Beijing bicycle

China, one of the largest countries in terms of land mass also has the largest population in the world. It is surrounded by the East China Sea, Korea Bay, South China Sea and Yellow Sea. China’s vast landmass experiences different climates ranging from subtropical in the south to subarctic in the north. The geographical terrain of china ranges from configuration of broad plains, expansive deserts, and lofty mountain ranges, including vast areas of inhospitable terrain. The eastern half of the country, its seacoast fringed with offshore islands, is a region of fertile lowlands, foothills and mountains, deserts, steppes, and subtropical areas. The western half of China is a region of sunken basins, rolling plateaus, and towering massifs, including a portion of the highest tableland on earth. Despite all the diversity in the landmass of China, their population is mostly situated on the coastline cities. The booming economy also contributes to an influx of people moving to the city areas. More and more people are seeking better opportunities in the city’s factories, service industry and booming real estate developments. The movie” Beijing Bicycle” showed number of high rising buildings being built around the whole city.
The movie introduces a young man who comes from outside of Beijing in search of a better job opportunity in the city. He starts working for a delivery service on bicycle. His motivation for the job is he will own the bike as soon as he pays it off. Working towards owning his first possession, he is really attached to the bike. When he starts his job, the manager starts explaining job requirements. The way he talks to the employees, draws attention to how the City people treat people from other parts of the country. The manager’s behavior and attitude resonates that he thinks the employees can never be comparable to him in terms of social status. As the young man loses his bike, he becomes stubborn to find it and tries to track down his bike. Most of the people in Beijing use bikes for their day to day activities and the city are swarmed with bikes. To find one bike out of millions is quite impossible. The movie shows how people use bikes for activities such as going to school or work, shopping. In one scene, it shows two people trying to carry a fridge on the back of a bike.
The movie also introduces a school student who lives in the slumps of Beijing. People live in close small quarters and use common facilities for cooking and cleaning. The young school kid is desperate to get a bike, but his father cannot afford it. So he steals money and coincidentally buys a stolen bike from the second hand market. But when the owner, the delivery service guy, tracks down this bike, he tries to run away with it. For a long time in the movie, they both try different means to get the bike to themselves. Such is the importance of the bike to them; they even fight over it for a long time. After series of events, they make an arrangement of using the bike every other day.
At the end of the movie, the owner of the bike carries a broken bicycle on his shoulder on his shoulder thru traffic. On the background, the bikes were in a distant view and cars of different company swarmed the street. The director tried to paint the picture of rapid economical change and environmental changes that are taking place in China. The mean of transport which dominated the backdrop is quickly fading and making way for the automotive industry. He also tried to create the sense of moving forward accepting the changes than to cling on to outdated technology.

Eat,Drink,Man, Woman

The main island of the archipelago is Taiwan Island, which comprises about 98 % of the current jurisdiction of the Republic of China; the other 2 % consists of the smaller islands of the archipelago - Orchid Island and the Pescadores, along with the tiny islets - Green Island and Hsiao Liuchiu. The archipelago is separated from mainland China by the Taiwan Strait, which ranges from 220km at its widest point to 130km at its narrowest point. Taiwan is bounded by the Bashi Channel in the south, the East China Sea in the north, and the Pacific Ocean in the east. The climate on the island is generally marine and varies widely by season in the Northern part and the mountain areas. The South, however, belongs to the tropical belt and is warm and humid all year. From May to June Taiwan experiences almost daily showers.
The movie “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman” directed by Ang Lee really painted a picture of life in Taiwan. It tells a story of a widower trying to maintain his relationships with his daughters. The old man plays a master chef who is really enthusiastic about his culinary. The movie focuses on the lives of his daughters and how the subsequent events affect his life.
The movie starts of with the old man working on a Friday banquet just for his daughters. The idea of family getting together for weekly dinner and sharing important announcements are tied together to their family values. But still they provide everyone with sense of privacy in terms of career paths they choose. One of the daughters’ works for an Airline Company, one of them is a teacher and another one works at a fast food restaurant.
Even though they family practices traditional Taoism, the prominent religion in Taiwan, they are also free to have different religious beliefs. The older daughter goes to church, offers prayer before she is having a meal. While others do not participate in, they still respect each other.
Taiwan has been a democratic state and participated in trade relations all over the globe. They are an important player in the capitalistic economies and the movie portrays that. Throughout the movie, references are made to people who left for United States for higher education or just living in the United States. The airline company is involved in deals in Netherlands and Australia. The booming economy in Taiwan also introduced the factor of people trying to move away from family homes to city apartment complexes. In one scene, the second daughter makes an announcement at dinner that she will be moving to a new luxury apartment in the city.

