Schindler's List

            ‘Schindler's List’ is a 1993 historical film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film starring Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, Ben Kingsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern, and Ralph Fiennes as cruel and heartless Schutzstaffel (SS) officer Amon Goeth. The film had won seven Academy Awards in categories such as Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score. The film was basically adapted from the novel ‘Schindler's Ark’ by Australian novelist, Thomas Keneally. As the name of novel suggested, the storyline was similar with Noah’s Ark where Oskar Schindler save the lives of 1,200 Jewish people during the Holocaust from Nazi Germany by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories.

            The film did portray the obedience in which one following the order of an authority (Ciccarelli & White, 2014). As we can see in the film, Amon Goeth ordered his fellow officer to shot an educated girl for complaining regarding the mistake in the construction of Plaszow concentration camp. And the officer also without hesitating shot at the girl’s head following the order given by Amon Goeth. We can see the obedience did illustrate throughout the film, for example in event where the Nazi Army follows the orders by killing hundreds of Jewish children and burning their dead bodies like a dump rubbish. And also they follow the order by strip off the cloths of the Jewish women and humiliate their naked bodies. The film also portrays Operant Conditioning especially positive punishments where behavior occurs following by a stimulus to decrease the behavior. In the case of this film, the stimulus is fear of death. The Jewish people were living in the fear of being killed by the Nazi Army and reduce their mistakes in their daily routine as the Amon Goeth did not considered to pardon their mistakes and always just simply killed them. One best example was Helen Hirsch, the maid working in Amon Goeth house who is physically and mentally tortured as a sex slave and always in the fear of being punished by her master.

            The film also did portray self-determination theory in term of Relatedness, where someone wanted to be universally interact, connected to, and experience caring for others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). In the beginning of film, Oskar Schindler seems only interested in earning profits from his business. But, after he saw the Nazi liquidation of the Ghetto from the hill top, especially the little girl with red coat running to hide herself, he became a changed man who’s only concern was to save as many Jewish lives as he can. He willing to spend his fortune to bribes few Schutzstaffel officers including Amon Goeth and Rudolf Hoss to move his 1,200 Jewish workers to a new munitions factory he plans to build in his home town of Zwittau-Brinnlitz. He even forbids the SS guards to enter the factory at there. He also bribes few more officials in buying shell casings from other companies in order to keep his workers alive since his factory does not produce any armaments during its running. By the time Nazi surrender in 1945, Schindler was run out of his fortune but the Jewish people from his list was alive. His caring for Jewish people can be seen clearly when he regret for didn’t save few more Jewish by selling his car and his gold Nazi badge. His act of saving 1,200 Jewish that day, contributes four thousands of Jewish people still live in Poland today. Even though Oskar Schindler is not alive today, but he is still living in the hearth of Jewish descendants.

            Personally, I am not a black & white movie person, but after watching the film until the end, it made me realize how much suffering and pain did the people went through during Adolf Hitler’s Nazi invasion during World War II. This made me to appreciate my life and what I am having with me right now. I liked this movie even though it’s running time more than 3-hours. I would give rating 6.5 out of 10 for this movie.

References
 

Baumeister, R. & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
 

Ciccarelli, S. K., & White, J. N. (2014). Psychology. United States of America: Pearson Education Limited.

The Sixth Sense (1999)

            ‘The Sixth Sense’ is 1999 supernatural film directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film starring Bruce Willis as a child psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe and Haley Joel Osment acted as a troubled, isolated boy Cole Sear who has the ability to see and talk to the dead. The story starts with Dr. Malcolm Crowe being shot in the torso by his former Schizophrenic patient Vincent Grey, for not helping him get over with his hallucinations issues ten years ago. Feeling guilty from his failure with Vincent’s case, now Dr. Malcolm dedicated most of his time and energy working on another patient Cole Sear, whose case was similar with Vincent. At the same time, his relationship with his wife Anna Crowe became less intimate and they hardly talk to each other. During one session, after Cole tells his secret to Dr. Malcolm that he has the ability to see the astral bodies (ghosts), who are unaware that they are already dead, Dr. Malcolm thinks he is delusional and considers dropping him. But after obtaining the evidence from Vincent’s sessions old audiotape, he learns that Vincent also possess the same ability and understand Cole was telling the truth all the time. How Dr. Malcolm does helps Cole to overcome his problem at the end forms the rest of the story.

