Intro to Film 2025 • Professor Gregory Zinman • Emory University

Author: Jooeun Choi

  • Why Did Ki-taek Stab Mr. Park? — A Question After Parasite

    Parasite tells the story of how Ki-taek’s family, who live day to day on the edge of poverty, slowly infiltrate the wealthy household of Mr. Park through a carefully staged web of lies. Beginning with the son Ki-woo, they succeed one by one in placing each family member into the Park household—as an art therapist, a driver, and a housekeeper. These “con-artist” sequences are edited into elegant montages accompanied by a soundtrack that recalls Baroque music. No matter how many times I watch those scenes, they still feel almost impossibly precise, as if every movement, every note, falls perfectly into place.

    There are many characters in Parasite that I still struggle to fully understand. But the one moment I return to again and again is Ki-taek’s final decision near the end of the film.

    Why did Ki-taek stab Mr. Park?

    When Ki-taek’s daughter, Ki-jung, is stabbed by Geun-sae (the man who had been secretly living for years in the hidden bunker beneath the Park house), she collapses, bleeding heavily. Mr. Park asks Ki-taek to throw the car key so he can rush her to the hospital. But the keys have fallen to the ground beneath Chung-sook, who is physically fighting with Geun-sae. As Mr. Park moves closer to get the key, he recoils. He turns his head, wrinkles his face, and covers his nose at the smell coming from Geun-sae.

    In that brief moment, everything changes.

    As Mr. Park picks up the key and turns away to leave, Ki-taek suddenly lunges forward and stabs him. Then he runs away. What follows in this film is silence, where the audience can only hear the faint buzzing of flies.

    Why, at that moment, did Ki-taek choose to kill Mr. Park? His daughter was dying. Getting her to the hospital should have mattered more than anything. And yet, he killed a man instead, a man who was not even the doer.

    My answer is this: Ki-taek had reached the limit of what he could endure about “the smell.”

    Earlier in the film, even Mr. Park’s young son mentions that the members of Ki-taek’s family all share the same scent (he didn’t know that they were family). That smell is the smell of poverty, the smell of the semi-basement. The smell of a life that never fully dries, no matter how much you try to wash it away. It clings not just to the body, but to their life.

    Mr. Park believes he is reacting only to Geun-sae’s odor. But Ki-taek knows better. That smell is his smell too.

    In that moment, when Mr. Park turns away in visible disgust, Ki-taek finally understands that no matter how convincingly he performs this borrowed life, no matter how neatly he dresses, how well he imitates the manners of the wealthy, he can never escape the mark of who he truly is. The times of quiet humiliation, of being tolerated but never fully seen as equal, collapse into a single instant.

    And so the knife rises.

    Ki-taek’s act is not only an outburst of personal rage. It is an eruption of anger toward a society that makes escape from poverty nearly impossible. It is fury at the lie he tried to live, and at the invisible wall that kept dragging him back to where he began. In the end, he is attacking more than a man. He is struck by the smell of his own life.

  • Unseen, Unheard, Unescaped: Redefining Suspense Through Jaws

    The suspense Spielberg shows in differs from other shark films. Viewers never see the shark until about two-thirds into the movie. However, the fear of the shark’s existence is conveyed through the predator’s point of view, the leitmotif of the shark, and spatial irony.

    When viewers are shown the story through a character’s point of view in the film, we tend to identify with that character’s thoughts and emotions. When the characters are placed at a disadvantage, the audience empathizes with their frustration and joins them in their anger when they face injustice. However, in Jaws, the viewers cannot empathize with the shark’s thoughts or emotions. Whenever the shark’s POV is shown, and it sees the surface of the water, we are terrified that it might attack the person depicted. This is because we put ourselves in the shoes of the potential prey – humans. The viewers are only left with the fear of the shark’s uncontrollable instinct.

    John Williams’ two-note theme turns sound into fear itself. The same music that appears before the shark’s appearance signals to the audience that the shark is coming. Hearing the sound becomes more terrifying than seeing the shark. The sound is made by only two notes (E-F, F-F#), but this is the fastest way for the audience to notice the shark’s presence. This non-diegetic sound is John Williams’ way of communicating with the viewers and hinting at the next scene.