Veer Zaara

“Veer –Zaara” an epic Indian love story which was filmed at the northern region of India known as Punjab. This region is distinct based on the geography and culture from rest of India. The movie created and displayed cultural similarities between India and Pakistan. Throughout the movie there is noticeable use of English words or sentences. As the whole sub continent was ruled by the British Empire for nearly a century, the strong influence is noticeable. After the ruling of British Empire, the sub continent was divided into regions. Areas with high concentration Hindus was part of India and high concentration of Muslims became Pakistan. A mass exodus followed during the period of separation. A conflict between the two neighboring countries exists still now and three different wars have not built any bridges to mend their viewpoints. This movie was created to enforce the idea of similarities between the two cultures and change the preconceived notion of the youth.
The region of Punjab in Northern India is fueled by agriculture. Their weather is suitable for wheat, sunflower, mustard seed cultivation and in the movie vast fields of mustard seed flowers can be seen. The tractor is a common way of transportation for the village folks. The movie also focuses on how the people in villages have to take own initiative in order to prosper. There is a strong sense of community ties in the movie portrayed by the whole village. In a scene where the actor, Veer, is coming into the town, the entire village gathers round to welcome him. The movie also sheds light on their cultural and family values.
In both of the countries, the society is male dominated and roles of women are limited to household duties and responsibilities. The women are deemed to play a role of good daughter and sister before getting married. After marriage, only role for them is to be an ideal wife and mother. Women going to school for education and doing a job is viewed unreasonable. In the movie, when the actress, Zaara, goes to the village and asks the village elder about why he has worked so hard for the male students’ education; but at the same time crippled any chance for girls’ education in the village. The present day culture is much more liberal about women rights. But still the women face scrutiny in different professions. The lawyer, Saamiya gets her first case after years of working as an associate. But the case is deemed impossible to win and despite the case being a low profile case, the government asks one of their best lawyers to represent the Government. Saamiya describes the situation to her colleague as the government’s attempt to nip the bud on her becoming an inspiration to women.
The movie portrays the culture of arranged marriage which is still a practiced tradition. The practice of Dowry, a promised amount of money paid to the groom’s family, still exists in both cultures. The idea of respecting elders and parents goes above and beyond one’s own preferences. In the movie, Zaara agrees to marry someone else for the sake of her family’s reputation and to obey her father’s wishes. In one scene, where Zaara’s mom visits veer, shows the respect he has for her. He instantly agrees to obey her wishes and even makes Zaara understand that they cannot be together. This scene epitomizes the sense of respect he has for obeying an elder that he is willing to leave his beloved.
This movie was made to create a sense of acceptance and similarities between the cultures and appreciate each other’s subtle differences. India and Pakistan not only share boundaries, but also have overlapping cultures. The new generation appreciates and accepts these facts and does not drag bad memories of the past while interacting with each other. The movie succeeds in achieving the feat of conveying these messages.

