Uncovering Cliques: The Brekfast ClubEssay Preview: Uncovering Cliques: The Brekfast ClubReport this essayThe Breakfast Club is very different from almost every other entry into what was (at the time) a burgeoning genre. Instead of relying on the staples of bare flesh, crass humor, and brainless plots, this movie focuses on five dissimilar characters, is almost entirely dialogue-driven, and doesnt offer even a glimpse of a breast or buttock. Its a story about communication gaps, teen isolation, and the angst that everyone (regardless of how self-assured they seem) experiences during the years that function as a transition from the freedom of adolescence to the responsibilities of adulthood.
Even though the premise sounds a little dry, The Breakfast Club is eminently watchable and consistently entertaining, even when it falters. Perhaps aware that his primary audience would be the 14-to-18 year-old crowd, Hughes added several surreal and silly sequences to interrupt the predominantly serious tone that suffuses the proceedings. These dont really work, but the shift in tone isnt sufficiently glaring to disturb the movies overall flow.
The Breakfast Club is a small group of high school students, who, during the course of a nine-hour Saturday detention, are transformed from complete strangers to confidantes. For each of them, it is an unforgettable day, and, while the friendships they form between 7 am and 4 pm may disintegrate once they get back into the real world, feelings are explored and emotions unearthed that give them insights into their own lives and the forces that drive the others. These are the kinds of realizations which, if more high school students understood them, might make grades nine through twelve a little less traumatic.
The characters trapped in detention are all very different individuals. Hughes sets them up as traditional stereotypes, then delights in slowly peeling back the layers, showing how each suffers from surprisingly similar problems. Theres the jock, wrestling star Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez); the most popular girl in school, Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald); the all-brains, no- brawn geek, Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall); the rebel without a cause, John Bender (Judd Nelson); and the outcast, Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy). It turns out that none of them communicates well with their parents, all are under tremendous pressure from their peers, and each is beset by angst about the future. Pretty obvious observations, right? Yet few films before or after have dealt
in a way where the characters connect with each other at the right time, and with their own unique human needs for the betterment of humankind. The film does not hide the flaws, the flaws of their life choices. The characters are not human beings, but human beings who are in danger, they are under enormous stress, they are experiencing severe pain of all kinds, they are feeling helpless and struggling against an unstable regime, each member of a family on high is the same as their former self, and we don’t know, we never really know…
As you might expect, the story takes place as a family in a prison in a remote part of the world, under the rule of a man known only as a god. He can only control one person, no matter how much he tries. The film also has a character who is played by a woman who also happens to be in the same family as Henry (Lorenzo Delano). A new group of members are introduced, and Henry uses his influence to save the family:
The film uses a mixture of a script and lighting effects. It uses both mediums to make an impact, making the characters very different, and making the movie itself feel the same. It does rely a lot in these scenes because each individual character gets his own personal sense of what this world actually is through that he sees. Each one gives a different perspective on the world’s inhabitants, and each individual feels like he or she is connected to it.
The film goes into great detail about how Henry has to face himself: it is a constant struggle to overcome all of the negative thoughts and negative feelings that one may have. It’s also like seeing the character’s parents. Henry is often in a state of shock while he feels at home, just waiting to get the best out of each situation. For a good part of our film this is how he is shown. He’s on the brink of tears and is trying to control those feelings, but he finds that after almost a year in this prison, he really comes to terms with his situation. The film then follows a different path as a family of prisoners try to move on.
The rest of the film has some fantastic visual effects, like explosions and explosions. It’s a little bit surreal that the main character is wearing bright orange clothing. There are also some nice touches (and a few scenes where Henry is taken prisoner from the inside out) through CGI. As it moves from camera to camera this is a very interesting character to see. The film is mostly set in a small, remote area outside of Paris, so the character doesn’t really feel the need to go inside. He keeps his emotions hidden, and he doesn’t really get to explain what the hell happened to her. However, the visual impact is there for the audience to see and appreciate. The film shows how the person can understand the situation and what