    Most horror movies heighten tension in dark, small spaces where you can’t escape. On the other hand, this film sets its terror in the vast openness of the ocean. Under the bright sun, the vast ocean looks endless, yet it becomes an open space where there’s no place to hide. Audiences feel exposed, left between viewing the safety of the surface and the unknown depths below. Spielberg uses the contrast between the surface and the underwater to amplify this suspense. The viewers always hear the laughter above the water, which provides warmth; however, when the camera shows underwater, the silence and shadow immediately heighten the tension. While the camera lets us gaze at the unreachable surface, the viewers remain trapped in this fear.

    Jaws reminds the audience that fear doesn’t need to be seen, heard, or even real to hold us captive – it only needs to be imagined.

  • Learning to Love Beyond Judgment

    The Shack: a film review — FormEdFaith

    The film The Shack, directed by Stuart Hazeldine and based on William P. Young’s best-selling novel, explores how one man’s story of tragedy transforms into a journey of faith and spiritual restoration. The film tells the story of Mack Philips, a grieving father whose faith and sense of purpose collapse after the tragic loss of his young daughter, Missy. After Missy’s murder, Mack struggles with overwhelming guilt for not protecting her, as well as the inability to forgive her murderer. In The Shack, Hazeldine argues that refusing to forgive keeps individuals trapped in isolation, preventing them from experiencing emotional healing and building meaningful relationships. Through Mack’s spiritual and emotional journey, the film shows how guilt and resentment have distanced him from his own family and God, and how forgiveness allows him to reconnect with love and community.

    The first stage of Mack’s transformation began when he realized that judging others, an act which belongs to God alone, contradicts God’s divine love for people. When the personified figure of “Wisdom” asked Mack how well he could distinguish good and evil, he was certain that he could. However, Mack stated that his father, who had abused his mother, deserved punishment. Then, he was shown a vision — a young boy being beaten by his own father. At that moment, Mack understood that the boy he had judged was actually his father as a child, and that his judgment had been wrong. He realized that a human judgment is often limited and often fails to grasp the whole story. “Wisdom” then deepened the lesson by asking Mack to decide which of his children should go to heaven and which should go to hell. Mack couldn’t make a decision and asked “Wisdom” to take him instead. Through this moment, Mack came to understand the nature of God’s unconditional and sacrificial love. He loves every person, even when they are sinful. God won’t be selective with His children, but rather will love each one equally. By realizing God’s love and realizing that judgment belongs to God alone, Mack takes his first step toward forgiveness, learning that love cannot coexist with condemnation.

    Mack’s journey enters its second phase when he begins to see how his anger and guilt have pushed him away from others. His rage over Missy’s killer blinded him to the pain within his own family, including the trauma of his abusive father and Kate’s feelings of guilt, as well as to even God’s enduring love that continued to reach out to him. The anger he held onto dragged him down, preventing him from connecting with those around him. Mack’s wife, Nan, and his children needed him, but he was so lost in his own sadness that he was unable to help his family through their own suffering. God reveals to Mack that holding onto hatred isolates him from every meaningful relationship in his life. Through this realization, Mack learns that forgiveness isn’t about dismissing the evil, but about releasing the pain so that reconciliation can happen. God tells him that sin is its own punishment; therefore, neither God nor Mack should punish people for it. When Mack finally chooses to forgive Missy’s murderer, he starts to open his heart again — to the love of God, the love of a father, and the love that binds his family. After Mack’s spiritual journey, he was finally able to share his experience of meeting God with Nan and help Kate work through her guilt and sadness. Freed from the weight of the guilt, Mack was finally able to live each day with genuine joy, as forgiveness eventually paved the way for emotional and spiritual healing.

    The Shack' Review: Octavia Spencer Plays God in a Faith-Based Drama

    In The Shack, Hazeldine transforms a story of unbearable loss into a profound reflection of love, forgiveness, and faith. Mack’s journey reminds viewers that forgiveness not only frees one from hatred but also enables building stronger relationships with those around them. The film allows the audience to witness Mack’s inner struggle, allowing them to walk beside him through anger, grief, and, ultimately, forgiveness. The Shack traces Mack’s spiritual journey and growth through his week-long encounter with the Trinity, allowing viewers to realize how a genuine understanding of God’s love can reshape the way one lives and loves.

  • Revisiting RRR Through the Lens of Caste and Savior Narratives

    When I watched RRR, I didn’t realize that the film reproduced an upper-caste Hindu nationalist fantasy aligned with contemporary Hindutva ideology. By reading the Vox article, I noticed that both protagonists, Raju and Bheem, are portrayed in ways that make Raju seem the educated, visionary savior and Bheem shown as emotionally driven and illiterate “noble savage.” I learned that many popular films are made by upper-caste directors and actors, not confronting the caste system issues in society. I wanted to search if any films actually criticize this nature of Indian films relying on upper-caste “savior” narratives.