Run Lola Run

“Run Lola Run” is an innovative movie which does not qualify under certain norm of Genre. A fast paced movie where the plot line is simple: Lola needs to get hundred thousand marks for her boyfriend who owes the mob in twenty minutes. The director rather chose three alternate versions of storytelling and endings for the audience than mainstream movies. The movie had an extensive use of techno music which is a great part of German culture and lifestyle. Animation was also used in the movie extensively.
“Run Lola Run” builds upon the idea of minuscule things occurring affect the following events significantly with greater consequences. As Lola decides to help her boyfriend Mani, she starts running towards a certain location. She runs across the city of Berlin rather than taking the possible subways, or cabs available on the street. The major transportation modes for people in Berlin were either the trains or cars or cabs.
The cultural aspect depicted in the movie illustrates the family values are quite westernized. Lola’s parents both were unhappy in their marriage and were having discreet affairs. Also, in the first scenario, when Lola asks her dada to help her out, he vents his frustration about not being appreciated at home and wants to leave the family to start a new family. He also refuses to help her and kicks her out. In the subsequent scenario, he is reluctant to give her the money. The lack of bond between family members is visible in the movie. But people not related to her family are quick to dish out advice in regards to what is right or wrong. In contrast to lack of communication and bond between families, strangers help out people like when Lola was crying, a strange old woman approached her and asked why she is crying. Also, Mani is helped by another old lady who gives him a phone card to help him out in distress. A sense of social responsibility exists in people. The homeless person, who finds the bag full of money in the train, buys another stranger food as he meets at a roadside industry.
Casino is also a huge part of German society and in the movie it creates an atmosphere where only high end people are deemed acceptable to gamble at a casino. A certain sense of dress etiquette and behavior is acceptable. Lola in the third scenario, when she runs in to the casino draws questionable looks as of her appearance and demeanor. The security is signaled to remove her from the casino as they feel she is bothering the whole casino’s guests.
In one scene, when Lola robs her dad’s bank, her dad refers to the cameras recording everything and the police would arrest her any minute. To that she replies that police are always late. But as soon as she walks out, she sees police cars and swat teams ready to move in. She could not believe her eyes. The response time for the police to arrive to a crime scene is usually long. The movie also depicts the strong mob connection and dealings in Germany.

Good bye Lenin

Situated in the center of Europe, Germany is seventh largest country in Europe. It shares border with more countries than any other in the continent. Its neighbors are Denmark in the north, Poland and the Czech Republic in the east, Austria and Switzerland in the south, France and Luxembourg in the south-west and Belgium and the Netherlands in the north-west. After the Second World War, Germany suffered huge territorial losses as it was occupied by the Allied forces. Regions controlled by the United States, France and United Kingdom merged and created Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union controlled territory established German Democratic Republic. They were informally known as "West Germany" and "East Germany" and the two parts of Berlin as "West Berlin" and "East Berlin".
“Good Bye Lenin” focused on the life of East Germans just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Christiane Kerner dedicated her life to the perpetuation of Communist Party Ideology. She creates the perfect portrayal of East Germans before the fall of the “Berlin Wall”. She works her whole life teaching the ideologies of communism and truly believes the principles of communism are the best way for East Germans to prosper. In a scene, Christiane is helping a neighbor write a petition, she gets her point across about capitalism and western influence in a dry sarcastic manner clearly indicating her believes about the West.
The movie takes a twist when she witnesses her son, Alex, being arrested by the Police and she suffers a heart attack. The scene where her son gets arrested clearly shows how the Police were beating people who gathered for a protest. Any demonstrations against the Government are not permitted under the Communist ideology and anyone involved in such demonstrations could be arrested and prosecuted.
As Christiane suffered a heart attack and was comatose, the borders between East and West Germany fell, the wall collapsed and people were migrating to the West for better opportunities. The official end of the cold war happened. A society under communistic government is denied many different amenities such as types of media coverage such as movies, news and radio programs. So when the Berlin Wall fell and the amenities of capitalism and western influence hit the East Germany society, they embraced it. In one scene, Alex walks into a video store and sees a group of people watching an X rated movie in public. This scene illustrates the cultural gap between both societies and how the adjustment process works when trying to adapt new things into the culture.
In the movie, Alex tries to protect his mother suffering from another potential heart attack if she gets too excited or surprised. It would be devastating for a person who has worked her whole life teaching the principles of communism and who believed in those principles, to see them fail in front of her eyes. Knowing this, Alex tried to protect her from the truth about the fall of the Berlin wall and reunification of Germany. In one scene, the building opposite to them has this huge advertisement of “Coca-cola” and Christiane gets surprised to see an ad of western product in East Germany. Alex and his friend create this false news report explaining the incident with the advertisement in a typical East German news way. This scene shows the idea of news in the communistic East Germany was to downgrade the Western ideas and products and also create conspiracy theories to support their claims. In the movie, they claimed in the mock-news that Coca-cola was an East German invention and the formula was stolen by the West.
The capitalistic influence drew businesses and organizations into East Germany and their products, services were available everywhere. McDonalds opened up stores in East Berlin and Alex’s sister started working there. When Christiane wanders into the street one day, she notices all the cars around her are mostly BMWs; there are advertisements of “IKEA” all around the roads, large billboards on buildings.
The induction of western products and services drove out the ghosts of communism in Germany. The scene where the statue of Lenin is being carried away in air, symbolized the end of communism and arrival of capitalism.

