In Cleo from 5 to 7, the main character Cleo is a pop singer who cultivates her appearance. When she has anxiety about a potential disease at the beginning of the movie, she looks into a mirror and consoles herself by saying that as long as she has her beauty, she will survive. She proceeds to go shopping for a new hat. She is constantly looking at the appearance in windows and mirrors. What is the film telling us about beauty? About appearance and reality? Is beauty about appearance or something deeper? Is it in the eye of the beholder or is there a more objective quality? Is beauty skin deep?
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ReplyDeleteCleo from 5 to 7 represents the multifaceted concept of beauty through the emotional state of Cleo. Throughout the first half of the film, Cleo is shown to be materialistic, selfish, and spoiled. These are arguably undesirable traits for someone to have so prominently. However, many young people try to surround themselves with Cleo, seemingly disregarding her unlikeable personality. Seemingly appearing beautiful was enough to please others. The news of her cancer took a toll mentally, but, Cleo was still concerned with updating her appearance, believing that was the true meaning of beauty. This materialistic behavior of Cleo represents the fact that many believe their worth is based upon appearance and how others thought of them. This is a dangerous way of thinking, as it is unsustainable as Cleo demonstrates in the second half of the film. Being an idol wore Cleo down and eventually led to a change in her heart toward the definition of beauty. Eventually, the fashion that Cleo once hid behind was no longer useful. The mental stress of her cancer led her to find beauty in emotions and connections with other people. Physical beauty does not carry the same weight to Cleo as it once did because it cannot help with her emotional stress. Yet, the man Cleo met in the park distracted her and make her feel comfortable. Cleo insisted on staying with him. This dramatic shift in the understanding of beauty demonstrates that physical beauty can only get someone so far. But the beauty in human connections and understanding other people is much more powerful and purposeful. When Cleo received the news that she had to go through chemotherapy, she did not break down the same way she did when she received news of having cancer. Her fortitude was due to her connection with the man she just met. Overall, Cleo from 5 to 7 displays the fact that beauty has multiple parts, however, some are more impactful than others.
ReplyDeleteIn Cleo from 5 to 7, the main character, Cleo, is constantly cultivating her appearance and beauty. In the beginning of the film Cleo is told that she has cancer and she may not live as long as expected. Paranoid and concerned at this thought Cleo decides to decompress by going shopping. In this scene we hear her say, “As long as I am beautiful I am living.” From this one line the audience learns that Cleo is someone that cares more about her appearance and what others think of her than who she actually is.Throughout the movie, at every window, every mirror, every reflection the audience sees Cleo look at herself, readjust, and continue with a similar confidence. From this, the audience can infer that the director is saying that the world cares about the physical appearance of beauty instead of internal beauty. However as the film continues, Cleo has to put more and more work into continuing her appearance as more and more stress builds on her. On the other hand, when she started to be less of what people wanted from her, and more of what she wanted of her, her life started to change. Once Cleo stopped being so concerned about physical beauty the weight got lifted off her shoulders. Later in the film, Cleo learned that she had to go through chemotherapy; she was not concerned with how it would affect her appearance, but more so how it would affect the people around her. Cleo still felt beautiful, even when she did not put time and thought into how she looked, showing the audience that there are multiple layers to beauty.
