Dear John essay

In this short essay I will be analysing the trailer from ‘Dear John’ which is a Romantic film. The music is typical of a Romantic film its modern day music with a duet between a man and a woman. The settings used in this trailer to give us more of an idea that it’s a Romantic film is on the beach at the start where John saves the girls bag from under the water after she dropped it in there.

This film trailer is what you expect from a Romantic as well, a boy and a girl who like each other, John goes out to war and she writes letters to him to see if he’s alright. The use of iconography is showing the setting of John in Afghanistan/ Iraq, when he is called back for duty to fight for his country. It’s really hard to point out which one of the two characters is the main character from the trailer that we have just seen because we haven’t seen the whole film.

There are a load of different camera shots in this trailer like wide shots, mid shots and close ups. The use of close shots has been used to show the emotions on John’s and the girls face.

The use of narrative codes is the enigma codes where we start to ask questions like ‘Will he be ok?’ ‘Will he come back?’ ‘Will John’s father be ok?’ This film trailer is omniscient because we know that John is a soldier but the girl doesn’t know, but it could also be restricted because we don’t know whether John comes back or not.

The use of Todorov comes into this first of all:

·         The equilibrium is that they are both on the beach, he saves her bag from under the water

·         The disruption is that she finds out he’s in the army

·         The realism is that he goes out to fight

·         The attempt to repair is that he goes back again to fight for his country so he can be with her for longer

·         We don’t know whether the equilibrium will be re-established and this is where the enigma codes come into this because we ask questions like ‘Will there be a happy ending?’

This is a linear narrative because the story starts from the beginning, just like a normal film would do.