Hunt for the Wilderpeople

            “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” is a comedy film that talks about how a man and a boy face their challenges while adventuring in the wilderness for five-months. During this period, their relationships bond and change from not trusting each other into a father and son relationship. They learn from each other and together, they grow. The boy, who is an orphan, learns how to trust people and feel love after joining the family. The old man also learns how to express his love towards others after experiencing lots of challenges with the boy.  It is quite warming when both of them finally admit that they actually care and love each other, although they are so stubborn to show their love from the start. 

            The boy in the movie, Ricky Baker, is a juvenile delinquent who has been abandoned by his mother since he was young. Growing up without the presence of parents, he is insecure and it is uneasy for him to trust anyone. At first, he wants to escape from the house when he joins Bella and Hector’s family. However, it is Bella who makes him stay. She makes him feels love and secure as she really cares about him. Unfortunately, Bella dies unexpectedly. The only one who loves him is gone. Feeling insecure, together with Hector’s remote and the fact that he is going to be taken away by the child welfare, Ricky rans away and starts his life in the wilderness. He would rather live by his own than being send back into the juvenile prison. When he is struggling in the bushes, Hector finds him. As Hector breaks his leg, they are forced to stay in the wilderness for some time. However, Hector is being claimed as a psychotic molester by the people from child welfare, which therefore forces him to hide in the wilderness together with Ricky for five months. During this period, Ricky builds trust on Hector and learns lots of survival skills in jungle from him. He sincerely believes that they could live in the wilderness forever, without being caught by the authorities. However, they finally get caught. Ricky feels betrayed when Hector surrenders. He still wishes to live in this way, but Hector refuses. Feeling angry, he lies that Hector molested him and accidently shoots Hector. Although both of them gets well in the end, from Ricky’s actions, we could tell that he values trust very much. It is hard for him to trust anyone and once he trusts someone, he would not allow betrayal. This relates to his growing environment, where he has no one to reply on except himself. Feeling insecure yet force to be independent, he has learned to reply on himself since young. However, he is still a kid that needs love and caring from others. Therefore, he feels angry when the person he loves and trusts disagrees with him. 

            Hector shows some similarities with Ricky, although they are totally different persons. Being imprisoned before, Hector shuts himself out from other people. He barely has relationship with other people except his wife. Having no child also leads him to lack of the interpersonal skills to deal with younger people. He is quite like Ricky as both of them do not know how to build relationship with people. Ricky’s arrival to the family is not welcomed by Hector. He does not really care about Ricky and feels that he is just a troublesome kid. However, things change when they have to hide from the authorities and stay in the wilderness. After spending time with Ricky, he has built the responsibility to take good care of him. Without knowingly, he starts to act like a father. He teaches Ricky how to survive in the jungle and tries to educate him that becoming a gangster is not correct. In the end when they get caught, Hector surrenders and tells Ricky that he does not want to keep escaping anymore. Deep in his heart, I believe that the real reason that he surrenders is that it would be the best for Ricky. He has learned to love and care about others, same as Ricky. Both of them learn the way to build relationship with others and together, they develop. 

            This story talks about the development of two lonely persons and how they build relationship after going through lots of challenges. It also portrays a message to cherish someone who you love as some people might need to struggle in order to gain a love one.

Grace is gone

            “Grace is gone” is a movie that talks about how a man reacts towards his wife’s death, and how does he prepare in order to tell his daughters the heart-broken news. It portrays how helpless a father is to be forced to disclose the news towards his daughters alone, as he is struggling to find the best way in reducing the pain of his daughters after notifying the news. We can see his changes towards his daughters throughout the journey of taking them to “Enchanted Garden”. He transforms from a strict father towards a more lenient parent as he realizes that he needs to take the role as a mother as well. Besides, he tries to compromise towards things that he used to be disagree with, such as letting his daughters to get piercing, teaching his eldest daughter to smoke and allowing them skip class, in order to cheer his daughters up before hearing about the bad news. In preparing himself to disclose the news towards his daughters, Stanley undergoes five stages of grief. 

