ACROSS4SEAS.COM

Movie Comparison

Doh Young Yang

Some movies are made for fun. Some movies are made for informative. These movies changed my thoughts on each culture. Both films portray female professors in United States and China during the 1950s. The most interesting viewpoint was how each country looked at the success. In the movie, “Mona Lisa Smile,” 50s college girls considered success as marrying a successful man and supporting husband as housewives. In the movie, “And the Spring Comes,” marriage was also important, but people focused more on becoming wealthy and supporting their families. In my opinion, Confucian ideas affected Asian culture to family-focused. In the movie, “Mona Lisa Smile,” every stuff students talked about was their own lives after the college, but nothing about their families.

Another interesting cultural representation was personal development and growth. Although it is not clear to compare one of the best college students to a piano teacher, it was fairly interesting how each character overcame obstacles. In Mona Lisa, Katherine, a professor with great education, urged college girls to think of their dreams, too. In a Wellesley College, where the smartest girls in United States attended, students only thought about getting married after graduation. If they couldn’t find a man to get married, they thought of their lives as miserable. Katherine, at the end, was able to change their thoughts about the conservatism they had at Wellesley College. However, all of the dreams and the marriage stuff were possible, because they were wealthy. In a comparison to Mona Lisa, Wang laoshi is a poor and an ugly teacher who is teaching for living. She also has a dream, which is to become a professional soprano in Beijing. However, she could not even take one single audition in Beijing due to her social status and money. As the movie goes on, she realized her dream is uncatchable and adopt a little kid to live as a mother.

In Mona Lisa, I could see lots of ethos going on. Wellesley girls study, exercise, and talk in the ways they could be attractive to other guys and friends. Compared to Mona Lisa, “And the Spring Comes” is more related to Xin. Wang laoshi is a person who easily trusts others, which makes her life miserable several times throughout the movie.

Other than non-verbal cue, I want to talk about the titles of the movies. For “Mona Lisa Smile,” I think the title does match what is told in the movie. If you see the drawing, Mona Lisa awfully smiles only with the mouth. In the mid-1950s, college girls were expected to be like a Mona Lisa. Listen, follow, and support their husbands no matter what with that Mona Lisa Smile. For “And the Spring Comes,” I think the title could be something darker than this. Even though Wang laoshi finds a little happiness by adopting a child, throughout the movie she experienced all the bad events. While I was watching the movie, I thought she would commit suicide at the end of the movie, and she becomes a flower. I think adopting part was a little awkward for the entire concept of the movie.

I really enjoyed watching both of the movies. As a person who likes to watch funny movies, I would never have had a chance to watch these kind of movies.

Hi Doh,
Thank you for sharing your composition with us, I am glad to read it.
First of all, the comparisons you have made between the two films are comprehensive. And you have put them into a same paragraph, which makes it easier for the readers to compare. And the evidences you have given in every comparison are detailed, I can tell that you have watched the films carefully and seriously.
However, I don't think some of the evidences can accurately prove the focuses you have laid out. It could be more convictive if you stick the evidences to your focuses and write more about your personal thoughts upon them.
I have noticed that the structure of your article is parallel. You have a point in every paragraph. But I think it might be better if you have a main focus that every point centres on. Moreover, it might be better if there is a conclusion of your comparison statements in the end of the composition instead of just expressing your feeling of the films.
Your language is fluent and natural, yet you can make it more vivid by using metaphor and rhetoric that your composition can be more touching and attract more sympathetic responses.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Jiamin Zhao

Dear Doh

I’m really glad to share the essay and ideas with you. Overall a very nice job but in some respects I also have a bit of confusion on your essay and I wish we could have a further discussion for that.

I see your main comparison of these two films is between the Wellesley students and Wang Cailing, and your main focus is the cultural differences and similarities between United States and China, especially about the negative sides of each cultures. It is a good focus but I think you could have a deeper and further thought on this focus.

You have offered sufficient evidences to support your analysis. You have made good research on the cultural backgrounds. I really appreciate your analysis about the reason why Wang Cailing failed to succeed. I do agree that her personality is one of the main reasons leading her to failure. But there is a little mistake: And the spring comes happened in the 80s, not in the 50s.

However I am also a little confused about some of your viewpoints. For instance, “in the movie, ‘And the Spring Comes’, marriage was also important, but people focused more on …… supporting their families.” Would you mind telling me the reason why you think family could be an obstacle to getting married? Maybe it could be better for you to use “finding the true love” instead of “marriage”?

