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Thursday, September 8, 2011

Amelie Term Paper

"Amelie" Movie Essay

"Amelie" by Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a charming story about a young woman's quest to help people find happiness by performing small but nonetheless significant acts of kindness. The story begins with the most an even more precise time announcement than in "Monty Python's Life of Brian" with September 3rd 1976 6:28pm and 32 seconds being announced by the narrator. The use off such precise timing is unconventional and sets the tone for the rest of the movie and is obviously meant as a tribute to the great Monty Python member Terry Gilliam of whom Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a self-confessed fan. After the audience are given the time and date they are shown three completely unrelated and insignificant events that happened to coincide with the conception of the story's main character Amelie Poulain.
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The audience is then whisked away to Amelie's early childhood and are introduced to Amelie's parents Raphael and Amadine Poulain by the narrator, who's swift introduction gives us a brief biography including their occupation, personality and likes and dislikes. Although brief the introduction gives us just enough information we need to understand their actions and is repeated whenever a new character is encountered. In Raphael and Amadine Poulain's case we are told that Raphael is an ex-army doctor who doesn't show his affections physically. Amadine on the other hand is a neurotic schoolteacher. We are also shown that the only physical contact that Amelie has with her father is when he gives Amelie a monthly physical examination, this made Amelie (who like all young girls craved physical attention from her father) very excited, as a result her heart would race and her father diagnosed a heart defect as a result and declared her unfit for school so she was educated at home by Amadine.

Amelie only had one friend during her childhood, a suicidal goldfish called Blubber; Amadine's nerves are soon frayed by Blubber's constant escape attempts and forces Amelie to release Blubber into the wild making Amelie even more lonely than she was before. To compensate for the loss of blubber, Amelie is given a camera, after a day of taking many photos; her next-door neighbor accuses her of causing a car crash, a few days later she realizes that she'd been had and takes revenge by unplugging the offending neighbors TV aerial whenever a goal was about to be scored in a soccer game, this shows us that Amelie was now incredibly aware on how to manipulate the physical world to her advantage, her ability to manipulate the physical world to gain revenge is used again when Amelie, sick of the way Collingnon the greengrocer treats his assistant, breaks into his house and makes a few subtle changes such changing Collingnon's slippers for an identical but smaller pair, setting his alarm clock to 4 am, and swapping his toothpaste for a similarly packaged foot cream, these scenes show, that despite wanting to help as many people as she can, Amelie can also punish people for being cruel to their fellow humans.

The scene where Amelie finds the tin box is very significant in the context of the story because it shows the audience how a seemingly insignificant event with the opportunity to touch someone's life, to Amelie can be much more important than the world famous car crash that took the life of Lady Di, which coincided with the discovery.

The film technique of the beam of light shining on the people that Amelie has helped is used to show that they have truly been touched by Amelie's actions of kindness, and was a very important recurring effect in the film as if to convey the message that an act of kindness, big or small can make someone's day.

The Movie ended with a review of all the people Amelie had helped during the course of just one month and once the director chose to show some insignificant events as Amelie and her new love Nino ride through Paris on a motorbike, The insignificant emphasized the point that all of Amelie's actions would seem small and even useless to some people, but to the people involved they hanged their lives.

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Warning!!! All free sample term papers and college term paper examples on Amelie topics are plagiarized and cannot be fully used in your high school, college or university education.

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