Crooklyn Film Analysis PDF

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The assignment was to write a response to a film of our choosing that we saw at The Union Cinema...

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Lori Felker 09/27/2018 Toto- Wizard of Oz Crooklyn

Crooklyn is a coming-of-age film where Troy, the main character of this movie, tries to live her life as a girl with four brothers as her mother, and father worry over monthly bills. Troy is eventually sent to her aunt's home outside of the city against her will for a summer visit. When she returns to her Brooklyn neighborhood, she learns her mother is gravely ill with cancer. Troy is forced to realize the truth of life and loss. The film is snapshot into Troy’s life as she grows up with her semi-dysfunctional family. Because of the financial issues in the family, there was strong tension between the parents towards the beginning of the film. The peak of the tension occurred when the mother kicked out the father. With all the hardships Troy has faced, she had to grow up at such a young age to take over her mother’s role in the family after she passed. Even prior to her mother’s passing, Troy had endured her parent’s financial hardships by going to stores and attempting to steal. Even when she went to bring in food stamps for groceries, she was mugged by a girl she thought was her friend. The point of this film is to display the hardships city kids can go through and how it is handled. The focus is entirely on children as seen from the opening scene of the movie. While the opening credits rolled you can see children playing through the street and all having fun, and there is a small mention to young maturity when the camera pans to two children making out in an alley and the surrounding

children cheered on. Troy learns how to deal with many things within the two-hour film that other modern-day kids still learn to overcome, things like peer pressure and learning to atone for her actions. The end of the film perfectly represents how messy life can be. Instead of the mother dying and having the lives of everyone be changed and ruined, life moves forward. The children are still children, the mother’s responsibilities are just passed on to the father and Troy. The style and form were used expertly in many ways throughout this film. There were many instances of framing that were excellently executed such as: the many instances of framing using the steps in front of the family’s door where groups of boys and girls would go to sit and talk, and when the aunt, Tony, and her cousin were all framed together while praying before bed. The mise-en-scene was also very well accomplished. Various instances of this was seen as the film progressed, especially with the family dinner scenes. Each time there was a family dinner scene, the feeling gradually became darker, which leads me to believe that these scenes led to predict the mother’s death in this film. The first dinner scene was very light-hearted: a typical big family with many youthful children. Then the next, financial troubles were addressed which makes this dinner tense, especially between the parents. The dinner was creatively lit by shutting off the lights and illuminating the scene with skillfully placed candles all around the room, leaving an elegant and heavenly glow through the room. Those candles are what leads me to believe that scene was meant to lead to the mother’s eventual passing. I also really liked how the movie show the occasional teens breathing in substances in the paper bags. It puts in place the setting of the neighborhood and the nature of the older kids in the area. Instead of just having the scene just be those teens smoking, they artistically gave the drugs a visual effect on the screen by rotating the angles of the camera and flipping the scene to be upside-down. This is especially prevalent when the teens force Troy to do it. The effects are extremely chaotic on her as

she is a child, and they chose to represent that by having her float away from the teens and away from the ground. She continues to float towards and away from the camera until the scene changes to her being home. The music in the background also really set that short scene well. The music used throughout the film tended to be happier-toned, even during some of the darker scenes. The music only seemed to cut out or be sad when Tony, or any of the children, were not around. This leads me to assume that the music is used to represent the children’s youth and innocence. Fun music would represent the lack of worry or responsibility that children have perfectly. This film did have me feel very lost for much of the duration. I could not pinpoint a motive or meaning until I contemplated it after the film. This very well could be part of the intention as this is feels somewhat like a little girl’s life in down parts of Brooklyn but compressed within two hours. There was nothing out of the ordinary until the ending scenes, because of her mom getting sick and passing. I also believe the mother’s death was just tossed in at the last minute to add something big to throw Troy off. I think it would be more impactful if we as an audience realized the mom was sick earlier in the film and draw that out to lead better to her passing, instead of essentially killing her off two scenes later. Doing so would show more of Troy’s struggle with coming to terms about her mom’s sickness. The longer sickness period would also provide a better explanation for how Troy was able to quickly pick up the mother role. Troy could learn a few more lessons this way, adding to the coming-of-age aspect of the story. The film also only is two hours, so adding an extra twenty or so minutes to that area would heighten the impact. Overall, I really enjoyed Crooklyn . The actors were all expertly picked and they all performed their roles excellently. The acting never once felt fake, even as some of the side characters were ridiculous. The family really felt like a real family, a big one at that. This film from the 90’s really captured the essence of the 70s era....