    This article from Hindus for Human Rights examines how the Indian caste system continues to shape popular cinema. It first explains that caste is not just a historical phenomenon but a living structure that still affects education, economic opportunity, policing, and social mobility. The article highlights how Indian films have historically avoided directly confronting caste or have softened it through romance and nationalism to avoid criticism.

    It then contrasts older films with more recent works like Jai Bhim (2021), which directly depicts caste-based police violence against an Adivasi family, and Article 15 (2019), which addresses caste discrimination but has been criticized for relying on an upper-caste “savior” protagonist. Through these examples, the article argues that cinema can either reinforce or challenge caste hierarchies by centering the voices of marginalized communities.

    This source is worthwhile because it provides a clear framework for analyzing how caste operates in the film industry. I think this is useful for our discussion of RRR tomorrow because it helps identify whether a movie truly centers marginalized voices or instead reproduces an elite-savior narrative. Since the article is written by a human rights organization, its perspective is strongly activist and critical, but that also makes it effective at questioning films that appear progressive on the surface while remaining politically limited beneath the surface.

    https://www.hindusforhumanrights.org/news/caste-system-in-india-and-its-representation-in-popular-cinema

  • Reality, Performance, and Ambiguity in Holy Motors and Parasite

    This week’s readings both explore what defines art cinema. Bordwell describes art cinema through realism, authorial expressivity, and ambiguity. Unlike classical Hollywood films, which follow clear cause-and-effect logic, art films leave uncertainty and interpretation to the audience. Frodon’s interview with Carax shows how these ideas of art film are embodied in Holy Motors, where everyday life itself becomes a performance.

    In Holy Motors, Monsieur Oscar travels through Paris, performing multiple identities, such as a beggar, a father, and a killer. Although there are no visible cameras or audiences watching him, he continues to perform and act. This reflects authorial expressivity, as Carax blurs the line between art and life. The stretch limousine that Oscar rides represents the realism of modern alienation as it looks luxurious on the outside but feels empty inside. It reflects how technology connects people, yet simultaneously isolates them. The ending, where machines speak, creates ambiguity. Audiences are confused about whether they are watching life or just another performance as Carax blurs the line between human and machine. Human Oscar performs like a machine the entire day, and now the machine has started to talk like a human being. 

    Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite also embodied the art cinema mode. Its realism is grounded in the vivid contrast between the wealthy home and the semibasement house. Bong’s authorial expressivity is evident through symbolic motifs such as stairs and rain. The vertical movement of the stairs represents the class hierarchy in the film. The rain reveals the stark reality of how the experience of rain can change significantly depending on one’s social status. Finally, the ambiguous ending, whether the son ever rescues his father, reveals life’s uncertainty rather than a happy ending or resolution.

    These are questions we can think about:

    1. If life itself becomes a performance, can we ever distinguish between authenticity and acting?
    2. Does the director’s control over ambiguity make the film more honest or more artificial?

  • Paris Is Burning: Redefining Family

    Learning about the history of New York City’s Ballroom culture was genuinely fascinating. There were so many new ideas to me — such as houses, reading, shading, and voguing. Houses are competing teams that go against one another in different categories in Ballroom. However, I believe the idea of a “house” is more than a team; it’s an ideological home where people can love and be loved despite being overlooked or unappreciated in reality. For the participants, the House was a new kind of family. They understood one another, accepted themselves as they were, and learned how to give and receive love.

    Throughout the film, it’s mentioned that many of those who participated in the Balls were economically disadvantaged or even homeless. Yet, the Ballroom gave them a reason to dream. Everyone in the film had a dream: to be famous, to be recognized, to be rich, or simply to form a loving family. As you listen to their stories, you realize that their dreams are no different from anyone else’s. People want stability, acknowledgment, love, and belonging — the very same things that society once told them they couldn’t have. The Ballroom, however, became the space where they created their own version of family, culture, and hope.

    One thing that struck me deeply was realizing that voguing actually originated from the Ballroom culture. I had seen dancers perform it before, but I had never thought about its history. As I watched the movie, the movements looked familiar. But when they described voguing as a way to “attack each other through a dance,” I was able to recognize and understand it as a new concept.

