Essays on Wok

Film Studies Portfolio

Xavier Dolan’s “Laurence Anyways” Film Review

An extremely ambitious project from a very young director, Xavier Dolan, the romantic drama “Laurence Anyways” follows the love story between Fred (Suzanne Clement) and Laurence (Melvin Poupad). Ironically, although they both have masculine names, Fred and Laurence are women. A transgender who had lived as a man, Laurence comes out with the revelation that he has always felt as a woman inside, and continuing his fake male life would kill him. The filmmaker situates this unique love story in the 1990s, a time when transsexuality was still considered an illness, and ...

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth” (Marcus Aurelius). The knower’s perspective is essential in the pursuit of knowledge. This aspect of knowledge is something worth considering because the nature of the human mindset is made in such a way that perspective always creates a filter on the way one interprets life and “truth”. One could even say that without perspective, there would be no need for the pursuit of knowledge. It is nearly unavoidable to remove one’s perspective when pursuing knowledge because it is often ...

Remembering life through tastes. This seems to be the essence of “Climbing the Mango trees – A Memoir of a Childhood Indian”. Traditionalism and local Indian events are shared through the pages of this book, which creates the impression of a happy, normal family, a family much entrenched in the Indian values. Nevertheless, as in any family, first of all, the one presented here, the author’s family displays feelings of love, protection, and sharing among each other. For any of these feelings, and many others that exhibit out of this book, the author found associations with different food spices of dishes. ...