"My Sassy Girl"-Korea

The Korean cultural structure is based on the teachings of Confucianism principles. The movie” My Sassy Girl” describes certain aspects of what the Koreans believe. Their beliefs resonate through their actions and the characters in the movie really show those principles in practice. Koreans respect their elders and are obedient to their commands even if the command is ridiculous. The narrator saves and intoxicated girl on the subway. In the course of event, she manages to throw up all over an older person. Furiously the old man orders the narrator to take her home and the narrator obeys his order even though, he does not even know her. After carrying her off the train, the narrator contemplates on leaving the girl at the station; but the sense of social responsibility stops him from doing so. The narrator takes her to a motel so that they don’t have to stay on the street. In going through her bag to find out more about the girl, the narrator finds her ID and discovers she is younger than him. The next morning he asks her not to talk to her in a rude manner as he is older than her, and treat him with respect. The narrator also witnesses the girl telling off some younger girls whom she suspected of providing services to wealthy gentlemen at a bar. They believe the social responsibility falls upon everyone in the society and it is an obligation to fulfill those duties.
As the narrator goes home and even though he is an engineering student enrolled in a college, he still lives with his parents. This is a common practice in their culture and people tend to live in extended families with parents and even grandparents. There is an environment and tradition of younger family member staying with older ones in order to learn etiquette. The narrator’s dad spies on his son and even asks him about his internet activities in order to control and mold their characters. One more characteristic of their culture is to beat up their kids if they make mistakes. The narrator describes that his mother will beat him up with whatever that is in her hands.
Korean society system is a male-dominated society. One scene, where a runaway soldier meets up with the narrator and the girl, he describes her as being the evil one for getting involved in an affair with one of his colleagues. In a male-dominated society, women are more scrutinized for their mistakes than men.
Throughout different phases of their lives, they follow the teachings of Confucianism. Starting from infancy, they are under parental control. In a scene, when the girl brings the narrator to her home, her parents forbid him to see her anymore. To respect her parents’ wishes, they stop seeing each other for a while. Then there is a woman whom we see at the very end, the narrator’s aunt, she persistently asks the narrator to visit her and meet a girl. His aunt wishes to arrange his marriage to someone she knows. This is a very common practice in Asian cultures and most marriages are arranged by the families.