ReplyDeleteCleo from 5 to 7 utilizes glass reflection and mirrors to push a narrative about how self-image can be altered in the case of true love. As viewers follow Cleo on her tumultuous few hours before hearing the results of her test, it is very common for Cleo to be in the scene more than once. This is because of the meticulously set up mirrors and glass that showcases her reflection in many scenes. The reason Cleo owns so many mirrors is because of her deep insecurities and desire to maintain her beauty. Her obsession with mirrors as a result of her insecurities is introduced to viewers at the beginning of the film. While worrying about what the results of her test will be, Cleo falls back onto what she can maintain. While the inside of her body may be deteriorating, she can still remain in control of how she looks. As she realizes this, she says to herself, “As long as I am beautiful, I am alive.” In this instance, and in many others, Cleo fixates on her self-image. When she is shopping for hats after suffering from anxiety over her potential cancer, the reflection of bustling city life is reflected in the shop window. In an attempt to preserve her public image in case of her death, Cleo misses out on the life that is passing by her in the shop’s window. This worry of preserving beauty is multiplied by the paranoia induced when Cleo feels as if all pedestrians are looking at her and critiquing her appearance. Cleo expresses her worry of how the public views her when talking to her friend who occasionally works as a nude model for artists. Cleo’s hesitations with the work is that the artists would observe each imperfection, similar to her fear of the pedestrians. This fear mounts until it becomes too much, and reaches a literal breaking point. The imagery of that very same friend’s broken mirror towards the end of the film foreshadows a change in emotion. Despite a constantly superstitious Cleo calling the broken mirror bad luck, very soon after the object symbolizing her internal struggle with appearance is broken, she meets Antoine in the park. As she and Antoine talk, Cleo begins to realize the errors of her ways. She finally abandons her image-reliant lifestyle after meeting someone who values her for her personality. Cleo’s new way of thinking is demonstrated in the final scenes as she claims to be happy even after receiving a cancer diagnosis. Although Cleo is going to have to go through months of body and image-altering chemotherapy, she feels happy having someone by her side. All in all, the mirror is a bygone representation of Cleo’s internalized fears. It was only after the idea instilled in Cleo’s mind was broken, that Cleo stopped striving for perfection, and formed a strong relationship that would infinitely more useful as she battles cancer.
ReplyDeleteCleo from 5 to 7 uses the concept of beauty and mirrors to represent the fleetingness of health. Throughout the film, Cleo interacts with the idea of beauty by looking at herself in mirrors or when she talks to her friend who is a model for artists. In the beginning, Cleo believes that as long as she is beautiful, she will stay healthy. However, Cleo views her own beauty through mirrors, which represent the fake façade that she is putting upon herself. Instead of realizing and coming to terms with the possibility that she may have cancer, she focuses on her exterior emotions and how other people see her, rather than what she actually believes to be happening. This disconnect between reality and her appearance makes her anxiety worse about finding out what the results are. Another way in which Cleo interacts with the idea of beauty is when she talks to her friend who models for artists. At first, Cleo thinks that modeling like that would feel exposed, but her friend thinks about it more as an appreciation of beauty than an interpretation of quality. Cleo and her friend have different values of beauty at that moment. Cleo believes that her beauty defines her and how she is doing at the moment, but her friend believes that beauty is a way to appreciate someone rather than a defining quality. In Cleo’s mind, her beauty keeps her alive, which is why she goes to the store and buys a hat for herself. The hat represents how other people see her and how she sees herself from the outside. Cleo is worrying throughout the movie about what the results will be and is completely focused on herself; however, the only time where she does not worry about the results is when she is talking to the man she met. This is important because the man shares Cleo’s friend’s values of beauty in that it is a way to appreciate someone or something rather than a defining quality, and at that moment Cleo does not care about the results as much and instead appreciates life for what it is.
ReplyDeleteThe film Cleo From 5 to 7 emphasizes that beauty is a superficial concept defined by an external lens through the use of mirrors and Cleo’s character development. At the beginning of the film, Cleo discovers that there is a possibility that she has cancer and begins to obsess over her appearance. As the film developed, Cleo tried to enhance her image in hopes of counteracting her deteriorating health. One example of an attempt to enhance her image was when she bought a new hat. Although the hat had no practical purpose since it was a winter hat in summer time, its beauty made her feel alive. She believed that as long as she was beautiful, she was alive since to others she appeared to be well. Cleo believed that her liviliness was defined by the way she was viewed by others. In the scene where Cleo was walking down the street to the restaurant, she looked at her reflection in just about every reflective surface she passed and fixed what she believed were her external flaws such as her messy hair. This shows that at the beginning of the film, she valued physical beauty above all else, even her health. Throughout the first half of the film, Cleo was surrounded by mirrors and other people which represented the observation of her external image. However, on her way to meet her friend, Cleo separates from the crowds. This deviation represents the diminishing value of her physical beauty because she is no longer being observed by others. The final nail in the coffin was when she broke her pocket mirror and finally realized that her physical beauty was not going to keep her alive and did not hold as much value as she thought. Furthermore, when she was alone in the park she did not care about her physical beauty because it became apparent that it did not define her livelihood. When Cleo was isolated her appearance served no practical purpose so when she met Antoine, she was not focused on her appearance but rather her internal beauty. She didn’t look at her reflection at all as she traveled through Paris with Antoine. Ultimately, the juxtaposition of Cleo’s character at the beginning of the film and at the end serves to expose the superficiality of external beauty.
