Frank459
30-05-2009, 05:06 PM
Its a scottish film, pretty old but yeah. I've just finished my final draft of the essay so here it is!
------------------------------
“Leaving” Essay
“Leaving is a realistic television drama written by David Boyle and directed by Sandy Johnson. The story follows three fifteen year old boys who live in Greenock. I am going to be writing about two of the boys, Nick and Gus. These boys both have family problems which we sympathise with them regularly. The lives of them are easy to imagine, mainly because the events happen every day in our world, to quite a lot of people.
Nicky is mainly the ‘leader’ of the three, as Jada and Gus look up to him for advice. The audience can sympathise easily with Nicky because of the things he has been through. Two of Nick’s important scenes are when he is a child, he wakes to the silhouettes of his mum and dad arguing following his dad walking out of the house. No young child should have to see this and we feel sorry for him instantly. Another main scene is when the film flashes back and he returns home to find his mother dead on the kitchen floor with a note addressed to him. In this scene, it’s hard to believe that he drags his mum onto the sofa and gets help from his neighbour. Medium close up’s of Nicks face shows the sheer terror and fear in his facial expressions. At the end of the film, he matures to where he is thinking about what to do with the rest of his life. He joins the merchant navy in search of his dad and promises to keep in touch with Jada even though it would cost a lot and take a while to receive any responses back.
The second character is Gus. At first we think of him as a dark, bully like figure because of the colours and music the directed has used. We first see Gus appearing from a dark doorway wearing dark clothing and smoking when Nicky comes out to meet him, but as we continue through the film we realise how vulnerable and weak Gus really is. Two main events for Gus is when he wanders the streets alone and drunk. He then goes to see Jada and questions him about his dad. Gus asks such personal questions because he doesn’t really have any relationship at all with his own father and is jealous that Jada has such a great fatherly role model. In this scene the director uses a number of zooms and low angle shots to show Gus’ reaction to Jada. Another scene for Gus is when two bullies from school offer the three boys a fight and Gus accepts without hesitation. This scene shows a lot of the bottled up anger Gus has inside him and we feel sorry for him when we see how angry and contorted his face is. There must be a reason why he has such a temper and to make him this angry at times. Gus dies towards the end of the film due to drinking too much and choking on his own vomit, yet we still feel sorry for him because he wasn’t able to take much more, and when Jada announces he is going to Canada and Nick is going into the merchant navy, he couldn’t stand to be alone hence why he got himself into such a mess with alcohol. His death has a huge impact on everyone because he still had most of his life to live and he threw it all away.
You can feel sorry for the boys when they go to school because of them getting caned for a wrong answer. The teachers don’t seem to care about the welfare of the students at all! A scene showing this would be in the craft class. A boy slams a hammer and screams out loud pretending to have hurt himself yet the teacher does not shift his eyesight from his newspaper or respond in anyway. The boys wear the same dull, dirty clothes each day which shows that their families are poor. The teachers back then are really strict, and to show this would be when Nick is sent to the girls class and is caned in front of the girls. This is to humiliate him, since when he tries to open the door, his hands are in too much pain and so somebody else had to help him.
In conclusion, I agree that Nick and Gus are believable characters with whom the audience can sympathise. I particularly felt sympathetic towards Nick because he had to go through a lot when he was young – his father leaving and his mum committing suicide, it would have been really hard to cope with for a young lad. The film was generally successful because of the real life resemblance and also because of the great storyline and plot.
------------------------------
Extra information:
Words: 805
Paragraphs: 6
Lines: 60
Characters (No spaces): 3,386
Characters (With spaces): 4,197
Well, thats it really. Predicted grade is a 2-3 (Scottish grade).
:)
------------------------------
“Leaving” Essay
“Leaving is a realistic television drama written by David Boyle and directed by Sandy Johnson. The story follows three fifteen year old boys who live in Greenock. I am going to be writing about two of the boys, Nick and Gus. These boys both have family problems which we sympathise with them regularly. The lives of them are easy to imagine, mainly because the events happen every day in our world, to quite a lot of people.
Nicky is mainly the ‘leader’ of the three, as Jada and Gus look up to him for advice. The audience can sympathise easily with Nicky because of the things he has been through. Two of Nick’s important scenes are when he is a child, he wakes to the silhouettes of his mum and dad arguing following his dad walking out of the house. No young child should have to see this and we feel sorry for him instantly. Another main scene is when the film flashes back and he returns home to find his mother dead on the kitchen floor with a note addressed to him. In this scene, it’s hard to believe that he drags his mum onto the sofa and gets help from his neighbour. Medium close up’s of Nicks face shows the sheer terror and fear in his facial expressions. At the end of the film, he matures to where he is thinking about what to do with the rest of his life. He joins the merchant navy in search of his dad and promises to keep in touch with Jada even though it would cost a lot and take a while to receive any responses back.
The second character is Gus. At first we think of him as a dark, bully like figure because of the colours and music the directed has used. We first see Gus appearing from a dark doorway wearing dark clothing and smoking when Nicky comes out to meet him, but as we continue through the film we realise how vulnerable and weak Gus really is. Two main events for Gus is when he wanders the streets alone and drunk. He then goes to see Jada and questions him about his dad. Gus asks such personal questions because he doesn’t really have any relationship at all with his own father and is jealous that Jada has such a great fatherly role model. In this scene the director uses a number of zooms and low angle shots to show Gus’ reaction to Jada. Another scene for Gus is when two bullies from school offer the three boys a fight and Gus accepts without hesitation. This scene shows a lot of the bottled up anger Gus has inside him and we feel sorry for him when we see how angry and contorted his face is. There must be a reason why he has such a temper and to make him this angry at times. Gus dies towards the end of the film due to drinking too much and choking on his own vomit, yet we still feel sorry for him because he wasn’t able to take much more, and when Jada announces he is going to Canada and Nick is going into the merchant navy, he couldn’t stand to be alone hence why he got himself into such a mess with alcohol. His death has a huge impact on everyone because he still had most of his life to live and he threw it all away.
You can feel sorry for the boys when they go to school because of them getting caned for a wrong answer. The teachers don’t seem to care about the welfare of the students at all! A scene showing this would be in the craft class. A boy slams a hammer and screams out loud pretending to have hurt himself yet the teacher does not shift his eyesight from his newspaper or respond in anyway. The boys wear the same dull, dirty clothes each day which shows that their families are poor. The teachers back then are really strict, and to show this would be when Nick is sent to the girls class and is caned in front of the girls. This is to humiliate him, since when he tries to open the door, his hands are in too much pain and so somebody else had to help him.
In conclusion, I agree that Nick and Gus are believable characters with whom the audience can sympathise. I particularly felt sympathetic towards Nick because he had to go through a lot when he was young – his father leaving and his mum committing suicide, it would have been really hard to cope with for a young lad. The film was generally successful because of the real life resemblance and also because of the great storyline and plot.
------------------------------
Extra information:
Words: 805
Paragraphs: 6
Lines: 60
Characters (No spaces): 3,386
Characters (With spaces): 4,197
Well, thats it really. Predicted grade is a 2-3 (Scottish grade).
:)