Train man

The movie “Train Man” paints a clear picture of Japanese culture and its functions throughout. Inspired by a true story which started on a bulletin board, the movie is a light hearted romantic comedy. It depicts various norms of Japanese life and cultures. The lead character is called Otaku, a computer geek, who is submerged in his own world and feels comfortable only when he is alone or wandering around different gadget stores in city of Akhibara. In one scene, there is a package sitting on his bed, and throughout the whole movie, no family member is even shown. He lives in his own bubble – isolated, with minimum interaction at work and most of his interactions are with online chat room, bulletin board friends. He gets ignored at work and even by a roadside vendor who is selling cosmetic products because of his appearance.
The movie shifts gear when Otaku saves a group of women from harassment by a drunken guy on the train. This is the first time he interacts with people in real life rather than on his computer. In that scene, he asks the drunken guy to back off and leave the women alone. Even though, it might seem a feeble attempt on part of Otaku to save the women from harassment, one has to consider the culture. Japanese culture does not allow people to be involved in inappropriate behavior, and it is the duty of everyone to maintain the social tranquility. Exceptions are made if alcohol is involved. And in that scene, the person was clearly intoxicated and such behavior on his part was normal. In the next scene, when the police was taking statements from Otaku and the group of women, Otaku started to walk away right after getting done with his statement. But one of the women came up to him and asked his address so that she can send him a thank you gift. He wrote down his address and in the meanwhile kept on apologizing to the woman as his actions lead to everyone being at the police station. The idea is to take care of everyone in the society and fulfill their duties towards one another in order to keep the harmony.
Then as Otaku receives a supposedly expensive tea set “Hermes” from the woman at the train station, he becomes excited and confused. His online friends suggest him to ask her out. In order to impress her, he takes their suggestion of various changes in himself like hairstyles, wardrobe etc. But living in the flashy and false persona became difficult for Otaku and he initially gave up trying to be with the girl anymore. Then, he got inspired by the words of his online friends who helped him along the way and in many ways, he helped them change. He ran through the Akhibara gadget section to find her. The place where he used to spend all his time just became a backdrop in the scene as he was running towards something much more meaningful and important. Otaku’s character is quite contrast to drawing the idea of a male-dominated society which the Japanese society in general represents. In one scene, when Otaku is waiting for the girl outside of her building, she comes out with her colleagues. Rather than waiting for her, the Japanese guy tells the other colleague to just keep walking.

Le Grande seduction

"Le Grande Seduction" movie illustrates the issue faced by a small town in Canada which draws attention to struggling fishing business. The first scene in the movie creates a fairy tale vibe of how the small community used to be when the fishing business was at its peak. Due to the environmental problems, the business of fishing slowly diminished. A fairy tale ending was in the view of the main actor to return back to the way things were. But reality check was when all the towns household had to rely on welfare checks to sustain.

The movie really focuses on the functions of a small town and how desperately all the town folks wanted to have a hard working job rather than collecting welfare. The issues which rose were unavailable workforce even to start a factory, no qualified doctors in the town and the bank's unwillingness to grant a loan because of lack of collateral. Faced with all these uncertainties, town folks wanted to leave in search of better living conditions.

This movie really creates the small town lifestyle and problems faced by the fishing business community located on the coast of Canada's Quebec region. The only mean of transport is by boat to the unattached island community . The bank shown in the movie is so small that even the bank could replace the manager by an automatic machine.

The only hope for the town folks to work and sustain a better living condition is to have a doctor sign a contract which will enable them to fulfill a major requirement of establishing a factory.

The little girl who sold the sun

“The little girl who sold the sun” draws comparison between global market competitions among different nations of the world. A crippled girl called Sili represents a Senegalese economy while the street boys represent the competition. Sili manages to get into newspaper selling on the street where aggression is only the way of survival and those who are weak do not seem to have any chance. A dead kitten on the side of the road symbolizes the fierce competitive environment.

The first scene in the movie holds out a clear image of life in Senegal. A woman is wrongly accused on the street and arrested, while everyone else watches the show. Membety tried to create a picture of the injustice in society. Another scene in which Sili is trying to buy things and a police officer just accuses her of getting the money in an illegal way.

A different approach to sales pitch of Sili attracts a clientele which then turns into a turf war later and everyone trying a cutthroat approach in order to regain competitive advantage. But her clientele actually go out of their way to buy her papers and she becomes financially independent. The director symbolized the independence of Senegal from the use of French Franc as suggested by The Sun as the same as Sili’s financial independence. Sili represented a new Senegal, moving towards improvement in their economy leaving behind the chaos, anarchy, injustice, corruption which essentially crippled the country’s economy.