The main character, Katherine Watson, finds it hard to believe that women could accept to drop their ambitions in favor of getting married. Mona Lisa Smile criticizes the traditional views about women role only being mothers and wives and concludes that women have the right to make their own choices.
“Thus, if you look at the painting so that your gaze falls on the background or on Mona Lisa's hands, your perception of her mouth would be dominated by low spatial frequencies, so it would appear much more cheerful than when you look directly at her mouth.”
Watson wanted to give them a life lesson. The lesson here is that one should become a reflection of their own desires, not what the society around them tells you to be. She guides them to reach their conclusions through scaffolding (Firestone).
Why did Katherine break up with Bill in Mona Lisa Smile?
Katherine spends some time during the movie Mona Lisa Smile dating a character named Bill, another professor at the school. He had plenty of stories about his time as a war hero, but Katherine learns he has not been truthful about that and decides to dump him.
Mona Lisa Smile (2003) Official Trailer 1 - Julia Stiles Movie
What is the mystery behind the Mona Lisa Smile?
Gazing at Mona Lisa's eyes, our less accurate peripheral vision notices the mouth, picking up shadows from the cheekbones. The shadows play visual tricks, hinting at the curve of a smile. But when we look directly at the mouth, our central vision doesn't see the shadows, and so the smile suddenly disappears.
Katherine pushes Joan into applying for one of the few female slots at Yale Law School, which enrages Betty, who starts writing nasty editorials against Katherine and her friend, the lesbian nurse, who passes out birth control diaphragms to promiscuous students.
The film addresses the issue of women's role in society. In the 1950s many people believed that women's position was as mothers and wives. Society at that time was patriarchal and the director of the movie wanted to illustrate how most the women were forced to stop their careers and get married (Fatmawati).
The most noteworthy part of the film, a fictional tale set at Wellesley College during the 1950s, is how much it apparently got wrong about student life of that period, according to a growing phalanx of former students.
Does Connie end up with Charlie in Mona Lisa Smile?
However, she elopes and plans to be a wife to her husband in Philadelphia. Connie ends up with Betty's cousin Charlie. Katherine discovers Bill lied about serving in Italy, which leads to their separation.
Katherine Ann Watson (Julia Roberts) ends the movie without any man and was the catalyst for quite a few of her students' discovering their sexuality. Amanda Armstrong (Juliet Stevenson), the only out lesbian in the movie, gets far too little screen time and leaves us too soon.
In the end, the students realized the importance of education and their role as women in society. They learned that women can also make their own choices without conforming to what society tells them.
Finally, Betty files for divorce, decides to move into a Greenwich village apartment with her nemesis Giselle and tells Katherine that she may even apply to Yale law school.
The Mona Lisa has also been interpreted in different ways by different cultures. In Italy, where the painting originated, it is often referred to as La Gioconda, which translates to “the joyous woman.” This interpretation suggests that the painting is a visual representation of happiness.
It was painted by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, and now belongs to the French Republic. The Mona Lisa conveys a mood of calm and quiet happiness. The woman is seen smiling slightly. This conveys a sense of comfort and relaxation.
The real eye-catcher, though, was the presence of plumbonacrite—a rare compound stable found only in an alkaline environment. “Leonardo probably endeavored to prepare a thick paint suitable for covering the wooden panel of the Mona Lisa by treating the oil with a high load of lead II oxide, PbO,” the study states.
Mona Lisa sat for Leonardo to paint her, but she wouldn't smile during the sitting. Not all the way. The story goes that da Vinci wanted her to smile wider, but she refused. She did not want the joy she felt for her new baby to erase the pain she felt from losing [one prior]. There in her half smile is her half joy.
The president of Wellesley College, Diana Chapman Walsh, issued a statement last week to "set the record straight" about the movie Mona Lisa Smile, a fictional account of women's lives at Wellesley in the early 1950s.
Summary. Smile uses horror to explore how trauma destroys lives, leaving an impact long after the movie ends. The entity in Smile represents emotional pain, forcing victims to confront their fears and inner demons.
It's actually Betty's mother, not Betty herself, who obsesses over every detail of her wedding and happily browbeats everyone into pulling it off her way. Broken Aesop: Joan decides to get married rather than go to Yale and is happy to have done so.
Mike Newell's Mona Lisa Smile , from a screenplay by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, reportedly had as its genesis a magazine article about Hillary Rodham Clinton's years at Wellesley College in the 1960's.
The study, published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, cited the Mona Lisa's thinning hair, yellow skin, and possible goiter as visual evidence of hypothyroidism.
Researchers studying 3-D images of the “Mona Lisa” say she was probably either pregnant or had just given birth when she sat for Leonardo da Vinci's 16th-century masterpiece. Maybe they should call it the “Mama Lisa.”