ReplyDeleteThe film’s message is more about the obsession with beauty than beauty itself. The film is centered around Cleo, a singer who prioritizes her beauty over everything else. When she learns she has an illness, her thoughts about whether her beauty will fade rather than the cost of medical treatment or how the rest of her life will progress. She values her beauty so much that she says “as long as I am beautiful, I am living,” as if she’d as well be dead if she were ugly. As the movie progresses, however, she starts to place more emphasis on the value of her life, rather than the value of her physical beauty. This leads to her becoming more and more stressed about her cancer - examples of this can be seen throughout the movie. The movie demonstrates a lot of the emotion through different cuts. At first every scene of her at an angle or in the mirror was to highlight how she was focused on her beauty. As the film went on however, different cuts and scenes are used to highlight her change in mentality. Nowhere is this more prevalent when talking to the man assigned to take her to the hospital. On the train to take her to the hospital is one scene where both simply sit in silence, accepting of each other despite not being the most beautiful. This scene portrays how much Cleo has changed in the short duration of the movie as she went from being completely obsessed with her looks to being completely content. Additionally, when she arrives at the hospital to receive chemotherapy (a procedure that can cause major weight and hair loss) could cure her cancer, she is joyful instead of worried about how she’ll look after the procedure. Ultimately, the movie makes the point that yes, physical beauty is beautiful, but it is life as a whole that is more beautiful as both may be evanescent, but the loss of life includes the loss of beauty and many other things.
ReplyDeleteThe film Cleo from 5 to 7, conveys the message that one’s beauty isn’t important to ourselves and others as we might think. Throughout the film we get to see through Cleo’s lens of how important it is to her to cultivate and attend to her appearance to self-validate and feel more secure in herself. Early on in the film Cleo is told by a card reader that she has cancer and she does not have long to live, which sends Cleo into an enormous frenzy. She eventually reassures herself after hearing this news by saying, “as long as I have my beauty I am living.” This comment of self-reassurance lets us know that she ultimately cares about how she presents to the world on the outside above all else, and that keeping up her appearance can solve her underlying issues. As well as giving herself positive affirmations about her own beauty after receiving terrible news, she goes out on a shopping spree to fill the void in her soul that is further deepening. Cleo goes out shopping and buys herself a high fashion hat, and while trying the hat on and looking how it fits and feels in the mirror, she gains compliments from others in the store. After she buys this hat that is deemed attractive on her, her demeanor is visibly less filled with dread and panic. In addition to the scene in which Cleo buys the hat, there are many scenes in the film where at every mirror or reflection of herself, she makes miniscule adjustments and tweaks to her appearance showing the audience an even greater view of beauty’s importance to her, and her deep insecurity about how she presents physically to other people. As the film continues and the stress of knowing she could lose her life very soon haunts her, she puts in more work to continue her appearance that is beloved by others to distract herself and to feel better. It is only when Cleo abandons this harmful standard of beauty for herself, and when she stops being what others want her to be, that she finally can enjoy her life knowing that she will still be beautiful after cancer treatment and by not constantly fixing and keeping up her appearance to please others.
