Slusarczyk on Anne Hathaway 44: An
Analysis of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ from ‘Les Misérables’
Sometimes actresses do not get to decide what lines they say. If they have to
say certain things they cannot communicate with us with the words they say so
they have to communicate with how they say the words they say.
This film is about poverty. The song is about dreams. The performance is about
insanity, a type of dream.
Firstly poverty and dreams are related because poor people dream a lot. They
dream about being rich. They dream about living in mansions and driving
supercars. Ruch people do not dream of living in mansions because they live in
mansions. They do not dream about driving supercars because they drive a
supercar every day. Poor people dream more because they have less and the less
you have the more you can dream of having.
The actress walks us through a psychotic break over the course of this song.
First she is so quiet she is whispering and then she starts singing beautifully
when she gets to the line ‘I dreamed a dream’. That means the singing
beautifully is dreaming so the quiet beforehand was not dreaming. She is sane
at the start of the song and then she becomes insane.
After that there is a word ‘shame’ which increases in volume dramatically so
that is talking about the intensity of the dreams, the insanity, increasing.
After that is a line that is breathless so she falls in love with the insanity
which is bound to happen if the delusions are delusions of grandeur. To start
with their insanity is fun but it soon changes.
Then there is a line about her childhood being taken from her and she says the
line incredibly angrily so the insanity is ruining her life and that makes her
angry. She fell in love with the psychosis so she spent ages doing it so she
stopped living because she spent all her time in her head. After that there is
a particularly loud line with an especially loud word ‘cannot’. So if it is
loud she is trying really hard so she is trying to get rid of the insanity but
the word is cannot so she tries really hard to get rid of the insanity but she
can’t do it.
Finally there is a line where she is crying so she can’t force the insanity out
of her head so she starts crying because she has to accept that she is crazy
now.
Over the course of this song there are a lot of lines that are whispered. The
start of the song is very quiet and there is a lot whispered there but there
are lines all throughout the song that are whispered. So the actress has these
brief periods of sanity in the middle of the insanity. She has these brief
periods where she is lucid and she tries to use those periods to force the
insanity out of her mind but she can’t do it. But at the end of the song she
returns to speaking quietly so she does end up sane even though she couldn’t
choose to be sane. So she ends up sane but not because of anything she did she
just naturally goes back to being sane.
So the points of these quite bits is that we do not have any control over
whether we are sane or insane. Some people are sane and some people are insane
and there’s nothing we can do about that. Some people get lucky and some people
get unlucky. Just like some people are born to billionaires and some people are
born in the gutter.
Slusarczyk
on Scorsese 56: An Analysis of ‘Gangs of New York’
This film is about war. The war is a war between two rival gangs in New York.
But they are only in a very small part of New York. They are fighting over this
one square, this one intersection. They are fighting over a very small area of
land.
But they are fighting for the right to live in the city. The Natives, the bad
gang. want to exterminate all the immigrants. The Dead Rabbits, the good guys,
are Irish immigrants. They just want to be able to live in New York. They want
to call New York home.
The sides disagree so they have to fight. It is a war because it is endless
like all wars are. It doesn’t matter what you are fighting over once you start
fighting over it you will be fighting over it forever. Russia invaded Ukraine
years ago. They still haven’t conquered a significant part of Ukraine. Ukraine
still hasn’t kicked them out of the country. They will still be fighting years
from now.
Israel has been fighting Palestine for decades. That war has been going on for
years and years. Every year Israel conquers more of Palestine but still Israel
has not conquered Palestine. And the war will not end when they conquer
Palestine. When they conquer Palestine the Palestinians living inside Israel
will fight from the inside.
They have started fighting so now they will be fighting for the rest of time.
The fighting will only end when the land they are fighting over doesn’t exist
anymore and land doesn’t just stop existing so they will be fighting for the
rest of time.
Or they will fight until the other side is extinct. They will fight until they
kill every single person on the other side. The only way Palestine can win the
war is if they kill all the Jews. The problem is there are Jews all over the
world. They cannot possibly exterminate all the Jews so they can’t ever win the
war. The war will go on forever because the land will exist forever.
So the battle between the gangs in the film is a war because it will never end.
It will never end because it is a battle over land. The native gang, The
Natives, think they own the land because they were born there. The Dead
Rabbits, the immigrants, just want to be allowed to live somewhere. They are
running away from famine. They came to America because the alternative was
death.
They must have known how bad it was. Irish people must have sent back word.
They would have told everyone exactly how racist America is. They would have
told everyone about the violence and the crime. And my god there is a lot of
crime. It seems everyone in the city is committing some kind of crime. They
steal because they need money to get food. They steal because if they don’t
steal they will starve.
The Irish couldn’t stay in Ireland and steal to live because nobody in Ireland
had any money. They had to come to America because you can make more money
stealing in America because Americans have more money. They moved to America
because they wanted more money.
Isn’t that why a lot of people move? Everyone is always moving to richer
countries. A lot of people move to America because America is the richest
country in the world. They move there because they will make more money there
than they would make anywhere else.
But every penny they make is a penny an American doesn’t make.
That is The Butcher’s argument. He says that every penny the Irish get is a
penny an American could have got instead. The Irish person stole a ring off a
woman. If he hadn’t stolen that ring an American could have come along later
and stolen it for himself. So every penny the immigrants make is a penny the
Americans don’t make.
So they fight. They fight over land. They fight over money. They fight over the
land because if you own the land you will make money. If you live in America
you will make more money than you would if you lived anywhere else so everyone
fights over the chance to live in America.
There is a man. He has a football. He plays football in his back garden every
day. But he has no friends. He does not have one friend in the whole world. So
he has to play football on his own.
He has a little goal. It is made out of plastic but the net is made out of the
right material he thinks. He puts the goal in the back corner of his garden and
he kicks the football at the goal. He usually scores because there is nobody in
goal trying to stop the football. So he usually wins but he usually wins
because he is playing himself.
But he does not always win. Sometimes he kicks the football and he misses the
goal entirely.
He wishes he had a friend. If he has a friend they could go in goal. He would
even take a turn in goal sometimes. He would dive and save the ball and he
would have a lot of fun because he has never tried being in goal before. You
cannot go in goal when you are playing on your own.
Every night he goes to sleep and dreams of dancing.