Saturday, November 13, 2010

Khalil Jerdak- Critical Essay ( Jason Reitman 'JUNO')



          Jason Reitman.









       Jason Reitman was born in October 19, 1977. He is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter, producer and actor, best known for directing the films; Thank You For Smoking (2006), Juno (2007), and Up in the Air (2009). As of February 2, 2010, he has received four Academy Award nominations, two of which are for best director. His father Ivan Reitman was also a famous producer.
Jason attended Harvard-Westlake school located in Los Angeles, California and he was majoring English Creative writing at the University of Southern California.
Reitman was "film-schooled" at an early age: His father Ivan, a successful director and producer of the films Ghostbusters, Stripes and Kindergarten Cop, and among many others, helped his son, as an adolescent and teen, get involved in the movie world by offering him small parts in his productions, and menial jobs as an assistant.

 

Jason was nominated for Best Director at the 2008 Academy Awards for his work on the movie Juno, but lost to The Coen Brothers for No Country for Old Men.
One his Best Movies that I’m going to talk about is “ Juno”.
His film, Juno, generated great buzz after it premiered at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival and was released in December 2007. It received great critical acclaim and received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Ellen Page’s performance as the title character, Diablo Cody’s original screenplay, and Reitman himself for Best Director.
Reitman did win other awards for his work on Juno, including Best Director at the 2008 Canadian Comedy Awards; he was also honored with the “Cinema for Peace Award 2008 for Most Valuable Work of Director, Producers & Screenwriter”. The film thus far has grossed over $140 million at the U.S. box office, making it the largest success of Reitman’s career and more successful than any of his father’s films. Reitman was in the middle of writing a screenplay when he came on board to direct Juno and, at one point, he expressed intent to finish writing and to direct this screenplay.

 

Juno, a movie talks about a sixteen year-old high-school junior in Minnesota, who discovers that she’s pregnant after sleeping with her best friend. Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) was the main character in Reitman’s film.  The story of the movie begins when a sixteen year-old girl Juno  MacGruff, finds out that she is pregnant from her best friend Paulie Bleeker. After she discovers her pregnancy she starts to think of abortion till a friend of her called Leah decide to change her mind from abortion to adaption. Juno starts to look out for a proper family that she can trust in giving her child to. She finds happy couples Vanessa and Mark and she feels they are worthy to have the child. The story goes on till Juno give birth to her baby boy and were Paulie runs to the hospital the see his baby and also Vanessa enters to see her new adopted child. The movie then ends with Juno and Paulie on the guitar and was Juno stands and kisses Paulie.
The director’s main focus for this film was to create a discussion or commentary on the topic of teenage pregnancies. The primary theme for the film “Juno” is not only teenage pregnancy but as well for the subject being mature and confident.  A sixteen year-old girl faced unplanned pregnancy due to unprotected sexual act. However, it’s about maturity since Juno had to deal with her situation and be able to take decisions of her own life and of her child life where we can see that when she starts to plan for her baby adoption to another family. The movie shows that Juno, the main character, is mature enough more than she thought of herself to take such decisions. After all, the movie is trying to make the point that age and maturity don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. Also, it shows that abortion is not the only solution of the unplanned pregnancy in way to kill an inside spirit but it’s an option.
Finally, in my opinion, the director Jason Reitman was sending a clear message through his film” Juno” about life decisions and expressing the idea that even teenagers are able to have decisions when it’s necessary for some situations even though of their age. And the example was Juno that cool girl that didn’t let what happened with her affect her life but it made her strong and able of facing any situation. She was actually overly practical and mature, and most of all strong enough not to care what people though of her. 


References:
         Ebert, Roger. ""Juno's" Reitman on Ellen Page", Chicago Sun-Times, 2007-12-08. Retrieved on November 12, 2010







  

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