What are we looking for in life as a human being?

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The two movies Mona Lisa Smile and And the Spring Comes depict the relationship between dream and reality. However, due to the differences of era and cultural backgrounds, the characters made different choices when facing contradictions and future.

The movie Mona Lisa Smile describes a warm story which Julia Roberts stars as a professor at a women’s college. Roberts played the role of Kathrine in this movie, who is a feminist teacher full of ideals and enthusiasm. She finds that the college's stereotypes have reached an intolerable level. While Kathrine boldly teaches the girls that they can break traditions of marriage and brought a new atmosphere to the conservative campus. And the Spring Comes tells us a another story about the pursuit of dream. Wang Tsai-ling is born with a beautiful voice, but she is ugly. She has been chasing the dream of being an artist in Beijing for many years. Wang fails to find a bosom friend in career and life. Although she has connections with men in the small town, who are Zhou Yu, Huang Sibao and Hu Jinquan, she doesn’t find her love story. At this time, Wang helps a cancer patient Gao Beibei to realize her singing dream. Gao confesses that her illness is false. Finally, Wang surrenders to her life and accepts the fate.

In the two movies, we can also find the cultural differences between China and the United States under ideology. Although they all have the main theme of making people’s dreams into reality, the American movie pays more attention to individualism while the Chinese movie focuses on the life of nobodies in a specific environment. The artistic connotation of two movies are embodied in different social forms and cultural consciousness. Despite distinct cultures, there are historical and ideological differences in the worlds of each film that lead to different character reactions to their own situations.

Back to the era background, in 1953 women fought for the legal right to follow their dreams when the second-wave feminist movement rose gradually around the United States. However, some educational institutions represented by Wellesley College still supported the notion that women should have marriage and give up career goals despite excellent results in their schools. The highlight of the movie Mona Lisa Smile is that it is not a simple feminist propaganda but a way to convey an attitude to the audience through the growth of several women: The real independent liberation of women does not lie in their social status, their unique attitudes and different ways of life, but in their potential to choose their own life without being driven by the outside world.

There are different plots in the movie which manifest the long distance between women’s dream and reality during that period. For example, Julia Styles as Joan who was intelligent and eventually had a chance to go to Yale University to study further. But she was also torn by the stuffy notion that she must be a housewife and raise a family. Kathrine was bizarre teacher who played an unusually unlikable character. There was no denying that she was perfect as the inspiring professor sitting with the students in a casual posture by their desks while sharing special moments with them. On the other hand, Mona Lisa smile is very good at using plots to make hints and comparisons. In the beginning of the film, Katherine moved out of the school dormitory because she couldn’t use the electric iron, which suggests that she was not a regular person. School nurses were forced to leave suggests the fate of people who don't comply with school regulations. When it turns to the shooting techniques, Mona Lisa Smile shows the style of oil painting. The protagonists dressed in the retro clothes of the 1950s to perform the scene. There are also some color matching and composition elements in the movie.

In the 1980s and 1990s, China was opening to the outside. Thus this country was inevitably impacted by the western culture as the economy recovered. For the first time, all kinds of cultural thoughts and arts forms flooded into China. In the movie And the Spring Comes, there were two shots showing the charm of art to normal people in that period. At the beginning of the movie, there was heavy traffic on the street. The mass seemed to be unconscious. They did not care about the beautiful songs on the radio. The daily necessities were the top priority in their minds. In the murky sea, Zhou Yu stopped and appreciated the opera carefully. He woke up and was attracted by singing, which proved that he was longing for art in heart. Another is that the KTV waiter was influenced by Wang’s singing and wanted to follow her to Beijing. I believe that everyone has a dream of art in his heart, just like a seed. When the sun, air, water and soil conditions are sufficient, the seed of artistic dream will break out. And the Spring Comes use a unique photography. On the train, Wang Tsai-ling was in the middle of the crowd alone, which describes her own depressed mood and tired body. This is also a kind of contrast. Wang was indulging in the joys of the music while other passengers around were asleep. The shot expresses Wang’s extraordinary character and creates an atmosphere of repression in such dim light and sleepy environment.

