Ghett'a Life

1. In general, what did you like and dislike about the film?

Well, I liked a lot the style and the narrative development of the story, specially the beginning. I think that the film captures a very huge amount of different aspects of Jamaican culture, such as the day by day routines, their music, their social-political reality, patriarchy, among others. Finishing the film in a very comic way and showing us a lot of very deep themes of their society using codes of dark comedy, sometimes the film felt so real and raw, and sometimes I felt they were just teasing with me. Anyhow, the very unique construction of reality and the film editing made me have a really good time watching It. The song thing also was very cool to me, telling the story using the musician and his song and sometimes in a very abstract way was so cool and refreshing from all the jokes and nonsense. 

Now, what I didn't like was the very bad acting scenes, although they were really funny, those assassination and fighting scenes felt so unreal and weird and took me out of the feeling I was having from It. It really bothered me, and the film pretty much did so the whole time. But at the end I was like "ok, this is a joke, I get it..." but many thoughts and feelings stood with me after the screening. 

2. Who is your favorite character from the film?

I liked Elsa, mainly because is like the one female character In the whole film and she is kind of the representation of a very brave and strong woman, besides all the conditions she lived and the problems she could have because of Jimmy (who I really don't like although he is very funny) didn't stop her. And she kind of had a very brief transformation of being a little girl looked over by the priest to an very strong woman in my opinion. That at the end decides to stood by herself and do what she thinks is the right thing for the others she cares, like when she denounced where Jimmy was, for instance. 

 3. Would you recommend this film to someone, why/why not?

Absolutely. I really had a good time watching it and as I said many thoughts were in my head as I watched It. I think is a very intelligent film when delivers information to the spectator and the way it unfolds the story. Besides it's a fictional film, i think that it has a lot of very deep meaning scenes that reflects the social circumstances of the Jamaican society at those years, specially being like the "former" colony of the British Kingdom (But the queen stills being the ruler wtf). 

4. How does this film contribute to postcolonial identity?

As I said before, again this film reflects different aspects of Jamaican people. The music element was much like a open window to submerge into the dynamics of how the people live, and at what costs do they live. The white men having the power to decide which records are popular and paying just a few bucks to the actual musicians and many other abuses between their own people are very normalized and is very raw and moving in a sort of way. I think this film is like an invitation to contemplate those stereotypes as well. Just like the Jamaicans in the film were watching it in the cinema. That is not a random choice for the filmmakers and that gives you a very different reading of the film once you finished watching it.