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The Black Balloon Essay

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A quote by Curt Armstrong, “Our human family is completed when everyone is included.” Elissa Down produced the film, The Black Balloon, in 2008 to depict the struggles that not only the parents of a disabled child face but the struggles the siblings face as well. The Black Balloon is a coming-of-age film based on a familiar Australian family in the 1990s including a disabled elder son and a young teenager. The text explores the journey of Thomas, a neglected teenager, finding acceptance and maturity towards his disabled older brother through the help of Maggie, Simon, Charlie and Jackie. The Black Balloon uses film techniques such as music, colour, juxtaposition, dialogue and camera shots to evoke humour and compassion in the audience. Down …show more content…

At Thomas’ birthday dinner, Charlie embarrasses him in front of his girlfriend which therefore sparks the catalyst of rage shown in his facial expressions and atmospheric colour and hatred Thomas has bottled up shown in the darkening of colour and body language. His following actions of destroying his brother’s Nintendo is heavily symbolic of how from Thomas’ perspective Charlie destroyed what matters to Thomas so he destroyed something that matters to Charlie. Darker shades of grey and blue as well as diegetic sounds of Thomas weeping in the bathroom as Maggie walks towards the door. The door is symbolic of the negligence and isolation Thomas feels from everyone therefore the door acts as a barrier. By opening the door, Maggie is symbolic of her coming to realise the harm that her son is going through and finally is able to understand him better shown through her dialogue of, “poor boy”. In the monkey performance, Thomas shows extreme maturity and healing through his dance performance by showing happy facial expressions and joyful music. This use of a humorous performance also shows how instead of Thomas showing embarrassment he shows happiness. When the two brothers are in the bath, Thomas says “Did you just pee on my foot”. Instead of reacting disgusted like he would have acted at the beginning of the film, he reacted with laughter which resembles the character growth Thomas has been through by using a humorous scene. The Molison’s family went through a long process of healing as shown with the usage of humour and

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