JUNO CHARACTER ESSAY
Describe an interesting character in your film.
Explain the visual and verbal features helped to make that character interesting.
In the movie Juno directed by Jason Reitman Juno, the title character, is very interesting. She is interesting because she is a teenager who faces her pregnancy with courage and we see her grow up. She faces big decisions, feels a range of emotions and The verbal and visual techniques of dialogue, costume, and camera work helped to make her interesting.
Juno is an interesting character because she has to make a lot of difficult decisions due to her pregnancy. Firstly she decides to abort the pregnancy, then when she realises she can’t go through with this she decides to adopt out the baby to the perfect family. When the couple separate she decides to still give the baby to the woman, Vanessa, even though they are no longer a perfect family. Camera work is used to show her emotional struggle with the decisions she makes. A high angle shot is used when Juno first goes to the Loring’s house to meet the couple who will adopt the baby. This helps to make Juno and interesting character as it makesher appear much more vulnerable than her dialogue suggests. There is a close up on her face as she sits in her van and cries after learning Mark is leaving Vanessa. This helps to make Juno an interesting character because it shows the depth of her emotion as she struggles to keep control of everything that is going on around her. They made me realise that it would be really hard to be pregnant and making such difficult decisions.
The verbal technique of dialogue helps to show that Juno is an interesting character because it shows that she is witty, sarcastic and has a great sense of humour even in this difficult time in her life. Juno’s dialogue includes comments like: “They call me the cautionary whale”, “I’m already pregnant, what other shenanagans can I get up to”, and“I’m ill equipped”. This dialogue helps …
The visual technique of costume helps to show that Juno is an interesting character because it visually shows us the development of her pregnancy and people’s reactions to it. At the start of the film Juno is wearing jeans, plaid shirts and cardigans that look like they come from the op shop. As she grows Bren (her step-mother) has to sew elastic into her jeans to make them fit. She still wears t-shirts but they are stretched tight across her belly. There is one scene where all the other students in the hallway are parting and staring at her as if she is a monster. In another scene an older woman looks disapprovingly over her glasses. The use of costume to visually show Juno’s developing pregnancy helped to make her an interesting character because I saw how difficult life was for her in the later part of the pregnancy and although her friends and family were supportive the wider community wasn’t. I can’t imagine being in this situation so it was interesting to learn how a teenager might cope.