In fact, what Mona Lisa Smile tells us is not that women should be completely free from the shackles of family and all the stereotypes. All we have to do is to be ourselves and do what we want to do. Choosing to be a housewife or a career woman totally depends on their own minds. And the Spring Comes has no ups and downs and even no particularly touching plot. It only contains people’s pursuit of their artistic dreams despite the cruel reality. Their life actually represents all people who spare no effort to pursue dreams. To sum up, both of these movies are worth watching more than once to figure out their inner connotations.

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Dear Xin Zheng, Xinyi Yu
In general, you have written a good passage. Your article combine lots of scenes from the movies, making the analysis more persuasive. And the logic of this passage is very clear. Just like the title : What are we looking for in life as a human being? In your following writing, you have clearly demonstrated that we ought to be ourselves after analyzing that we should not be shackled by the traditional marriage and not be defeated by the cruel reality when pursuing our dreams. What is more, not only your language but also grammar are both well used.
Nevertheless, we think that some sentences are not directly connected with the theme. For example, like the third to last paragraph, you covers shooting techniques. Although it is a wonderful aspect analyze these two movies, we think it is discordant with the main idea of the whole passage.
In a conclusion, this article is wonderful and profound.
Yours,
Miao Lv, Ting Xuan Liu

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Dear Lv and Liu,
We are happy to hear from you. Thank you so much for your advice to our review!
To be honest, just as you mentioned, some sentences are not directly connected with the theme. Though the last three paragraphs have good analysis of the two movies, it is off the point. We will adjust these paragraphs to make the review better. But if we cut these paragraphs selectively, we don’t know how to design a good ending. What will you do with this problem? Would you like to give us some advice?
When it turns to our review, you appreciate that the logic of passage is very clear. What’s more, you also think our language and grammar are well used. We are glad to get your recognition. Thanks for your precious advice. We will listen to you carefully and make progress.
Hope to hear from you !
Yours
Xinyi Yu, Xin Zheng

[sjt5448]

Hi Zheng!

I appreciated the character comparison between professor Katherine in Mona Lisa Smile and Wang Tsai-ling in And the Spring Comes. I also liked that you provided a brief cultural summary of second-wave feminism in the U.S. to support your arguments in your essay. Your analysis of camera shooting techniques and how this relates to the ideology present in a film helped to make your argument more salient as well. My big takeaway from your piece is that the characters in both films have to reconcile dream vs reality, but there are cultural, historical, and ideological differences in the worlds of each film that lead to different character reactions to their own situations.

I think that you can either combine your second and third paragraphs or improve the transition between the two paragraphs which say different things about each of the two films. Additionally, I think that you can take your paragraph about the two different ideologies that characters occupy in each film and move that section in front of the sections when you talk about camera shots and how the cinematography and dress exemplify the different ideologies.

Your paragraph breaks should also be more consistent. Sometimes there is a space between paragraphs and other times there isn't. I would recommend you stick with having a space/text break between paragraphs because this is a web interface without indentations. I would also consider removing the last two sentences from your essay because they are not concretely tied to specifics in the films. Try to avoid broad generalizing statements because you can run into the problem of inserting cliches into your essay that take the reader's focus away from your points backed up by evidence from the artwork being analyzed.

In regards to grammar, this platform isn't ideal for me to make any edits. If you have an email or WeChat, I can send you a pdf with my markups.

Thanks for the read ,
Steven Toomey

[gms5486]

Hello Zheng (I noticed that your name was written as both Zheng Xin and Xin Zheng; I hope that I got the first name right!)

Here are my thoughts on your writing. I think that you wrote a strong thesis statement: "The two movies, Mona Lisa Smile and And the Spring Comes, depict the relationship between dream and reality." Your statement clearly shows the reader where the essay is going. You did well at returning to the thesis statement in the concluding paragraph. Because you repeated the main idea of the essay in the conclusion, the reader was left with a stronger impression of your argument.

