Film: The Republic - Movie Review Example

Film: The Republic The Republic is a film written by Plato and translated by Benjamin Jowett. The film, “The Republic” isa piece of art and film work written in the year 1960. Elements of humor and imagery possessing reflective and capturing dramatic power significantly dominate the film. The film provides a manifestation of the highest philosophical point reached and attained by ancient thinkers in the field of philosophy such as Plato. Plato is one of the world’s greatest thinkers and metaphysical geniuses in history. The film, “The Republic”, therefore comes out with a massive conviction and attraction on the life happenings having much similitude to the real facts of nature (Plato 3). Film is the art of depicting actions through moving pictures accompanied by sound, to show daily events based on human life. The moving pictures are those of humans as well as those of animals and their immediate environment. That is how the living interacts and manipulates nature as they try to cope and live a better life. The Republic by Plato is a film revolving and based on the main theme of Film Maker or film holding up to nature. Plato creates a depiction in the film that tries to explain and indicate how film is holding up to nature. He build on his main theme of the film, “film holding up to nature,” by giving detailed explanations showing how film acts as a mirror to nature. The film gives an elaboration to reflect on how film is holding up nature through film characters’ roles. Holding up to nature refers to acting as a mirror of the events in life. The film therefore seeks to answer the question, “does film hold up to nature?” The subject of concern of the film is to explain the various ways through events in the film are of resemblance to the events in real life. The film contemplates the ideas factoring in the social virtues (Plato 57). The film explains the various ways in which the film held up to nature. The film is set upon explaining projected or foreboded events to happen in the future in relation to the different human life aspects. The Republic film is a vehicle of great truths in life. In Plato’s, own thinking and argument in writing the film, some of the great truths in life and the related life events assume the form of state. For instance, the film depicts that the Jewish prophets foreseen the reign of Jesus, the suffering of God’s people and healing in the sun righteousness wings. The film reveals based on Plato’s own imagination the idea of what is good. The film illustrates what is good based on the ideas and examples. The sun is visible in the world and human perfection of education justice witnessed to begin in youth and continues in the later years of life. The evil examples that are dominating the world are about the tyrants, sophists and poets who are providing false teachings and evil rulings to humanity. (Plato 112) The main characters in the film are, Socrates, Cephalus, Polemarchus, Glaucon, Adeimantus, and Thrasymachus. The roles embraced, assumed and performed by the characters in the film execute the film’s subject of matter on the main theme of film holding up nature. The characters in the film hold conversations just like any other ordinary human being in real life (Plato 264). The conversations help the audience to understand what the film or the filmmaker is communicating. The conversations and theme communicated in the film influences the audiences and one may adopt some slangs from the film. Some audiences go as far as using certain gestures when conversing with his or her colleagues in a given setting. The phenomenon explains how a filmmaker of a film may be of a reflection to the happenings occurring in nature and human life. Therefore, it is right to say that, a film or filmmaker holds up to nature. Through the film, the artist can narrate what has happened in the past as well as predict what is most probably to happen in the future. It is upon this technique of present-future reflection that demonstrates how the film is holding up to nature. The film is providing a look into the future by demonstrating situations of what happened in the past and are now recurring. Most of the provisions that the film did preliminarily foresee at the time of the film creation are now evident through the various human life aspects such as education. The prediction and reflection of future happenings based on the current situations bases upon different ways in which the living relates with nature. Plato says that an artist hold up to nature because, he or she acts as a reflection portraying the real life happenings in the human life and environment (Plato 328). In The Republic film, the artist holds a mirror to nature, for instance, the different characters assume different roles relevant to enable the audience to relate with, dialogue. Dialogue is evident in most of the films especially where heroes and villains feature (Plato 272). Since the parties involved, the audiences and actors relate with each perfectly through a particular medium provided, most people tend to identify themselves with the hero. From a contrary perspective, other people hate or develop a negative attitude towards the villain based on his or her actions. “The Republic” film, both its inception writing by Plato in the 360 B.C.E. and the translation by Benjamin Jowett, did address the concept of education. The film viewed education as the utmost gift to humans. In the Republic film, Plato argues that people should treat education as a primary aspect that an individual takes towards attaining an ideal lifestyle. It is evident that Plato, as he writes in the film, was right, education contemporarily overrides all other aspects of human life. Even health is no exception to educational requirements since every healthy child all over the world has the expectation of getting a quality education. One can therefore ascertain that the film holds a mirror to nature. Plato who lived centuries of years back wrote the film and his words continue to manifest as facts by nature in today’s life. Global organizations like the United Nations are giving education a priority in their agenda (Plato 426). In the film, Plato asserts that education forms the most vital and basic component of an individual’s success in any field of work and career. He adds on that being competent in the film art by any artist involves providing a reflection of nature’s happenings by holding up to nature. The artist must preliminarily attain some good educational trainings and insights on the subject of matter. The Republic film narrows down on the explanation of education importance by considering the Lumiere’s brothers film, Auguste Lumiere and Louis Lumiere. Despite the two brothers being some of the most acclaimed filmmakers in the history of film art, they had a first-class ground in educational qualification attainment. They are in history as being so good in the subjects of physics and chemistry that they received scholarships awards to further their education in Boston. The Lumiere brothers and their film work careers conformed to Plato provisional explanation that education is key for any artist who desires to hold up to nature. Holding up to nature involves offering a reflection of life happenings (Plato 502). Education helps an artist to make some inventions that might be important in facilitating the passing of nature information to another party and the next generation. The Lumiere brothers, after gaining a good education, invented a Cinematographe and became the first to hold private projected motion