Radical

    Movie Poster
    Release year
    2023
    Director
    Christopher Zalla
    Biography of director(s)
    Christopher Zalla is a writer and director born in Kisumu, Kenya, in 1974. He spent much of his childhood living in different countries. He later earned an MFA in directing from Columbia University, where he also taught film. His first feature film, Padre Nuestro (Sangre de Mi Sangre), won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Zalla has also directed episodes of television series, including Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, and Criminal Intent. In 2023, he returned to Sundance with Radical, which won the festival's Festival Favorite Award.
    Country
    Mexico-U.S. coproductions
    Original synopsis of the film

    Radical follows Sergio Juárez Correa (Eugenio Derbez), a sixth-grade teacher who starts working at José Urbina López Elementary School in Matamoros, Mexico. The school has a lot of problems, including poverty, violence, limited resources, and students with low test scores. Instead of teaching in the traditional way, Sergio tries something different. He encourages his students to ask questions, experiment, and figure things out for themselves instead of just memorizing information. This helps some students realize they are capable of more than they thought, especially Paloma, whose talent for math and interest in space become more noticeable. The movie also shows other students like Lupe and Nico, who deal with issues outside of school, including family responsibilities and the difficult environment they live in. As Sergio becomes more involved with his students, he begins to question how the school normally does things and realizes that being a teacher does not mean he can fix everything. Since the movie is based on a true story, it shows how having someone believe in you can make a big difference, especially when you come from an environment where you may have few opportunities.

    Film still
    Classroom scene

    Describes the setting of a scene in a play or a film. It refers to everything placed on the stage or in front of the camera—including people. In other words, mise en scène is a catch-all for everything that contributes to the visual presentation and overall “look” of a production. When translated from French, it means “placing on stage.”

    Setting
    Setting
    Explanation
    The movie was filmed in different parts of Mexico, including Veracruz and areas around San Salvador Atenco, but it is meant to represent the border city of Matamoros. The worn-down school, dirt roads, trash-filled canal, and surrounding neighborhood help show the poverty and difficult conditions that the students and their families live with.
    Props
    Prop
    Paloma's homemade telescope
    Explanation
    Paloma’s homemade telescope is important because it show the difference between her difficult living situation and her goals. She lives next to a garbage dump and makes the telescope from things she finds around her. The telescope represents her intelligence and ambition because, even though she has very little, it allows her to look beyond her surroundings and toward the sky.

    Other props: upside-down desks used as lifeboats and water container used to demonstrate buoyancy.
    Lighting
    Lighting
    Explanation
    I chose high-key lighting because many of the classroom scenes use bright, soft, natural light coming through the windows, with very little contrast or heavy shadow. The movie also uses very little artificial lighting inside the classroom, which makes the school feel more realistic and believable. Since the story takes place in a poor and under-resourced school, relying mostly on natural light fits the environment and reflects the limited resources available. The colors are also somewhat desaturated, making them look less vivid and adding to the movie’s natural and simple appearance.
    Costume
    Costume
    The students wear white and gray uniforms
    Explanation
    The costumes are white and gray school uniforms. The students wear nearly identical uniforms, which shows the school’s focus on conformity, discipline, and following the rules. Although they all dress similarly, the students have very different personalities, talents, and goals.
    Hair and Makeup
    Example
    Eugenio and students
    Explanation
    Makeup design by Elena López Carreón. The hair and makeup are kept pretty natural, especially for Sergio and the students. Eugenio Derbez does not go through a dramatic physical transformation to play Sergio, which helps him look like a normal, everyday teacher. This keeps the focus more on the characters and what they do rather than making their appearance stand out.
    Figure Behavior
    Example
    Sergio (Eugenio Deberez)
    Explanation
    Sergio (Eugenio Derbez) is very energetic when he teaches and doesn’t just stay at the front of the classroom. He gets on the floor, crouches, kneels, and moves around with the students. At the beginning, the students are quieter and mostly just follow the rules, but as Sergio starts teaching them differently, they become more comfortable participating and working together. By putting himself at the students’ level, Sergio makes the classroom feel less strict and creates less distance between the teacher and the students.
    Representative Clip
    Explanation
    Sergio’s first unconventional lesson has the students imagine their upside-down desks as lifeboats. He asks them to figure out how they should divide themselves between the boats instead of simply giving them an answer. The scene brings together the worn-down classroom, the school uniforms, the natural lighting, and the unusual use of the desks. Sergio’s energetic movement around the students also shows how his teaching style is different from what they are used to.
    Timecode
    00:09:00-00:11:50

    This is the art of photography and visual storytelling in a motion picture or television show. Cinematography comprises all on-screen visual elements, including lighting, framing, composition, camera motion, camera angles, film selection, lens choices, depth of field, zoom, focus, color, exposure, and filtration. Cinematography sets and supports the overall look and mood of a film’s visual narrative. Each visual element that appears on screen, a.k.a. the mise-en-scène of a film, can serve and enhance the story—so it is the cinematographer’s responsibility to ensure that every element is cohesive and support the story. Filmmakers often choose to spend the majority of their budget on high-quality cinematography to guarantee that the film will look incredible on the big screen.

    Point of View
    Quality
    Framing
    Scale
    Movement

    Editing is the process of putting a film together–the selection and arrangement of shots and scenes. Editing can condense space and time, emphasize separate elements and bring them together, and organize material in such a way that patterns of meaning become apparent. In addition, editing can determine how a film is perceived: for instance, quick, rapid cuts can create a feeling of tension, while a long take can create a more dramatic effect. The first photoplays generally had no cutting, owing to the fact that they were single-reel films; once filming began, you could not stop until the film ran out. (https://filmglossary.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/term/editing/)

    Coherence, Continuity, and Rhythym
    Editing Style
    Transitions
    Match
    Expansion and Compression of Time
    Editing General Comments

    Sound is an integral part in a film. It refers to everything that the audience hears including sound effects, words and music. Sound is used in films for various purposes, including: providing the information to the viewer about the location of the scene, heightening the mood, telling the audience about the characters and advancing the plot. Every person who watches a film realizes that the choice of voices, soundtrack and music present in a film affect the way that the viewer perceives a particular film. As a result, the sound is an important and integral element of the film, one that determines the way that the viewer experiences and understands a film as a visual experience.

    Sound Type

    Narrative analysis is an examination of the story elements, including narrative structure, character, and plot. A narrative can be considered to be the chain of events in a cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space. In order to analyze the narrative of a film, we need to first make the distinction between the plot of the film and the story of the film. This is sometimes referred to as the discourse and story of a film. Narrative may also be called the story thought story mainly refers to the events that describe the narrative.

    Plot Comments
    Story Comments
    Narrator Type
    Narrative Structure

    Film genres are various forms or identifiable types, categories, classifications or groups of films. (Genre comes from the French word meaning "kind," "category," or "type"). These provide a convenient way for scriptwriters and film-makers to produce, cast and structure their narratives within a manageable, well-defined framework. Genres also offer the studios an easily 'marketable' product, and give audiences satisfying, expected and predictable choices. Genres refers to recurring, repeating and similar, familiar or instantly-recognizable patterns, styles, themes, syntax, templates, paradigms, motifs, rules or generic conventions.

    Category