Word: mona
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...Mona Lisa...
...Mona Lisa...
...film is filled with heavyhanded symbols of societal oppression and the universal urge to free oneself from convention, and the director's major problem is that she cannot quite decide whether Mona is a person or a symbol. The fact that we learn nearly nothing about her personal history and that she rarely speaks or thinks would indicate that she is a metaphor, not an individual. But occasionally, Varda strays from her reservedly elegant direction and portrays Mona in human-dilemma situations. These are often very moving in themselves. For example, just as Mona begins to develop a believable emotional...
...inconsistency of the film, not the weakness of specific moments, that detract from its effectiveness. At the end of the film, Varda suddenly and incongruously makes us feel sad when we watch Mona sicken, cry and freeze. One could try to explain away this sadness as a more universal quality than just sympathy for a pathetic girl. Maybe what you feel is regret at man's mortality and realization of the unavoidable limits of freedom, but this is pushing...
...atmosphere--the way it turns bleak, open stretches of landscape into symbols of freedom, and thus manages to turn a young girl's random travels into a symbolic human odyssey. Until the end, you feel the movie is as much about the people she's met as about Mona herself, with a little about humanity in general thrown in. Mona's death scene at the end of the film completely destroys the subtle mood it has worked so hard to create, but regardless of the disappointing end, the fascinated detachment with which you watch this film is different and more...