Film critic reborn

I never thought I would enjoy an exam so much as yesterday's General Studies. It was just so relaxing, which is not a word that I tend to associate with exams. I suppose it did help that there's absolutely no revision required :)

First was modern language reading comprehension which was rather straightforward given that I did French A/S level last year and theoretically you shouldn't have to study the language beyond GCSE to get good marks. Oh, and it was multiple choice, which is always nice :) And then there was a science and spatial reasoning multiple choice paper, which is just fun and very quick to do.

Then came the two essays, during which my hand almost dropped off at the wrist due to all the longhand writing to which I am unaccustomed, but thankfully it remained attached and so I could complete the paper. The short list of science essay questions to choose from all seemed rather dull - "Detail the ways in which a gardener uses science in his garden," or "In the world of computers ever more technical hardware and software is making its way into the home. Discuss some potential applications of this for a family". The latter I avoided because I didn't like the wording of "more technical", and also there's a strong possibility that I would have started veering off the point of "family applications" if I'dtried writing that one. I ended up choosing a question about the validity of the quote There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics and how statistics can be used properly or improperly.

The second essay though - culture/arts/social science/humanities - was great. I was very tempted by the question which read: "What social, moral and ethical problems are caused by the increasing availability and use of the internet as a means of communication? Discuss how some of these issues could be resolved," but in the end I went for the following: "Over the years, many films have been acclaimed as the greatest film of all time. Determine the criteria by which you would judge the quality of a great film. Illustrate your answer with reference to at least two films." I had a field day with that one and couldn't stop writing!

The major annoyance was that having bought Citizen Kane last week, we almost watched it at the weekend, and then decided not to at the last minute. It would have made such a good subject, seeing as it's just about always voted the best film ever made, but I couldn't include it since I've never seen it. So I tried to make sure I chose films that the examiner would probably have seen, so Vertigo and The Godfather were my two examples, and 2001: A Space Odyssey was an example of a so-very-nearly-great film - I don't think that you can quite gove a five-star rating to a film that actually requires you to read the complementary book in order to understand the last quarter of it. There's just no way that you could know what was going on by only having seen the film.

I started going into rather too much depth though, such as talking about the symbolism of some of Vertigo's cinematography - for example, there are a large number of shots filming Judy's mirror image, which is apt since she's becoming he reflection of Madeleine, and for the first part of the film Madeleine is nearly always filmed from afar to make her seem ethereal - again, appropriate because in a way she's not really there. Oh look, I'm off again :)

The Godfather part of the essay was rather less objectively critical than it was meant to be - I got carried away and it started turning into a gushing review of what I consider to be a superb film. Ach well, never mind. I got back on track again in time for the rest of the essay.

It was such a nice exam. The only annoying thing is that now I don't have any access to the essay that I wrote, which is a shame because I rather liked it.

The only thing that I didn't enjoy was the sudden appearance of a medium-sized spider on my desk halfway through. And for you Antipodeans, that's going by the UK size system, so I believe this translates as "invisible" for you - it was about 15mm in diameter. I started to jump but had to control myself since it was the middle of the exam, and so had to settle for sweeping it off the desk with a pencil. I didn't give it a second thought until it reappeared at my elbow ten minutes later, prompting the suppression of another jump in mid-air. After its second removal I spent the rest of the exam glancing nervously around at regular intervals in case it decided to grace me with its presence again.

By the way, an update on the tea situation - definitely better with sugar. I will persevere.