    Overall, this film introduced me to a new culture built on resilience, creativity, and love. It showed how members of the Ballroom community fought to create a space where they could turn their dreams into reality. Everyone has a dream that can sometimes feel impossible to achieve. When faced with the weight of reality, people often hesitate to dream at all.. However, the figures in Paris Is Burning never gave up. They are dreamers, and, in their own way, they are also achievers.

  • The Film That Reinvented Cinema: Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane

    After watching Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, I wondered why this film is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. The film left a lingering impression on me – particularly in its portrayal of Kane’s failure to understand others’ desires until his death. Although this film emotionally resonated with me, I still couldn’t understand why it is considered revolutionary. To gain a deeper understanding of why Citizen Kane is regarded as a revolutionary film, I viewed an analytical video about it on YouTube. The video explains that we may not immediately see this movie as revolutionary. In the past, films rarely experimented with visual storytelling or narrative structure to the extent that Citizen Kane did. The video especially highlights how the cinematic techniques that once set Citizen Kane apart are now standard in modern cinema. Although those techniques were not entirely new, Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland combined them in a new way that reinvented the language of cinema.

    Some interesting innovations include the following:

    1. Deep Focus
      Some of the film’s most notable innovations include the use of deep focus. According to Film Art, deep focus is “a use of the camera lens and lighting that keeps objects in both close and distant planes in sharp focus”. In earlier films, filmmakers typically used different focal lengths to separate the figures from the background. However, in Citizen Kane, the entire scene was kept in focus through the use of a small aperture, which allowed more of the image to remain sharp within a single frame. This allowed viewers to take in the whole frame simultaneously. An example of this technique appears in the scene where young Kane plays in the snow outside the window, while inside, his mother and Mr. Thatcher are making decisions about his future.
    1. Montage Sequence
      Another notable cinematic technique used in Citizen Kane is a montage sequence, which is a film editing technique used to condense time through a series of short shots. In this instance, Welles utilizes this technique to compress sixteen years of marriage into just a few minutes. The audience observes the emotional tone between Kane and his wife evolving throughout their relationship, as multiple breakfast scenes seamlessly dissolve into one another. Even though the exact year or time is never shown, it becomes evident that Kane’s marriage is gradually declining.
    2. Labyrinth of Flashbacks and Different Points of View
      Unlike most films of its time, Citizen Kane does not follow a linear narrative structure. Instead, it followed a radical approach to storytelling. This non-linear narrative structure allows the story to unfold through differing perspectives and recollections. The movie begins with Kane’s death, and the story unfolds as a reporter interviews several people to find out what “Rosebud” means. Each person who was once close to Kane takes the audience back in time, revealing different parts of his life. This kind of narrative technique had never appeared in films before. However, many later films abandoned the strictly linear narrative, adopting techniques such as flashbacks and flash-forwards in ways that reflect Citizen Kane’s influence on modern storytelling.

    After learning about these techniques, I came to understand why Citizen Kane is regarded as revolutionary. The cinematography, shifts in perspective, and narrative structure illustrate the film’s transformative impact on modern cinema. Ultimately, exploring its innovative techniques allowed me to appreciate how Citizen Kane continues to shape the style and storytelling of modern films.

  • Montage vs. Total Cinema: Rethinking Film Form with Parasite

    In this week’s reading, “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form,” by Sergei Eisenstein, and “The Myth of Total Cinema,” by Andre Bazin, both answer the question “what is cinema?”. 

    Eisenstein believes that the essence of the cinema is the montage.

    Eisenstein defined montage as an idea that arose from the collision of independent shots. He believed that a new meaning is formed in the film when shots collide. Cinema is not just a record or a reenactment of reality, but rather an art form created through manipulation and composition via editing. In this sense, montage can extend beyond stirring emotions: Eisenstein argued that intellectual montage serves not only as an emotional stimulant but also as a vehicle for intellectual dynamization. It pushes people to reach abstract and conceptual ideas through the collision of images in film. 

    Bazin, on the other hand, stated that the essence of the cinema is people’s desire to reproduce reality in film. 

    Cinematic technology was developed to achieve the aspiration of reproducing reality. 

    Bazin argues “…an approximate and complicated visualization of an idea invariably precedes the industrial discovery which alone can open the way to its practical use.” (The Myth of Total Cinema). Total cinema, bringing the complete illusion of life and recreating the world in its own image, is what Bazin defined as the guiding myth that inspired the invention of cinema.

    Both Eisenstein’s and Bazin’s views toward the essence of cinema are shown in the movie Parasite.