            There are five stages in Kubler-Ross model of grief, which indicates how people deal with death. The first stage is denial, where people would refuse to believe the reality. Stanley has shown denial towards the death of his wife, Grace when he refuses to let the army officers to enter his house and stops his daughters from eating the condolence food from the someone. He tries to denial the fact that his wife is death and even takes his daughter away from home to prevent them from hearing the news. He also avoids seeing other people by not going to work to prevent them from saying condolence. Later, he moves to anger stage when he turns out with a fight with his brother when he wants to tell the girls the truth. His emotions are unable and he could easily become frustrated and sad. As we could see, he asks his girls to leave his mother’s house and the motel immediately after he is being triggered by something that could arouse his anger or sadness. Stanley does not show any sign of negotiations in his grieving process. He does not show any wish for wanting his wife to come back by exchanging something he treasures. Instead, he portrays lots of depression, where he shows sadness towards the loss of his wife and feels helpless on dealing with his daughters. He keeps calling back home, just to listen to his wife’s voice on voicemail and tells her his depression and sense of helplessness after losing her. He would cry during the midnight without letting his daughters to figure out. He also rejects others help and instead decides a have a family trip with his daughters. When it comes to the final stage, which is acceptance, he shows his acceptance towards the death of his wife by deciding to tell his daughters the truth. When he is preparing to tell his daughters, he is also preparing himself to accept the truth. Therefore, the journey of him travelling to “Enchanted Garden” with his daughters displays the transition of different stages in grieving towards the death of his wife. Stanley’s grieving process matches with Kubler-Ross’s concept that not everyone will experience each stages of grief.

            Although it is a very touching movie that portrays the love of a father towards his daughters and also people’s grieving towards mortality, I still not very agree with Stanley’s acts in preparing his daughters to accept the truth. He somehow would classical condition his daughters to relate sadness as consequences of enjoying happiness. All the changes he has done, such as travelling with daughters, allowing them to do what they want and more are because of one reason: he wants to prepare them to accept the sad news. So, in future, when he acts differently again, his daughters might think that something bad happens again and it may be hard for them to believe that his changes of attitude is an act of love from a father. Their happy memories in “Enchanted Garden” might be replaced with sadness and despair. Due to these possible outcomes, I disagree with Stanley’s way in disclosing the news although he is desperate and helpless at that period. Something better could be carry out if he could seek help. However, his changes of parenting is good as it is the critical period where the children need more love rather than rules.

Amadeus

            Amadues is a movie that describes the life of a genius and a mediocrity. Mozart, the genius and Salieri, the mediocrity portray different personalities, together with their values towards lives. Both obtain glories and suffers, which therefore indicates life is equal. Genius will not always hold the privilege and mediocrity will not reach as high as the genius no matter how hard they try. Many people seem to admire the life of a genius as they could produce lots of excellent products without hard work. However, not many of them understand that staying normal is also a gift of God. Each person will eventually face with their life struggles, no matter which form of people they are. Contentment and strong determination would be the keys that help people to sustain through the end.

            Mozart, the genius in the movie, shows extreme talent towards music. He is famous since he was young and has produced lots of opuses throughout his whole life. His talents and persistence towards music make him the one of the best composer in that era. People enjoy and appreciate his work even until today. However, geniuses are also human. As a human, they must take their responsibility as children, parents and even grandparents. Mozart, in this movie, does not qualify himself as a good son, husband and father. Being a genius, he is always a step, or even a few steps faster than other people, which therefore leads him to become conceit and arrogant. These also contribute to his poor relationship with his colleagues as he thinks that he is the best of them all. His arrogant and poor social skills lead him to lose his job and have difficulty to support the family. Besides, his extravagance also leads his entire family to have difficult time. “He spends more than he earns”, as his wife says. He would spend lots in money in attending parties and buying wines, which are not good attitudes of a husband and father. He is passion towards music, however, his intolerance and vulnerability towards life difficulties bring him down and cause him dies. These therefore suggest that genius is not perfect. They still need to deal with their struggles and difficulties.

            Salieri, the mediocrity presenter in the movie, also shows talent in music. However, his talent has been overcovered by Mozart. He is the court composer for emperor, but he could not produce the same quality work as Mozart. On the same time, he is being convinced by Mozart’s talent. He appreciates his work but his ego stops him to be a true friend of Mozart when he recognizes he is a lot better than him. Unwilling to become the mediocrity, he questions God and thinks that He has abandoned him by showing a true genius in front of him. Having the feelings of admiration and hatred, he is also suffering and plans a lot of things that unconditionally lead Mozart to suffer and die. The outcome would be different if he is willing to put aside his ego and accept Mozart as friend. They could be good friends and together, they could produce lots of good music. By accepting his own ability and Mozart’s talent, he would not suffer until the end of his life. 

            This movie displays a life of a mediocrity in overcoming his fear towards a genius. It is also sending a lesson towards people, where we should be satisfied with what we have and prevent ourselves from chasing after things that do not belong to us. Everyone has a different life. We do not need to be envy on higher achievement’s people or look down on people who are not better than us. Sometimes, being normal is also a way of gaining happiness.