Historical Aspects of Oliver Stone Films
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Oliver Stone is a filmmaker who makes use of history as a springboard for political and social commentary, and he often includes history in the form of newsreel footage as well as in terms of references and historical characters who are part of the story. He makes use of fragmentary editing as well to create a sense of reality, placing the viewer at the event and in the historical era. He also has a strong sense of sentimentality that is not always recognized and that derives from the way in which he connects past and present, often in an ironic fashion to show how the promise of one era has been tainted by the reality of another. He begins the process of drawing the viewer into the connections he is making between past and present from the first frame, and the opening sequences in his films prepare the viewer for what is to come, sometimes with foreshadowing as well as with the use of newsreel footage and similar devices to place the action in historic time. These opening sequences then connect with the rest of the film. This can be seen in the films Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, and JFK. Stone's films are not documentaries, but they share certain characteristics with the documentary and use footage in a similar way: Most concerned documentary filmmakers work with two clear, if unstated, purposes in mind: to witness and to affect. To witness is to say, "Look--this happened, pay attention." To affect is to move the audience, to hope that the film will cause
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cident becomes a key moment in the life of the boy and in his development and the development of his sense of doom. The shift to 1948 includes a change in the color values of the film, with a more desaturated look reminiscent of old photographs. Newsreel footage is not used in this sequence, though Stone makes use of it elsewhere and of the disjointed editing that seems to characterize newsreel footage.
Morrison's memory has the flow of a dream, and indeed his other, trying to protect the child from the death at the side of the road, tells him that it is all a dream. Much of his life as it unfolds in this film has the texture of a dream.
The dream-like memory also is linked directly with the type of music Morrison performed, and one of those songs is performed on the soundtrack--the song itself a dreamy speculation on life and death--as the family car glides past the dead and dying around the traffic accident. The father gets out of the car to ask what has happened, and significantly the camera stays in the car with the boy, too far away to hear the answer. These deaths are left mysterious, emphasizing the random nature of death and perhaps recalling its inevitability, no matter what the specific reason in a given instanc
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2050
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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