In the last paragraph, I think it a kind of creative way to compare the titles of the movies, which could help you enrich your essay. Also it is unique to consider the drawing Mona Lisa awful and as the symbol of conservative thought.

Last but not least, the way you make comparison for each aspects is very efficient, which makes the comparison easier to see.

Please let me know if you have any questions

Good luck
Xiaoxi

Movie Comparison
Doh Young Yang
Some movies are made for fun. Some movies are made for informative. These movies changed my thoughts on each culture. Both films portray female professors in United States and China during the 1950s. The most interesting viewpoint was how each country looked at the success. In the movie, “Mona Lisa Smile,” 50s college girls considered success as marrying a successful man and supporting husband as housewives. In the movie, “And the Spring Comes,” marriage was also important, but people focused more on becoming wealthy and supporting their families. In my opinion, Confucian ideas affected Asian culture to family-focused. In the movie, “Mona Lisa Smile,” every stuff students talked about was their own lives after the college, but nothing about their families.
Another interesting cultural representation was personal development and growth. Although it is not clear to compare one of the best college students to a piano teacher, it was fairly interesting how each character overcame obstacles. In Mona Lisa, Katherine, a professor with great education, urged college girls to think of their dreams, too. In a Wellesley College, where the smartest girls in United States attended, students only thought about getting married after graduation. If they couldn’t find a man to get married, they thought of their lives as miserable. Katherine, at the end, was able to change their thoughts about the conservatism they had at Wellesley College. However, all of the dreams and the marriage stuff were possible, because they were wealthy.
In a comparison to Mona Lisa, Wang laoshi is a poor and an ugly teacher who is teaching for living. She also has a dream, which is to become a professional soprano in Beijing. However, she could not even take one single audition in Beijing due to her social status and money. As the movie goes on, she realized her dream is uncatchable and adopt a little kid to live as a mother.
In Mona Lisa, I could see lots of ethos going on. Wellesley girls study, exercise, and talk in the ways they could be attractive to other guys and friends. Compared to Mona Lisa, “And the Spring Comes” is more related to Xin. Wang laoshi is a person who easily trusts others, which makes her life miserable several times throughout the movie. Other than non-verbal cue, I want to talk about the titles of the movies. For “Mona Lisa Smile,” I think the title does match what is told in the movie. If you see the drawing, Mona Lisa awfully smiles only with the mouth. In the mid-1950s, college girls were expected to be like a Mona Lisa. Listen, follow, and support their husbands no matter what with that Mona Lisa Smile. For “And the Spring Comes,” I think the title could be something darker than this. Even though Wang laoshi finds a little happiness by adopting a child, throughout the movie she experienced all the bad events. While I was watching the movie, I thought she would commit suicide at the end of the movie, and she becomes a flower. I think adopting part was a little awkward for the entire concept of the movie.
I really enjoyed watching both of the movies. As a person who likes to watch funny movies, I would never have had a chance to watch these kind of movies.

1)
The border-crossing activity was much better than my expectations. I thought it would be hard to comment on each other’s essay, because we are not physically seeing each other. However, I think because of the accessibility, each student could talk about other’s essay more thoroughly and critically.
2)
I was trying my best to not use any word or sentence that might hurt peers feeling. Also, it was my first time for peer reviewing other’s essay, so I didn’t know if I need only need to say something good or something bad. Lastly, about the movie “And The Spring Comes,” I didn’t watch it with native language, so I tried not to over express my thought on that movie.
3)
I did change some sentence structures; however, I didn’t change a lot in my essay, because I wanted to write comprehensively for the movie review. Also, as I mentioned in #2, I didn’t want to deliver my own thought about Chinese culture, so I didn’t get deeper on Chinese movie.
4)
To be honest, I thought the essay written by Chinese students would be not as good as ours; however, as soon as I saw their essays, I knew I was wrong. Their essays were well-written and well-organized, which I could see how much time they spent on writing those essays.
7)
For this activity, I want to use interesting, helpful, and repeatable. I never had an experience like this before, so it was really interesting activity for myself. When I was in high school, I had my essay reviewed by my friend, but it was my first time getting reviewed by two different people. Two opinions helped me a lot to think about my essay. And lastly, I think this activity can be repeated as many times as it can.
8)
I think if we can share each one’s social network or messenger so we can get feedbacks right away, because I didn’t get any notification for the comments, it would be helpful in the future.