Bleatings from the Sheep

Group #3 – “Poetic Justice”

I thought this was a pretty interesting film. I thought the idea behind it was pretty creative; that the person who starts off as appearing to be the “least” actually turns out to be a greater human being than the man who appears successful at the beginning. Also, the concept of poetic justice is great in itself. I think there’s something inside of all of us that enjoys seeing when somebody gets what’s coming to them. This pretty much happens when the “great” man is reduced to the level of the “least” man. What’s also interesting is the concept that the man who was truly greater on the inside shines at the end when he gives his “day’s wages” to the man who had been so rude and unkind to him so often before.

At the risk of being unpopular here, I’m going to go ahead and say that I don’t think it was necessary to have the homeless guy flip the rich guy off earlier on in the movie. Is it because that sort of thing greatly offends me? Ha. Please, I went to a public high school. It’ll take a lot more than that to offend me. Granted, I’m still not crazy about it under any context, but if it was absolutely needed and intricate to the plot itself, I’d be able to deal with it. My main issue here was simply that it created a conflict of character to me. If I am correct in assuming the main idea behind the film was to show that the “least” guy (the homeless man) was in fact greater than the “great” man, then to show a lapse in the homeless man’s character somewhat throws a kink into the works. I mean, generally, the kind of person who flips another person off because his drink got spilled is not the same kind of person who would be so generous as to give his “wages” to the same man later on. To me, it created a conflict in the character, and so it was slightly less believable at the end when he proved to be a good guy after all. Just my opinion, though.

One part that I did like, that I know people seemed to not be quite so crazy about in class, was how the passing of time was portrayed as the rich man’s life began going downhill. I like how it showed him pacing back and forth, growing more and more anxious each time, until finally you see him walking down the street for real with a box of office supplies in his hands. I know I could feel the passing of time, and I could see things slipping and going downhill for him. So I actually thought that was pretty good.

Overall, I did enjoy it.

posted by Caitlynn @ 8:44 PM