College Writings

This is the page where all my college writing is, Enjoy!

Here are two pieces we had to do for Creative Writing.

18/2/2009: A Place

Pere Lechaise, Paris
Pere Lechaise, Paris

The graveyard was surrounded by tall thick walls which stopped only for iron gates at the corner. The entrance way divided into two paths, skirting around the inside of the great walls.

A row of trees covered the path to the right, which was broken in places to reveal stones from long ago. The rows of headstones were only interrupted by old family crypts.

The path split into smaller ones, one of which went up a hill. A funeral was proceeding. Three mourners, wearing black, wiped tears from their faces.

To the left, a hugely decorated monument was covered in fresh flowers. The red flowers and ribbons obscured the writing on the stone. It read: Fredric Chopin 1810-1847.

People queued nearby paying their respects at a tucked away grave. A simple posy of flowers rested on the small white stones. A visitor said “Jim Morrison will never die”.

This wasn’t a regular burial place; this was Père Lachaise, Paris.

11/2/2009 Film Criticism: Australia. Dir: Baz Luhrmann

Before the opening frame even hits the screen, ‘the new Gone with the Wind’, Baz Luhrmann’s Australia has a lot to live up to.

Nicole Kidman stars with Hugh Jackman, in this over indulgent love story, set against the backdrop of World War Two. Kidman plays Lady Sarah, an English aristocrat who travels to ‘Far Far Away’, the farm and bottomless money pit in Northern Australia, her husband has purchased. Jackman, plays The Drover, living up to his World Sexiest Man title, who is sent by Lady Sarah’s husband to collect his wife from the airport. The love story between the two weaves in and out of the film intertwined with the struggle of the aboriginal ‘lost children’. The real star however, is the scenery of Australia’s outback.

This is a drawn out love story, in which Luhrmann, cleverly plays the ‘Oz’ theme and even has Kidman singing ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’. Luhrmann’s style of his previous films creeps in with its humour and occasional cartoon-like imagery, especially the beginning of the film. It’s an OK love story, it’s an OK story telling of the ‘Lost Children’ but other movies have done both a lot better.

© Copyright Vanessa Monaghan/Nessy Productions 2009