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Showing posts from December, 2014

The Attraction of Ambiguity

When it comes to films, I’ve never really been one for happy endings. It’s just too satisfying when you know that everything works out in the end and you can just forget about it, safe in the knowledge that the guy got the girl; the bad guy lost; they all lived happily ever after. I love a film that leaves you guessing, wondering long after you’ve left the cinema and brushed the popcorn off your clothes. I love a film with an ambiguous ending that’s open to endless interpretations, where there’s no definite answer and it’s all left to the viewer to decide what happens and how they want to story to end. Or perhaps not how they’d like it to end, but how they think it ends. A film like that will open discussion and linger on your mind even when you’ve forgotten the predictable finale of Endless Love . My Own Private Idaho: "This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world." An unclear film ending differs from a plot twist. Sure, unexpected twists are gr

When Does Photojournalism Become Exploitative?

Jake Gyllenhaal as Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler, 2014 (Source: huffingtonpost.com) A few weeks ago I went to see Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal’s latest movie. The plot revolves around Louis Bloom, a petty thief who stumbles into a new career as a ‘nightcrawler’ – a nocturnal cameraman who, along with his assistant Rick (played by Riz Ahmed), scours the streets of LA in search of shocking and grisly crimes to photograph and film before the mainstream media. Gyllenhaal’s character catches people at their worst: dead, dying, mutilated, and all to satisfy the public’s morbid curiosity. Like Bloom says, “I like to think that if you see me, you're having the worst day of your life.” When Louis realises he can make some serious money ‘nightcrawling’ by selling his best and bloodiest footage to a failing news station, his hell-bent obsession with getting the ‘money shot’ has dire consequences. As someone who would like to work in journalism in the future, the film got me thinking: when