Sacrifice and Catherine Essay

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Proof Media Assignment – Masks In the movie Proof, the directorial decision to include Catherine’s eulogy and the post funeral scenes is very effective because it enhances the development of three characters. It also introduces the topic of masks – people wear masks to cover their real thoughts or intentions. The movie made a vivid contrast between a normal eulogy spoken by a man and Catherine’s interrupting speech. She first rudely interrupted the music, and spoke in a calm voice, “I’m not on the program.” This behaviour reveals Catherine’s braveness because not everyone has the courage to behave in such a rude way and speak about all the sacrifices she made even some of them are embarrassing; she was strong enough that she forced herself not to cry till the end of her speech in which someone else would’ve already been crying and shouting out loud probably. From Catherine’s words, it is obvious that she was angry at “Robert’s friends”, and she was blaming them for not helping at all within the past five years. She questioned the entire audience that if Robert was really such a “great man” as described in the normal eulogy, how come nobody helped at all when he was sick! “Wow, I can’t believe how many people are here, I never knew he had this many friends. I guess to you guys he was already dead, right? What’s a great man without his greatness?” said Catherine. From this quote, she hated and condemned those people who actually didn’t care about Robert at all, but still came to the funeral with their fake masks, pretended hypocritically that they missed “the great man intensely” after his death. She was being sarcastic at them because they didn’t have the right to attend such a great man’s funeral and nobody needs this fake and useless help. She was so furious that even Clair, her closest relative on Earth, didn’t even help at all. She just came back for a party and the reunion with her old friends and suddenly wanted to take “care” of Catherine hypocritically. Compare to those hollow people, Catherine didn’t wear any masks at all. She was brutally honest about everything and wasn’t trying to hold back. Her concluding sentence “I’m glad he’s dead” contains all of her bitterness, sacrifices, exhaustion, grievances, pain, sadness, etc. She wasn’t truly “glad”, in fact she must be suffered, painful and heartbroken upon his death. However, she was glad in a way that Robert was liberated from his illness and he didn’t belong to a world that’s full of lies and mistrust. She was also glad that Robert didn’t have to know the fact that most of his friends were hypocritical people with masks. Catherine’s entire eulogy reveals that she is a brave, strong and honest person; she sacrificed her entire life for her dearest father; she didn’t care about others’ thoughts, she just did whatever she wanted to do or whatever she thought was the right thing to do. Catherine is a great daughter. However, on the other hand, Clair is totally different from her. During Catherine’s eulogy, Clair felt guilty but she did nothing after Catherine ran away other than just stood up and called her. Clair is more restricted by social norms; she didn’t run out