Student Practice Response

LOOK BOTH WAYS PRAC SAC
The stories of all the characters carry equal weight in Look Both Ways. What do you think?

Each character in Look Both Way’s don’t carry the same weight, some carry huge weights such as Nick with his life or death cancer and some carry different weights such as Anna and Andy with the baby dilemma, All the characters carry some sort of weight but are to all different extents.

In the film one of the main characters Nick carries the heaviest weight of all. He has recently been told he has testicular cancer , which is what he has just watched his father die from, throughout the film he doesn’t tell anyone except Phil because he didn’t know the state of the cancer and he doesn’t want to leave his mother with after his father just dieing. Another weight on his shoulders throughout the film is his relationship with Meryl, He is drawn to her because that have similar experiences and they have numerus things in common, but he is reluctant to burden her about his cancer because she see’s death in everyone except him for some reason, due to Nick not being fully honest with Meryl about his health it makes the viewer feel a sense of awkwardness between the two of them whilst they are together.

Meryl also carries weight around with her throughout the film, although it’s not the same as the Life or death circumstances that Nick carries around with him, Meryl carries the emotional weight that her Father has Just passed away which leaves her in the mental state that causes her to imagine death scenarios during her normal life, these are shown through the artistic animations shown in the film such as the one where nick walks up to her window and says hello but she imagines him walking up and pulling a gun on her, also throughout the film there are many more instances where Meryl imagines being killed from everyday situations. This shows the mental state she is in during this time of her life which is the main weight she has to carry around with her.

Anna and Andy are carrying around a different t weight than what Nick and Meryl are, although it isn’t as challenging as the previous two characters it is very difficult. There weight is the burden of an unplanned pregnancy between the two of them which is brought to there attention after they have sort of broken off there relationship, Annas main concerns are that Andy isn’t at the right place in his life to look after another child along with his other two with his ex-wife, this is made even more clear to Anna when she witnesses Andy and his ex-wife arguing and her not trusting him enough to take there children to a party.

Although Julia isn’t featured as much as the other characters in the film she carries the weight of her partner being hit by a train and dieing, this happens after the two of them had recently brought a project house that needs plenty of renovations which gives the viewer a sense that the two of them are at the start of a long term relationship, after Robert dies it leaves Julia with far to much work to handle. One of the things that hurts Julia the most Is the Newspaper article that is written by Andy about her partners death possible being a Suicide not an accident and it featuring a large picture of herself on the front page, the article is obviously incorrect because that Julia and Robert where happy together and just at the beginning of there life.

Phil is the character that is carrying the lightest weight on his shoulders compared to the rest of the characters because he isn’t dieing or had someone die close to him. The weight that Phil Carries is the one of his familys wellbeing because of his bad habits of drinking, smoking and always putting work ahead of his family which is a very unhealthy life he is leading which could fly right past him very quickly, But by Nick coming to him an telling him about his cancer it opens his eyes up to the way he is living and how it would affect his family if he died, due to this eye opening experience Phil decides to change his lifestyle choices and stop smoking and drinking as much and putting his family ahead of his work, this is shown in the scene when Phil goes to his daughters party instead of working, due to this change of lifestyle it takes a huge weight off his shoulders in the end.

The statement ‘The stories of all characters carry equal weight in Look Both Ways’ isn’t correct as shown in the previous paragraphs from Nick who is carrying possible death around to Phil who is just worrying about how his family would cope without him around if he continued his unhealthy lifestyle, so a better statement would have been ‘All characters carry weight on there shoulders throughout there life but all are to different extents’.