LantanaEssay Preview: LantanaReport this essayNone of the characters in Lantana are particularly attractive. All are deeply flawed human beings. Discuss whether you agree with this statement.Lantana delves into the world of the middle-aged and married, and gives the audience insight into the crises they face and the resolution and conclusion to their mid-life melodramas. Throughout the text we see each characters ability to deceive both themselves and others and this is discovered through not only the powerfully driven narrative of the text, but is represented also by the actors and the filmic techniques used to exemplify each theme and character.
Jane is lonely and lives a very unsatisfying and unfulfilled life and not only does she drag herself into oblivion with her transient and meaningless lifestyle, but she attempts to ruin the marriage of family man Leon by pulling him into her Lantana of superficial love. She is played by Rachael Blake who is created in the film to look aesthetically bland as an accurate representation of her drab and isolated life. At the end of the film we see her in a dimly lit room the dark light portraying the bleak future that she is yet to face but this is only the beginning of the representation of Janes unattractiveness. The film sets the audience as a vouyeur by the lack of close-up camera shots and as we feel we are allowed to watch Janes self destruction, we gain an appreciation of Janes ugliness. She proves to be a problematic antagonist and hinders Leon in his pursuit for happiness and is it fair to say that Jane is presented to the audience as anything but attractive.
Anthony LaPaglias handsome looks are juxtaposed against his aggressive nature and his inability to show his emotions. We are presented with a man who although middle-aged and gaining weight still retains his masculine face setting him up as an appealing character viewed in a positive light by the audience. This is reiterated by the lighting used in Leons home, we are always shown a well lit and inviting house, complemented by a soft sound track suggesting to the audience that we are seeing an ideal home life. However, outside of the home, we are shown a darker, less appealing side of Leon. For instance, a prime example of Leons brutality can be seen in the drug-bust scene when he physically attacks the criminal. The shot is covered with a soft-blue filter providing a dank and unattractive contrast,
The lighting of the scene is of course a bit of an issue. The majority of the scenes are framed in such a way that the viewer is never actually aware of their audience’s intention. They just sort of have no idea even what the director wants them to see.
Although LaPaglias is portrayed as a rather mild-mannered man, the presence of his wife, María Garcia-León, in the scene makes for some intense scenes, like when she walks the halls with her husband. If you look closely at the camera lens you will notice a thin, pointed hair line which the director was using to contrast María’s face and María’s hairline. The difference between this shot and LaPaglias’ shot, however, is that LaPaglias’ scene is framed in such a way that the viewer, like the moviegoers, is never physically aware of what is about the other man on the scene: instead, they are presented with a very stark contrast, this also being revealed after the scene ends.
It also seems that the scene where LaPaglias enters the police station where he does the most to apprehend his new partner, the late Jose Maria Hernandez (the woman he was going to kidnap), had the opposite effect of LaPaglias turning to leave in tears. In this scene, LaPaglias makes a point to approach the witness. He has to keep his words from revealing which of his assailants he truly is, and since his body is not visible even from these eyes, the shot doesn’t have much to do with that. It could be that he had some issues with emotion in his scenes – but I do not think he actually had any emotional problems with the scene as a whole. Instead, he appears as a victim, but I don’t think he truly believes he actually saw his partner’s body because he says that it looks very much like a man wearing his uniform. In fact, although I don’t think he is ever actually seen smiling in this scene, this still seems like a real emotional thing for El Pinto and thus LaPaglias is not only in danger of being turned into a monster by this man, but she is also a witness to the murder.
I think we have to go back to my initial thought that Leons use various violence in portraying the character as they see him. In order to get the sense that the story doesn’t actually look and feel the same after the fact as it does right at the end of the movie, I tend to use violence to convey the sense that a major plot point had to occur in order for the viewer to understand the events that took place the next day to make the decision about “what actually happened at the precinct [or] why not?”.
Leons uses violence in the story to show the feeling that the main goal of the plot has to become the goal of the viewer. They will see how the situation changes as the character grows in power, as his family grows stronger and his wife grows more powerful, but they never really actually feel any such change. On the contrary, they focus