pictures screening. All owing to their superior education background that made them even more genius than before. During the times of the Republic film, education remained high in standards and value. Every child whether from the haves or the haves not, free or slave, male or female got exposed to some of education whether formal or informal. Girls for instance, received elementary education, teaching them how to behave and carry out themselves, as it was their moral obligation. Girls learnt the skills on how to carry house chores. Those children who came from poor backgrounds learnt how to deal with the circumstances presented by their unfavorable situations (Plato 521) Male children from the well to do families and aristocratic families received a formal education. Here, they had different teachers for different lessons. From this, one can therefore argue that the current system of education has its roots from the ancient systems such as the one taught during Plato’s time. Different social groupings present during earlier years when it came to attaining of an education, still exist in today’s world though not legally placed. In today’s world, human race have socio-economically grouped itself into three groups, the lower class, the middle and the high class. The groups consist of the poor, the average and the rich respectively. Children from poor backgrounds are only able to access basic education. While those from the middle class and first class compete for the secondary and higher learning forms of education. It is also through the appreciations of the works of philosophers like Plato that education is the utmost gift a child can ever receive. Thegirlchild has benefitted from formal education given that it has taken numerous vigorous campaigns to give education to . Yet the girl child from previous perception does not fit to acquire formal education. It is evident that Plato held a mirror to nature when he observed the importance of education to every individual be it formal or informal. As seen above, the fact that human beings from all lifestyles try to educate their young ones to the furthest possible education level they can. Today, like the informal education in ancient Greece where different teachers taught learners, schools have teachers who teach different subjects based on their specialization. The system enhances the quality of education as stated by Plato in “The Republic” film. Plato philosophically explained that education is not the mere act of acquiring knowledge of doing things but enhancing the mind’s understanding of untouchable ideas (Plato 534). Plato, the writer of The Republic film, addresses the concept of nurture and nature. He associates many activities that tend to seem naturally occurring in the art of film to the nurturing process and concept. Anything that exists in nature is because of a given perversion, influence or making. Plato philosophically explains how an artist or an individual is always made to follow the power waves of some given state or illusive influence. An artist complies with a particular power and ascribes to a given act in nature depending on the nature of pleasure and the tyranny principle. The meaning of this is that an artist should provide a reflection of that which is happening in nature. The reflection should base on the level of influence and interest that the happening has on him or the public (Plato 537). The Republic film artists (characters) occasionally holds up to nature on the events that people relates with a majority number of them in their daily lives. For example, in the Lumiere brother’s film, the two brothers invested a of their resources, expertise and energy in creating film screenings with motion pictures. The reason is that, the two, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, understood the power and influence that those pictures have on the public audience interests. As explained in the above paragraph, they went to the extent of inventing a device that could capture these pictures, the Cinematographe (Plato 583). The two artists in the Lumiere film made a perfect reflection of nature because they allowed the happenings in the human environment to nurture them. They got nurtured through traveling to different parts of the world. Most parts of the Lumiere brother’s film portrays the real life inspirational occurrences, which revolve around major life situations that earned Elliott Cresson Medal award in 1909. These occurrences portrayed in the film as explained by Plato majorly based on the virtues of justice (Plato 611). Everybody constantly faces the need of justice in many aspects of life. The reason is that it is naturally the aspiration of almost everyone to see good things happening for them, to them and around them. Good things, results and endings only occur where there is justice. Justice is the prevalence of good over the bad. Owing to this explanation, it is therefore clear that every individual desires for a life of justice. A life where only good things happen is the wish for all since every person will be comfortable and feel worthy of living. By The Republic film portraying on the aspects of justice in the society of human life. The film therefore blatantly and plainly held up to nature by giving an evidential reflection of real life problems, desires and occurrences. The cinema-related course work the film previously introduced is the Time-composition course. The course most commonly taught to those students who are their freshmen semesters. The course content centers on the perceptual and cultural constructions of time. The cinema-related course contains a number of sections with each having a particular unique theme in the field of art. The course primarily focuses on how new forms of audiovisual affect the learners’ perception, understanding and representation on time. The learner acquires an insight on understanding how to work with time in the field film arts such as cinemas. In the film art of cinema, working with time is a since it involves more than simply editing sounds and videos into linear sequences. The film learner of cinema art is therefore empowered by the Time-composition course to consider time as a designed idea that is functioning as a tool in film. The themes of Time-composition course include improvisation and scripting, silence and noise, experimenting writing and investigation of practices from multimedia composition. The areas of cinema studies that I am mostly interested in exploring are the theoretical issues in cinemas. The theoretical issues help a learner in gaining valuable skills and a good networking contact before graduating. The theoretical issues impacts a learner with the knowledge of completing essays, career files, case studies, presentations and professional projects. The knowledge instilled onto the learner forms the vital bedrock for the career success and excellence in the real corporate world of film work. My career aspiration is to be a film critic, based on the interest of exploring theoretical issues in film. Film critic is inarguably and perfectly in consonance with the line of interest chosen. The theoretical issues provide a wider base of knowledge and power of arguments to offer valid and relevant critic effectively to any piece of cinema (film) art. Therefore as a film critic having a vast knowledge of theoretical issues, it is possible to critically analyze any film work and provide legitimate critics blended with helpful suggestions. Works Cited Plato, . The Republic. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1960. Print. Read More