Two Days, One Night and The Bling Ring are two completely different films that share many commonalities. Two Days, One Night shows the story of a woman named Sandra and her struggle to find support from coworkers to keep her job. The movie has a very repetitive feel, as it shows the full scene of Sandra first meeting the individual to her leaving once she gets her response. According to RC Psych, "Each of Sandra’s encounters with her colleagues is filmed in real time with hand held camera shots, which bring an authenticity to the encounters that is very effective in conveying the difficult emotions present in each encounter". The movie seems to repeat itself to show the changes that occur within Sandra through every response. The dialogue and atmosphere of the scenes may be very similar every time, but Sandra is not. The movie is filmed with a lot of barriers, such that the position of the camera shows the viewers if the person is going to side with her and give up their raise for her job, or if they are not. These barriers show a clear distinction between Sandra and the other person and the positions they are in. According to Valeriy Kolyadych, "Two Days, One Night focuses primarily on the struggle for economic security, the dehumanization of laborers, and the supplantation of social relationships for economic relationships". The entire movie is a story of Sandra and her value and self worth and her struggle to overcome weakness. By the end of the movie, Sandra is offered her job back but only at the expense to another worker. She declines and walks away into the distance. By quitting, Sandra has shown that she has value since her job seems to think otherwise. They tell her that they are able to do her work easily with her gone. This movie shows the whole idea of conflict, as the struggling economy is in conflict with her value. If she had stayed, she would not have any value, therefore by leaving her job, she has broken free from the repetitive cycle and has now shown herself that she is worth something of value. Unlike Two Days, One Night, a story centered around the struggle of poverty, The Bling Ring is surrounding the idea of wealth. Two Days, One Night shows the value of working hard for what you want, while The Bling Ring is centered around the idea of entitlement. It tells the story of a group of brand obsessed, materialistic, social media obsessed friends and their crimes of breaking into the homes of celebrities and stealing anything they can take. The movie has a very repetitive feel, just like Two Days, One Night, as it shows the repetition between the group breaking into houses, stealing things, partying, and doing it all again within the next few days. Being filmed like this allows us to notice the changes in the characters throughout the film, especially with the main character Marc. According to Adam Nayman, "the sudden conflation of two primal urges—adolescent yearning and class envy—reconfigured global interpersonal communication". This means that the impact of fame and that idea of wanting fame changed the characters. As the movie progresses, Marc becomes more involved with the crimes and his attitude towards the actions become much more relaxed. The movie focuses a lot on the impact of adrenaline, fame, and the impact of some formal scenes. Unlike Two Days, One Night, this movie takes place in Hollywood, a town filled with celebrities and a lot of money. Hollywood seems to be a place where the image of reality and reality are often confused, leaving people (especially the characters) feeling like they are living in some type of fantasy world where horrible things cannot happen. This becomes very prominent when a video of the group breaking into a home makes the news, and the group is rewarded with fame and publicity. This is also shown by the group receiving new clothes and materials every time they break into a home. According to David Fear and his conversation about the director and the movie, "she picks up on the idea that these kids are so celebrity-obsessed that they believe some of that star power will rub off if they don the actual celebrity raiments". The movie also shares this common theme with Two Days, One Night which is centered around the idea of zero sum. This means that there is only so much of something to go around, or so the characters think. In Two Days, One Night, the characters believed this theme when they refused to support Sandra thinking that they might lose their jobs if she didn't since there is only a limited amount of jobs. In The Bling Ring, the characters believe that if others have fame, then they do not have any, therefore focusing on this idea that fame is finite. Similar to Two Days, One Night, The Bling Ring has a fairly casual camera view, which makes viewers feel as though they are a part of the movie. Both movies are centered around the idea of friendship, but in two completely different ways. In Two Days, real friends are there for you when you are in need, but in The Bling Ring, friendship is just fake, which is shown when Rebecca quickly sells out her friends to avoid punishment. The movies have a common theme relating to critiquing the world we live in, and not just the characters. In Two Days, we see how money can overcome people and cause us to not count people for anything of value, and in The Bling Ring, we see the idea of entitlement and wealth overcoming the values of right and wrong. The scene below of The Bling Ring presents a very common filming technique. It features the group, in a club, with lots of non-diegetic sound, such that the characters are not hearing what we hear. By filming it like this, and with this white noise that seems to cover the characters, it allows us to truly zoom in and focus on the interactions between the characters and their emotions. Since the music does not have lyrics, and since the characters are filmed in slow motion, we are able to focus on the faces of the characters and are able to watch their movements to interpret the emotion that they are feeling, whether it is easily seen or not. In this scene below of Two Days, One Night, we are able to spot the barrier between Sandra and the man as she approaches him at the soccer field. The barrier that the director used was the fence. This barrier is used much lower as opposed to other scenes where the barrier splits the scene in half. By doing this, we are able to see that from the start, Sandra and this man are not too different. We see that by the end of this scene, the barrier is broken as the man begins to break down and cry on the fence therefore showing that the disconnectedness between Sandra and her coworker had been broken, and they are now on the same team. We can also notice that this scene, like almost all of the others, is filmed in one continuous shot from the moment that Sandra arrives to the moment that she receives her answer. This allows us to see every struggle that Sandra is going through and how repetitive and strenuous doing this is for her. RC Psych: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/discoverpsychiatry/blogzone/mindsonfilmblog/twodays,onenight.aspx Valeriy Kolyadych: http://www.popmatters.com/review/196742-two-days-one-night/ Adam Nayman: http://cinema-scope.com/currency/bauble-heads-sofia-coppolas-the-bling-ring/ David Fear: http://www.indiewire.com/2013/06/stephanie-zacharek-and-david-fear-discuss-sofia-coppolas-the-bling-ring-37627/
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