    The director Bong Joon Ho recreated reality in film by designing houses and towns that appeared to be real. Each room, window, wall, and staircase was meticulously constructed to look authentic. The production team even recreated the smell of mold and garbage, making the set indistinguishable from reality. The camera could freely move around when characters walked in and out of the house, which made the viewers, as well as the actors, perceive the movie set as real. This corresponds to Bazin’s idea of people’s desire to reproduce reality in film.

    At the same time, new meaning is formed when each shot collides in this film, as Eisenstein argued. The shots for the wealthy family’s house and the Kim family’s semi-basement apartment are colliding throughout the entire movie. For example, the light that the Kim family sees from the street lamp dissolves into the sunlight that the wealthy family sees (Parasite 1:18:09 and 1:18:00). A new meaning is formed through the alternating shots between the semi-basement and the mansion, as it visualizes the conflict of social classes through montage.

    For a closer look at how the production team built the sets to appear almost indistinguishable from reality, see this production video. https://youtu.be/CdD2OnID6hQ?si=5UWGE5O641mZPj2q

  • Windows and Mirrors in All That Heaven Allows

    All That Heaven Allows, directed by Douglas Sirk, utilizes the window and mirror as tools to highlight the contrast between the two characters, Cary Scott and Ron Kirby.

    The window in Cary Scott’s house is small, and when Cary is depicted from outside the building, the window appears like a lattice. The window traps her in societal expectations, leaving her yearning for freedom from people’s gaze. People around her also leave her behind the window, and even push her back into her place whenever she tries to break free from it.

    Screenshot from the film

    However, the window in Ron Kirby’s house is different, starting from its size. It is larger and frames the beautiful scenery of nature. When any character stands in front of this window, we feel a sense of freedom rather than suffocation. The movie ends with Ron and Cary standing in front of the giant window, showing how Cary finally freed herself from the people’s gaze and made a choice for herself. The choices she had made up to now were always for others. However, by choosing to be with Ron, viewers can realize that Cary overcame her fear of society’s judgment and made a decision she truly wanted—for herself.

    Screenshot from the film

    The director also uses a mirror as a tool to show how Cary shapes herself to conform to societal expectations. She doesn’t look into her ego, but rather uses the mirror to see how others might view her. Every time she attempts self-reflection, external interference interrupts her, forcing her back into the role she is expected to play.

    Screenshot from the film

    The question that I want the class to pose is
    1. How does the eyeline match from the mirror scene highlight Cary’s character?
    2. How does the wide shot and deep space amplify Ron’s character?

  • The Art of Mise-en-Scène: How Color Shapes The Grand Budapest Hotel

    I found the video “How The Grand Budapest Hotel Uses Colour To Tell a Story” very interesting because it focuses on the colors highlighted in the film. It is embedded within the mise-en-scène’s elements through aspects such as setting, costume, and lighting.

    The film has a structure of a frame narrative where multiple timelines are present. The film’s use of color and saturation shifts with each time period. The video highlights that in the 1930s, the golden age of the hotel, the film uses colors to establish a distinct mood. Specifically, vivid pinks, purples, and reds are used in the film to create a glamorous and romantic atmosphere. The significance of the era’s color reminded me of the prestige of the Grand Budapest Hotel in its prime throughout the film.

    https://pin.it/2ZH6PnwEQ

    However, the post-war scenes (the 1960s) use calm beige, orange, and pastel blue tones to change the mood, emphasizing the Hotel’s decline and nostalgia for its former glory. The faded colors in the post-war scenes made me feel that the strong identity and prestige of the Grand Budapest Hotel had vanished.

    https://share.google/images/qv05EROCU1AnLBgr7

    The film uses more natural colors when the timeline is in the present, the 1980s. These color and saturation differences from each time period let the audience recognize how the film changes its narrative. The color itself is not an independent element of mise-en-scène; rather, it works together with setting, costume, and lighting. These aspects create an iconic style and atmosphere for each time period in the film.

    The video also mentioned how the aspect ratio changed for each narrative frame. The film used a 1.37:1 ratio in the 1930s scenes, a 2.35:1 ratio in the 1960s, and a 1.85:1 ratio in the 1980s. It was fascinating that the film employed different aspect ratios for each time period, each reflecting the most common ratio of its time. These ratios highlight how mise-en-scène is not only decorative but also a narrative strategy that links the style with historical meaning.

    https://youtu.be/7sSWTK1rnqI?si=cgaFJmb6gGkGcx3D

    Overall, the use of colors and aspect ratios in the film creates a stunning visual experience, one that I highly recommend watching.