            While watching the film, I notice the parenting style of Lynn Sear towards Cole Sear is ‘Authoritative parenting’. According to Santrock (2013), authoritative parenting style mainly results when there is high parental responsiveness and high parental demands. For example as we see in the film, Lynn gives Cole the chance to confess anything regarding her bumblebee pendant which belongs to her deceased mother, telling him she found it in his drawer. When Cole states he didn’t took it, thinking he was telling a lie, Lynn strictly ask him to leave the dining table and go to his room. While on the way to his room, he saw an astral body of the previous house owner’s son. Being feared and sweeting, he approached his mother to stay together with her for that night, she agreed and hugs him and notice he has been shaking and scared. This illustrates her love towards him. And there is one particular scene, where Lynn notices there are few signs of physical abuse on Cole’s body. She thought it was done by Cole’s peers at school and she immediately called their parents and ask them to keep their children’s hands away from Cole. There is another scene at end of film, when Cole reveals his secrets about his gift to his mother. Initially, he thought that his mom will think he is some kind of freaks but Lynn clearly states that she will never think his son as such and she eventually realizes her son telling the truth and embrace him.

The film also illustrated the Fear appeal theory. According to Maddux and Rogers (1983), Fear appeal is a kind of strategy by motivating people to take a particular action by arousing their fear. As we see in the film, Cole was very frightened by seeing those astral beings moving around same like other living beings. The reason for them to come near Cole is because Cole can see and hear them and they wanted him to help them fulfill their desire so they can find to light to enter spiritual world. Some of these astral beings were actually physically abuse Cole which causes him to become phobia all the time. In order to avoid fear, Cole started to help those spirits as suggested by Dr. Malcolm. The first ghost he helps was the little girl called Kyra Collins who just recently died. He travelled with Dr. Malcolm to her funeral reception and gives a videotape to her father. Then everyone watches the video which contains the shocking evidence that Kyra’s mother had been slowly killed her by adding cleaning fluid in her food. By doing so Cole has rescued Kyra’s younger sister from being the next victim. Thus, Kyle’s soul became peace and enters the other dimension.
 

As I’m watching this movie for first time, I really didn’t expect there will be the twist at the ending which reveals that Dr. Malcolm is also a ghost and he had been died on the day Vincent Grey shot him. So all this while he was unaware that he had been died and only had been seen and heard by Cole. The screenplay was brilliantly written by M. Night Shyamalan to allow the audiences to feel touched at the end. I personally loved watching this film and would give rating 8 out of 10 for this film.

References:

Maddux, J. E. & Rogers, R. W. (1983). Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory

of fear appeals and attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19 (5), 469-479. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(83)90023-9

Santrock, J.W. (2013). Life Span Development (14th Ed). McGraw- Hill: NY

Forget Paris (1995)

            ‘Forget Paris’ is a 1995 romantic comedy film directed by Billy Crystal, who himself acted as the main character Mickey Gordon in the film. The film was co-star by actress Debra Winger as Ellen Andrews. The screenplay was written in third person’s point of view, where Mickey’s friends narrated the story of Mickey’s marriage life throughout the film. Mickey is a basketball referee and fall in love with Ellen, an airline employee while he was in Paris for just one week. Mickey starts to develop romantic interest towards Ellen when she helps him found his father’s casket which was lost in the same airlines she works. While Ellen, being separate with her first husband, develop romantic interest towards Mickey as he makes Ellen laugh and forget about her problems. Both of them gets married after discover that each have been fall deeply in love with each other until to the point where it starts to affects their career. After the honeymoon phase of their marriage, things didn’t go as expected and relationships conflicts start to emerge in their marriage life. Whether they did solve all the conflicts from their relationships and whether or not they manage to be together with each other until the end forms the rest of the story.

            Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love (1986) can be applied to study the relationship between Mickey and Ellen. Initially, both of them started their relationship with only having intimacy to each other without considering getting into commitments, the fact that Mickey is only came to Paris to full-fill his father’s last wish and will return back to America very soon. So it was just one week they spend time together and it is not possible to know in details about each other in that short period of time. When Mickey became angry during a game session and gets suspension for a week, it shows that he misses Ellen and develops passion towards her. And Ellen’s decision to resigns her airlines job, officially divorce her first husband and flies over from Paris to America in order to stay together with Mickey illustrate her strong romantic attraction towards Mickey (intimacy with passion). Commitment came into picture when both of them get married. The moment they start companionate love with increasing intimacy, the passion towards each other starts to fall down. This is due to Mickey’s constant away from home for his referee sessions and Ellen have to be alone all the time with doing a job that she dislike. Even Mickey found a way to resolve this by taking off a year from referee job and wanted to spend time with Ellen, things happens unexpectedly where Ellen gets promotion and spend most of the time in workplace while Mickey have to take care of his sick father-in-law all by himself. However, commitment is the key fact that holds both of them together until the end of the film.

Adams’s Equity theory (1969) can be used to explain the conflict that occurs in relationship between Mickey and Ellen. Equity theory explores that couples will be most happy with their relationship if the distribution of resources is fair to both relational partners (Hatfield, 2009). In the film,
Ellen left her job in Paris and come over America to stay with Mickey while doing a job that she not interested. But, Mickey doesn’t want to give up his referee professions to anyone including his newly waded wife. He was always away from the house and only spends few days together with Ellen in a month. This created a problem as Ellen have to be alone in house, go shopping alone, go working alone and there is nobody for her to share her feelings. She didn’t quite her job at Paris to come her to be alone. This causes conflict in their marriage life as Ellen perceive Mickey was not equity enough as he didn’t willing to sacrifice as equal as Ellen. Even though Mickey took one year leave of absence from being referee, but he did went back to that job later because he really enjoy doing it and it was his identity. And in another scene, Ellen asked Mickey to together move to Dallas because of her new promotion. But, Mickey do not want move outside from California because he states it was his home and place where he belongs to. This makes Ellen to feels short-changed or under-benefited because she left Paris for him but he doesn’t want to leave California for her. This causes a temporary separation for both of them where Ellen went back to Paris.

             Though out the film I notice that this is not usual film which ends with ‘Happily Ever After’ story but it was realistic enough to point out what are the possibilities, when and how a marriage relationship might get into trouble and how to work out to solve the issue. The film portrays that falling in love was not feeling but it was a decision we took ourselves. Love is action, not emotion. It was Ellen’s action to quit her job in Paris and flies over America to stay with Mickey. Her action is the one causes the life to change for both of them. She might choose to stay in Paris alone in the first place but her action of love made Mickey’s life to be changed as well. This film is an eye-opener for me because it did portrays that keeping high expectation in a relationship will eventually causes more disappointments towards both parties involved if things happens not to our expectations. We always tend to put a lot of expectation for our partner but we forget that other partner also have his/her desires to follow. The title “Forget Paris”, emphasis meaning for both Mickey and Ellen that whatever happy moments happened in Paris, never expect it to happen again because life always change in unexpected way. I really like this movie even though its comedy didn’t make me laugh but it did deliver a massage and awareness about relationship towards the ending. I would give rating 7 out of 10 for this movie.
 

References:
 

Hatfield, E. (2009). Equity Theory. United States of America: Sage Publications, Inc.

 
Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological review, 93(2), 119.

