good. Even the use of colors and

audios in Inversions was more appealing and eye-catching than Fathers &

Daughters.

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 f. What has included in the "culture" or "people" that the film depicts, and

what is perhaps left out?

Iranian traditions, civilization, family hierarchy, social norms, and values

candidly depicted through the movie. In Fathers & Daughters, Italian culture was

presented wisely and with delicacy. Like from dresses, home arrangements, and

even houses were made it contrast and culturally communicated movie.

g. Did you feel you learned a lot about what the films were depicting?

I have learned about exploring the importance of self-realization from Inversion.

Fathers & Daughters has taught me about things that are seen from the surface

cannot seem from the bottom. Life is too short to be live in undefined revenge.

4. Discussion section

I feel that Fathers & Daughters seems like an intense movie Leviathan. The same

psychological battle has been happening in the film. The whale skeleton symbolized the entropy

and eventual conversion of everything in fossils. While, in Fathers & Daughters, the life of Jake

and his uncontrolled life events revealing the same truth, that was the essence of Leviathan.

Although sexuality and relationship fear is also visible in the movie. But bitterness either from

nature or people's behavior made the people live life with misery.

While Iranian movie inversion seems to me portraying like a figurine, plot, story, actors,

sceneries, and characters are different. But at some point, like selling Niloofer business and

making her abandoned in one night, she realized about seven years of a prolonged sudden change

in the life of Niloofer. In figurine, the sculpture was the culprit behind the miseries of people

live. In Inversion, close relations self-centrism is the main trigger behind bringing a sudden

change in the life of an ambitious and freedom lover lady.

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5. Conclusion

In both movies, the thing that I have been finding similar was an emptiness in both

characters. Both Niloofer and Katie belong to two different countries and societies. Their issues

and way of assuming things are various. Niloofer becomes a victim of her damn self-centered

sibling's desires. However, Katie was the victim of unrevealed truth and inner fears.