The Purple Rose of Cairo: A movie within a movie

      The Purple Rose of Cairo was an interesting movie. At first was difficult to sift through everything to figure out what the movie was about. One of the characters that were within the movie said that this story was about a man and self fulfillment and a woman said it was a true love story. These ideas do play some roll into the film but The Purple Rose of Cairo was about choices and so is life. Life is about choices. These choices can be given through rough choices, logical choices, or easy choices. There is not always an easy answer. In the movie Cecilia had a rough life going through the depression and a terrible marriage. She meets Tom and he is but a fantasy. He is the man every woman dreams of having. In the end she has to choose between the two men. Tom represents the fantasy world (the place of happiness that exists only in her mind) and Jeff represents the real world. One of the characters said, “The most human attribute is the ability to choose.” He is right about that. Life is about the choices that we make. Cecilia needed to choose how she wanted to live her life even though she was in the Great Depression. She still has some freedom to do that. Tom was a fantasy character. He did not really have to ability to choose how he wanted to live his life even though he came out of the screen.

      Logically it was wise to chose Jeff because the fantasy world could never be.   She later finds out that Jeff doesn’t really care about her and this is the reality of like. It is real and deceiving. Everything in the movie foreshadows that she will live happily ever after. I think the ending is a contradiction of what happens in the movie.

      One thing that I found interesting in the film was the film itself. The actual film was in color. The film in the film was in black in white. This was done with some intent. Black and white could give the impression of dullness and color is richer. When Cecilia was in the film that world was so perfect that is was dull but when she was in the real world it was richer. This also means it could lead to deception and disappointed. She found this out with Jeff. But that is where the human ability to choose comes into play to make situations better.

      There was one thing that she did chose out of all of this and that was to live her life. She was going through the depression but she did not go back to her terrible husband at the end of the film. People in the depression needed a fantasy to help them get away from the rough time they were having. The movie is centered on the idea of giving people in the depression something to get away and that was film and cinema.  She also chose to go back into the cinema to escape from everything that happened. She created another fantasy, but this time it did not need to be external. She found that out with Tom. I think the take home message is that happiness is not a set of external circumstances. It is a place in our mind and we can go there anytime we want.