ReplyDeleteThe film Cleo from 5 to 7 highlights the use of glass reflection and mirrors as a way of seeing physical beauty, and changing the way it makes you feel about yourself. In Cleo's case, she felt that if she looked pretty on the outside, then she would last longer on the inside. We found out early in the film that Cleo had cancer, and that she really cared about her outward appearance. Cleo felt that as long as she looked normal, then no one would ever know how she felt on the inside because of her condition. The first time we were really able to witness Cleo caring about her appearance was when she went to the store to buy a hat. She tried on many different hats, and looked at herself in the mirror to see how each one looked. She finally found one that made her confident in her appearance, so much so as to go out in public with it. Due to Cleo caring so much about her public image, she was missing out on what really mattered in her life. One very important part in the film was when Cleo's mirror broke, and she was finally able to realize that there was so much more she could be doing with the little time she had left. She meets a man named Antoine, and comes to see how much he valued her for her personality. Cleo realizes how valued she is on the inside, and that she doesn't need to worry so much about the way she looks on the outside. Cleo started forming strong connections and making the most of her life, instead of focusing so much on perfection and what people see on the outside.
ReplyDeleteThe film Cleo from 5 to 7 represents a certain perspective of beauty, one that believes that outward beauty means a healthy life. After being introduced to the character Cleo, we understand that she cares a lot about what other people think about her as she decided to go shopping for a new hat after receiving a premonition that she had cancer. She decided to place her looks over her physical health, which is not a healthy lifestyle. At this moment, she sincerely believes that simply looking good will translate to feeling good. However, this simply isn’t true as when her music producer co-workers visit her, she expresses that she is ill and that despite her living a lavish lifestyle, she doesn’t feel content. Though her life may appear to be perfect on a materialistic level, she is really struggling to find happiness in life as she is trapped by the anxiety of her disease. Her understanding of beauty consisted of persuading others through physical features that she was beautiful, and therefore was perfectly fine. Yet she herself began to understand that simply looking good wasn’t the same as feeling good. Then, when she meets a man at a park, who actually seems to accept her as being ill despite being beautiful. Cleo then understands that beauty can exist externally and internally. Even though she is beautiful outside, she didn’t feel beautiful inside, but the man she met helped her understand that she didn’t necessarily have to look beautiful for people to like her.
ReplyDeleteIn the movie Cleo from 5 to 7, Cleo cared less about her physical appearance and was less stressed about her cancer as the movie progressed, showing that obsession over physical beauty is harmful to one’s mental health. At the beginning of the movie, the director angled the camera so that it seems as if there was an infinite reflection of Cleo in the mirror. The infinite reflection represents the unlimited beauty she wanted since the more beautiful she is, the more lively she gets. The camera then follows her in a long shot that tracks her as she continues to walk on the street and shops for more hats to decorate herself. During this whole process, she was constantly complaining and panicking about how the doctor will confirm that she has cancer and she will die. To balance her worry, she continues to obsess over her appearance as she buys a winter hat and checks herself in the mirror. Essentially, her physical beauty calmed her down every now and then. Unfortunately, physical appearance is only temporary and eventually, her beauty no longer calmed her. Cleo decides to take off her wig and at that moment, her life takes a turn. She picked up a friend of hers who modeled nakedly in front of a sculpture class. On her way there, instead of looking at mirrors and obsessing over herself, she observes the world around her and sees the people that are looking at her. This time, she’s not caring about her appearance but rather the people that are looking at her appearance. As she begins to get uncomfortable, Cleo starts to hustle to pick up her friend. Cleo’s friend explains to her that she doesn’t care about her physical body being seen by others. She doesn’t need to be afraid of others seeing her body since nobody’s physical appearance is perfect. Instead, she feels happy that people see her and create art, have new ideas, and see her for more than just her appearance. As Cleo carried on with her day, worrying about her report from the doctor, she met a man on the bridge. After some back and forth teasing, Cleo was interested in talking to him and they slowly fall in love. Although she didn’t have a hat on, didn’t have a fancy hat on, didn’t dress up perfectly, she wasn’t bothered at all to be right next to the man she loves and get lost as she stares into her eyes. Finally, she received the news that she will be fine after a few months of treatment and was extremely relieved. During the whole second part of the movie, when she barely worried about her own appearance, she grew less worried about her sickness and her death. Instead, the director used a series of long shots to film the surroundings that she finally took her time and appreciated after realizing her physical appearance didn’t matter at all.