Strictly Ballroom (1992)

‘Strictly Ballroom’ is 1992 Australian film directed by Baz Luhrmann. The film had won Australian Film Institute Award in several categories such as Costume Design, Editing, Production Design, Best Director, Best Film and Best Screenplay. The plot centered around Scott Hastings played by actor Paul Mercurio, who wanted to establish his own steps of dancing in winning Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship. Scott came from a family with history of ballroom dancers and he had been given training since he was six-years-old by his mother. However his non-ballroom steps make his mother to feel worries and anxiety of him losing the competition and his regular dancing partner leaves him for losing in one of earlier competition in film for dancing his own steps. Being stuck between passion and rules, did he complies with dancing in traditional steps or with his own favorite steps in Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship is form rest of the story.

            Under social influence, Asch's theory of conformity (1951) can be seen in the film which is about matching our attitudes and behaviors correspond with others behavior. The Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship itself is conformity since all dancers must follow same steps approved of the Australian Dance Federation. I have one doubt, how the judges are giving the marks for the contestants if all of them dance with same steps? Maybe perhaps they see the cooperation with partner and the efficiency of the steps. In the scene after Scott loses one of the competitions earlier in the film, when he asked around in his mother's dance studio whether they liked his new steps or not, everybody’s concerns were he didn’t win the competition. Those people might love Scott’s new movements, with the absence of strong personal opinions, they tend to follow conformity of other by rejecting his steps. This can be seen clearly when his best friend Wayne replied simply with “I don’t know”. In the film, Fran and Doug (Scott’s father) are the first people to break the conformity. Fran is the first one to tell Scott that she likes his new steps and become his new dancing partner. For them it’s not about winning the competition, but to have accomplishment by dancing their favorite steps in front of people. When Scott and Fran were asked to leave the stage, the whole auditorium was quit and Doug is the first one to clap for their dance followed by Fran’s old folks and thus this action break the conformity and everyone else joins them by clapping. Similar with Asch’s experiment, it took one person to start breaking the conformity and everyone else starts following. This encourages Scott and Fran to dance even without the music at the end of film.

The film also did portray the power of compliance, which is a response made in reaction to a request by others (Franzoi, 2008). In the film, Scott wanted to dance with Fran for Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship but people surrounding him especially his mother pressured him to abandon Fran and dance with Liz. He refuses her order at first, but when Barry Fife came and make up a story stating his father, Doug was once a ballroom dancer too and lose the Pan-Pacific competition for dancing his own steps. And Doug wanted Scott to not repeat his mistake and win the competition on behalf of him. Assuming this as truth, Scott eventually complies with Barry’s lie and decides to dance with Liz in Pan-Pacific competition while abandoning Fran for the sake of his father.

Yet another psychological aspect I notice in the film is obedience which is changes in one’s behavior at the order of an authority (Ciccarelli & White, 2014). This can be seen by Scott’s mother being push her son since he was six-years-old to win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship. The reason could be most probably she had been threaten by Barry that her dance studio would be lose credit and closed if Scott didn’t win the competition. And in the year 1967, she abandons her own husband and dance with Les Kendall for Pan-Pacific competition by obeying Barry’s threatening. But eventually she loses in the competition in the end. The main reason for the characters portrait in the film to obey the command or instructions from their authorities is because of fear. As there is a Spanish quote mentioned in the film, “Vivir con miedo, es como vivir a medias” which translate as “A life lived in fear is a life half lived”. This quote really inspired me and reminds me not to feel fear all for the problems I’m facing at my current stage of life. I personally liked this movie, the fact that it was the first and only kind of movie I’ve ever watched in my life. I’ll give rating 7 out of 10 for this film.

References

Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgement. In H. Guetzkow (ed.) Groups, leadership and men. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Press.

Ciccarelli, S. K., & White, J. N. (2014). Psychology. United States of America: Pearson Education Limited.

Franzoi, S. L, (2008). Social Psychology (5th Edition).