My advice is to make your paragraphs more relevant. You do discuss the "dream" theme in the paragraphs, which is good. However, some of your paragraphs seem to lead the reader in the wrong direction at first. The third paragraph starts with this sentence: "And the Spring Comes tells us a sad story." That makes the reader believe the paragraph is going to discuss the sadness of the story. Actually, the paragraph discusses Tsai-ling following her dreams. You would benefit from rewriting the first sentence of the paragraph to better suit the following content. The same is true for the fifth paragraph: it discusses feminism and seems to be tangential to your original argument.

Overall, though, your writing was strong and your vocabulary was rich. I think that if you keep your paragraphs more relevant to the main idea of pursuing dreams, your essay would be even better.

Thank you!

[2216668684]

Hi Steven Toomey!
We are glad to receive your suggestion. Thank you very much.
Indeed, our review leaves a lot to be improved. We agree that there are problems in the transition and break of paragraphs. We will revise these paragraphs according to your suggestion.
As for grammar, we have drawbacks. In this we hope for your help. My email address is 2216668684@qq.com
Looking forward your reply!
Yours
Xinyi Yu, Xin Zheng

[2216668684]

Hello Gabrielle Stewart(There are two members in our group.One is Xin Zheng, another is Xinyi Yu.)
Thank you so much for your advice!
We will improve our writing in paragraphs according to your advice. We will make it more relevant to the main idea of pursuing dreams. In addition, we are glad to receive recognition of our strong writing and your rich vocabulary.
Thanks! Wishing our final writing will be the best!
Yours
Xinyi Yu, Xin Zheng

[2216668684]

Hi Steven,
We did not realize that our report contains so many grammar mistakes until we checked the pdf you sent to me. Because of Corona virus, it is hard for us to contact each other directly. Which unfortunately means that this report is not well-prepared. We would pay more attention on the grammar in the future. We really appreciate your work. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for letting us know.
Sincerely,
Xin Zheng& Xinyi Yu

[sjt5448]

No problem! As far as the markups on the pdf I emailed you are concerned, most are small errors with commas etc. but I did occasionally mark something that was technically grammatically correct but was phrased in what I interpreted to be an awkward manner. That is just me as the audience, and I think that depending on what you are shooting for it shouldn't necessarily matter if the phrasing sounds awkward to an American English speaker (I probably write stuff that is considered weird by British English speakers). So some of the edits are relative.

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Reflection
At the beginning of the border-activity, we intend to get in touch with native English speakers and have a good communication with them about writing, so as to improve our intercultural communication ability.
In fact,through this border-crossing activity, we did gain a lot of valuable experience. Engaging ourselves in communicating across national, linguistic and cultural boundaries fosters our intercultural ability. During the process of exchanging views with foreign friends, we realize that there is room for the further improvement in our writing. The thinking of exam-oriented education system has bound us for the past years. We lay too much stress on how to use abundant vocabulary to write, but ignore the logical structure of the article itself. In the future, we will pay attention to critical thinking in language learning.
In the process of communication, there are many things that impressed us a lot. As non-native English speakers, hardly can we avoid making mistakes in English writing. For example, our discussion on the theme was not concise enough, leading to general discussion. Besides, we neglected many careless grammatical mistakes. We are very grateful to these foreign students for they offered us detail suggestions to solve this problem. They actively gave us feedback to help us correct the logical and grammatical errors. Due to their help, we incorporated what had been discussed into the revised draft.
If we provide three adjectives to describe this activity, it must be: surprising, short and beneficial. This border-crossing interaction is an unforgettable experience for us. We feel very happy and honored to have this interesting exchange. However, owing to the time limit, our interaction cannot discuss further into different cultures. But it benefits us a lot because we all find and make up shortcomings to improve ourselves. We sincerely hope to have more opportunities to communicate with students from different cultural backgrounds.