In 4-6 pages, please analyze the film that use food and eating as a central narrative device: Like Water for Chocolate.
Your analysis should consider the deployment of food briefly in formal terms (including composition, line, focus, color, design, choice of lens and frame, sound, and how these affect the viewer), but concentrate on 1) iconography (the symbolic content of the images of food and the eating), 2) the critical context (what the images and narrative reveal about the film’s genesis in a particular culture, place, and time, either intentionally or unintentionally), and 3) location, how food or eating is used deliberately to enhance or even drive the narrative; that is, what food and eating reveals to the audience about the characters and what will happen to them.
This is NOT a film review, and the basic plot of the film can be disposed of in a brief paragraph. You can assume the reader has seen the film. You are encouraged to locate yourself in your analysis, and to address how well or how badly the film “worked” for you, but such a personal critique should only supplement the basic analyses.
Analyzing Food Movies:
Credits and mise-en-scene
Cinematography and visual style
Editing
Production design, costumes, fx
Narrative
Acting, dialogue, and movement
Sound and music: diegetic and non-diegetic
Genre
Intertextuality
“Critical” aspects of film
There are faxes for this order.
