The Structuring of Poseidon

This week was yet another new experience for me, as we covered more topics in cinema that I have never paid much attention to.

However, I think the most important part of the week for was the reading we were assigned and directed to integrate into our blogs. When I decided to take this class, it was unbeknown to me, that I would have engaged in the material as much as I have thus far in the semester. I have learned so many things about cinema that I never knew I didn’t know.

It was only while reading “The Structure of the Industry”, that I realized how just how much I now know about cinema. The way the reading breaks up cinema that we have studied into three revolutions, brought all the knowledge I have gained into one mindset. The fact that Hollywood has survived as long as it has, is mainly because of the revolutions, and revamping it has undergone. These changes were not brought about simply because the industry wanted them, it demanded them. The Paramount decision, along with the post-WW2 revolution in film are the two areas of study that I have enjoyed learning about, and I feel that the reading more than adequately exhibited their importance to the fabric of cinema history of which they are woven into.

This weeks’ screening was not what I was expecting. If I am going to be completely honest, when I heard “Poseidon Adventure”, I was picturing the Greek mythology and a sort of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” vibe, even knowing that this film was cataloged under the cinema of disaster films. But I could not have more mistaken. I was pretty much waiting to see a trident, and the sea bending at the will of a Greek god, up until I saw people being killed by the flipping of the ship. I realize that this is a rather boyish immature view towards this film prior to its screening, but I can happily say that I was much more impressed with this film that of what I had thought it would be.

The main theme I observed from the moment tragedy hit, was that each of the main characters was basically volunteering to be the one who accomplishes a heroic deed, and they seemed all to eager to trade their lives for the continuance of others’. I myself have often thought about what I would do in a scenario requiring an act of heroism, and a trade of lives made unselfishly, but this film brought those thoughts to life.

The journey to eventually be saved, was very long, and proved to be deadly. However, it seemed that if any less passengers had joined the group that initially climbed up the tree, no one would have made it off that boat. No one person was more important that the other, but rather they survived off each other’s strength, and the constant reminder that death was all to obtainable.

This film was unlike any film I had seen in a while, and reminded me of the idea that as humans, we all serve a purpose, but in times of grave crisis, that purpose is incomplete without the help of other humans whom share the goal of survival.