Analysing the different ways of portraying a characters identity in a film

– I´ve choosen various films that have different types of characters with a set of identities for each film. In some of the films the actual character doesn´t even know his own identity. What I will acomplish with this task is an understanding of how to give identity to a character in a film that doesn´t have one or even hide the real identity from the viewer giving the film a different overview and changing its meaning.

(The Bourne Identity, Pan´s Laberinth, Surrogates, Memento and Lemony Snicket a series of unfortunate events)

THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002)

In this film the character Jason Bourne is a secret specialized agent that has lost his memory and can´t remember who he is or where he comes from.

The way the character comes to life is based on the way he starts finding all kinds of different things he can do. Things like, self-defence techniques, combat skills, tactical and weaponary knowledge.

He can´t remember his past, but somehow he slowly finds out through out the film, that all his skills and methods that he carries in his memories are there for a reason.

Throuh out the whole film his true identity is unrevealed and for this reason he doesn,t trust anyone. The people he meets are the only people he knows and whoever seems to know him could be a clue to the past. Jason´s identity is the main frame of the film and the events that happen to him trying to find information about himself is the plot of the movie.

PAN´S LABERINTH (2006)

The main character of this film is a little girl called Ofelia. She is going through a really difficult time because her country is at war and she must presence some of the worse things in human history.

The story is based on the Spanish civil war, Ofelia finds a whole new world of adventures and fairy tales that protects her from her evil step farther and the scary times at war.

But the reason why I choose this movie is because Ofelia´s real identity, the one of beeing a child, is hidden during the whole film. All the characters and the tales she encounters are all product of her imagination. There not real, its just what the makers want you to think. For this reason the characters and storyline would be incomplete without this side of her identity. The side of beeing a child and confronting problems.

SURROGATES (2009)

In this film I will not focus on the main character because the identity of all of the characters in this film is distorted and thats the interestig part. The story is based upon a science discovery changing human kind, historicly and socialy. The discovery discribes a posibility of living your life through a robot connected to your brain through thoughts. This enables the users to enjoy things and challenges they could never do before, being a human. All the characters in the movie perform both their human identity and there robot identity. The way of acting and moving is completly different, the robots have got perfect skin, always young and the body movements are more corect. Humans are not perfect and always make mistakes. What I like about this film is that every character has two different identities and being inside a robots body can also be considered as censoring your own identity like they prove at the begining of the film. Great visuals aswell.

MEMENTO (2000)

In this film the main character Leonard, doesn´t know his own identity. He doesn´t posses a short memory capability. Everything and everyone that he meets or knows are complete strangers for him the next time he sees them. He can only remember his wife and read the tatoos that he has around his body saying that someone, John G. murdered and raped his wife. The interesting part is that his real identity is absent in the whole film. You don´t know if hes a murderer, if hes right or wrong, crazy of just faking it. The director has made a big enfasis in bluring the narrative from the viewer and making you feel as confused as Leonard himself. The character remembers people and locations through his pictures that he takes and the notes that he writes to himself. A really good concept that is explored in a fascinating and innovative film.

LEMONY SNICKET´S  A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS (2004)

In this film the bad guy is interpreted by Jim Carrey. He is Count Orlof, a evil person that wants to take the fortune of three young orphans. The Count goes through various methods of disguise to elude some of the characters in the film. His identity changes visually and also psicologicly. To describe Counts Orlof´s changing identity the producers relie on visual facial expresions and a lot of body movement and dialogue. This is why I found viewing this film related to my project.