The setting of Modern
Times was in the 1930s in the United States, and it was the time the Great
Depression had happened around the New York. Almost all of workers were laid off, and such people
were desperately busy to search their new job.
I found some
conflicts throughout this film. The first one was about between workers and its
society. The people who lost their jobs were forced to live without enough
foods. Because of the depression, it was not unusual to see the people who
stole productions from the store at that time. The second one was about between charley
and his factory. In this film, his factory’s boss worked him very hard, and what
was worse, they tried to reduce even the time to have lunch for its productivity and efficiency.
The last one was about both labor demonstration and the police. Many people
without a regular occupation joined such movement and tried to resist to the government.
To make them stop, the police held down, and took them to the jail.
As a climax,
charley was hired and became the café restaurant’s waiter, and finally, he
worked there for living with a beautiful women he met while he was escaping from his
workplace. The woman was also the waitress of the café, and supported him
to do work well. In this restaurant, all of workers had capability to sing, and
dance, or another performance. He managed to do that job, and he succeeded
to get new house to live with her.
The very first scene,
which was huge number of sheep moving diligently, was the symbol of workers
who was used by company and forced to do what their boss said, i think. The motion which
sheep was moving neatly was seemed to symbolize the people who were deprived
their freedom.
The irony was a
little hard to find. Charley was refused to work for his company. He always did
pranks. The working condition in that factory was really bad and he must have
thought that he wanted to stop working. When he caused some troubles and lost
job, he had no choice but to be vagrant. Of course he wished that he didn’t
have to work, but thanks to lose his job, he couldn’t earn money and difficult
to make a living.
The theme of
this film was we shouldn’t focus on social productivity, I guess. Too focusing
on that would gradually make our personality break down. The importance of
defending human ethics seemed to be the greatest point.
