The Happiness In Life - Joy Layton

The happiness in life is what Robin Williams is trying to convey in the movie Patch Adams directed by Tom Shadyac. This movie shows people that there is always something good in a bad situation. This movie tells the story of how to overcome one's trials and tribulations and look for the good in people. This movie is based on a true story about a man that really wants to change what is really means to be a doctor and how these relationships are with their patients.

    Patch Adams doesn’t know his place in the world, doesn't know where he belongs.  So he checks himself into a mental hospital and that's where he finds his true calling after he helps a man cope with with his fears.

Finally, Patch knows what he wants to do he wants to help people and he is very determined.  He has seen the way that the doctors were treating people in the mental hospital and he wants that to change he wants the doctors to actually have a relationship with their patients and not for them to be just things but actually people.

    So Patch goes to college to be a doctor, Patch starts with pride and is determined to succeed but not everyone has that plan in mind for him.  Everyone else has a different plan for they think he is immature and not fit to be a doctor because he makes people laugh.

 But little did they know that Patch was going to change the future for doctors everywhere.

Patch is at the top of his class scoring the highest grades than anyone else, that is why everyone despises him and his happy attitude so a lot of people try anything they can to tear him down.  

Patch loves the patients and he can't stay away from the hospital he wants to be there making them laugh and having fun with them.  But the administrator was not having it he told Patch that if he was to continue at this school then he was not to step a foot into the hospital until the third year.  But Patch can’t do that he loves the people too much.

    Patch decided to open his own type of hospital where people can come and stay and be treated and not have to pay for it.  Patch makes a lot of friends when he does it but one more than a friend he falls in love with a girl named Carin (Monica Potter) who gives him the cold shoulder for a while but she warms up to him and helps him with his hospital.

 One day and man came in and Carin felt uneasy about him but Patch took him in anyways but that was a big mistake.  Carin went to his house after a distress call and the man killed her and turned the gun on himself as well.

    Patch was very heartbroken but he didn’t give up.  The administrator tried to get Patch kicked out but Patch wasn’t having that either he took it to the council and won the case.  Patch graduated and changed the face of history.  He opened his own clinic for people without health insurance that way everyone could be treated no matter what.  A sad but very happy ending for a lot of people. Definitely a must watch and a great heart warming movie.

Metropolis? No Thanks - Nikki Anzalone

The year? 2026. The place? Metropolis, a thriving city filled with technological marvels, extensive gardens, and skyscrapers that live up to their name. Not all is well and good in the city however, just beneath the surface lies a dark secret. A society of workers pushed beyond their limits. They themselves treated like mere cogs in a machine, identical, yes, and completely replaceable. This is where Fritz Lang’s Metropolis begins, with a stark contrast between the citizens of above and below, and while Metropolis ultimately blurs those lines the message of the film could not be more clear cut. The movie isn’t particularly groundbreaking for it’s use of the narrative structure, in fact it’s rather transparent and the action drags at times. Nonetheless, it’s a visual spectacle that manages to still hold some water today.

    The story is a simple one that grabs its audience by the hand and drags it through a vaguely science fiction based world. Joh Frederson, played by Alfred Abel, is the leader of Metropolis and he encourages his people to lead frivolous lives that seem to mostly consist of frolicking through plants. His son unfortunately named Freder Frederson (Gustav Fröhlich) is no exception to this. Of course everything changes when Maria (Brigitte Helm) walks into Freder's life with the simple message that the people below are, in fact, people. (It is worth noting that Brigitte is quite possibly the film's greatest treasure). From that point on Freder is determined to be one with his brothers below. It's a pretty straightforward tale of a lower class's struggle to raise itself up to the standards of the elite, which makes sense given the context Fritz Lang has; post WWI Germany. After the war, Germany had a period of insane hyperinflation (in November of 1923 one US dollar was the equivalent of 4,210,500,000,000 marks) that caused the workers to go on strike. At least it would be straightforward if the eccentric inventor Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) hadn't built a robot of Joh's dead wife for reasons more paper thin than the movie's metaphors. Honestly, if that robot wasn't eventually played by Brigette (as part of a pretty half-baked plan to destroy Metropolis) I would not be able to accept its presence. Watching Robo-Maria dance and flail around is about as thrilling as it gets.
     Overall, Metropolis wants its audience to know the importance of emotion in society, which is fairly standard for German expressionism. Let's say though for some reason you didn't get that. Perhaps you missed the quote at the movie's start, “THE MEDIATOR OF THE HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART”. Maybe you also missed each time this was repeated, like when Maria in a beam of grossly symbolic light called Freder the mediator. Or the entire speech about the tower of Babel. Chances are though, unless you were asleep (not out of the question for a two and a half hour movie), you didn't miss it. How could you? Even the illiterate could figure it out as our protagonist is constantly clutching his chest as if he's in the midst of a heart attack (which would admittedly be more exciting).
     It's incredibly difficult for a modern viewer to like Metropolis. Every plot point that, back then, would have been a riveting twist, today, is just another kick to a very dead horse. The camera work is nothing special and is mostly stationary apart from a few "artistic" shots that feel almost out of place. However, this is where the audience can forgive Fritz Lang because Metropolis, for all its downfalls, pioneered a genre. It's predictably stems from its influence on movies today. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the writing isn’t terrible. The compulsive need to walk the audience through any sort of abstract concept is not a great technique to use, well, ever. Overall, Metropolis may not be a great movie, but it is a classic, and that is worth appreciating.