Neil Jordan - Appearances and understanding of his works, his autuerism, deceptions, use of realism and fantasy, gender roles and use of visual surfaces. complete with references

Neil Jordan - Appearances and Understanding

"A Strand of Jordan's work is concerned with challenging sight as the primary sense of understanding and knowledge. Indeed, throughout he is interested in appearances and visual surfaces."

A picture paints a thousand words is a proverb that has been used by many to describe the works of many famous artists. A work of art can depict a message that does not have to be said or written, a painting can spark a lot of speculation and indeed this in itself is part of the art form. It could be said that a director is to a film as a painter is to a painting, that a director is the painter and the various other members of staff and cast are the paints in which the director uses to colour the film. This would suggest that the direction of a film is an art form.

This is central to the concept of auteurism; that may be defined as "the belief that cinema was an art of personal expression, and that its great directors were as much to be esteemed as the authors of their work as any writer, composer or painter." Ref: Lapsey, Westlake: Film Theory Notes.

An auteur is a filmmaker, usually a director, who exercises creative control over his or her works and has a strong personal style. Jordan's authorship is conveyed in a lot of his personal trademarks. His films are dark and moody and sometimes comic, darkly comic that is; he says this reflects the way Irish people are. In some of his films he has taken scripts written by someone else and imposed his own directional style where he makes this script partly his and he becomes a co-writer of that script. This is evident in The Butcher Boy...