ReplyDeleteThe Film Cleo from 5 to 7 tells the story of how a person's life can become more gratifying by focusing less on their physical appearance and more on what makes them happy. This is seen through the character Cleo, who learns to focus less on her physical beauty as the film progresses. Early on in the film Cleo reassures herself with the phrase, "as long as I have my beauty I am living." This shows Cleo's perspective on life in the beginning of the film. She is obsessed with her looks, wanting to make sure everything about her is perfect. This is only compounded upon by her assistant who would tell her things such as it is bad luck to wear things you immediately buy as well as her job as a star. All of these things force Cleo to focus so much on her outward appearance, making it a focal point of her life. However, that focus shifts as the movie progresses and Cleo learns to focus less on her skin deep beauty, and rather on who she is as a person and what makes her happy. This transition from accepting herself begins when she meets a man who accepts her and her cancer. Meeting this man and talking to him helps Cleo gain perspective on life, which not only helps her see her true beauty, but also the beauty around her. This is shown through the several landscape shots throughout the second part of the film, symbolizing Cleo's newfound appreciation for the things around her. Cleo from 5 to 7 is a film that seeks to spread the message that beauty is not just something that is defined by how we look, but rather is a much larger concept. Beauty as a concept is one that encapsulates our entire being, both inside and out, as well as all the surrounds us, and this message is shown through the journey that Cleo goes on to accept herself and her illness throughout the film.
ReplyDeleteThe story of Cleo 5 to 7 is one that is rife with personal development and realization; the film uses Cleo’s character to show that beauty extends beyond just a superficial level. Much of Cleo's identity is initially based on how pretty she assumes herself to be. At the beginning of the film, Cleo learns she has cancer. The first time she is alone, she looks into her mirror and says to herself, "Ugliness is a kind of death. As long as I’m beautiful I’m alive." Cleo's concern with her appearance is likely related to the pressures of being a well-known singer. But she also uses it as a distraction while she worries about her cancer diagnosis — she would rather focus on what she can control than what she cannot. But she also worries that she will die "ugly," a death much worse than dying beautiful in her eyes. As the film progresses, we see that Cleo seems to stare into every mirror for a chance to fix her appearance. Cleo becomes more and more paranoid as she notices all of the people staring at her while out in public, until she finally finds her friend who is a nude model for sculpters. Her friend tells her how she isn’t afraid of the artists seeing her imperfections because no human is perfect. She ignores her friend as she cannot fathom not caring about her appearance in front of others. But later, when she meets a man in the park she goes to, she finds him appealing; he deals with her presence more than what is on the surface. This seems to affect Cleo, who seems to let go of her focus on appearance when she talks to him. By the end of the film, Cleo overcomes her troubles with her constant appearance anxiety and is no longer phased by cancer or cancer treatment; she is just happy to be alive and relieved of her loneliness. She finds that beauty is not just skin deep - but also emotional, intellectual and spiritual.
ReplyDeleteThrough the use of mirrors and Cleo's character development, the film Cleo From 5 to 7 highlights that beauty is a superficial idea defined by an external force. Cleo realizes that she may have cancer at the start of the film and begins to worry about her beauty. Cleo tried to improve her image as the film progressed in the hopes of masking her deteriorating condition. The first attempt to improve her appearance was when she purchased a new hat. Although the hat had no practical purpose in the summer heat, its attractiveness made her feel alive.Another example is when she becomes fixated on her reflection as she passes by a restaurant window. However the most significant technique used to highlight the idea was the film's use of mirrors.Cleo was surrounded by mirrors and other individuals for the first half of the film, which symbolized the observation of her exterior image. Cleo, however, distances herself from the crowds on her way to see her freinds. Because she is no longer being noticed by others, this deviation in behavior indicates her declining importance of physical beauty. The final straw came when she shattered her pocket mirror and realized that her attractiveness would not keep her alive and did not have the same significance as she had previously assumed.
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