Unit 2: The Leap Years

 

Recently, I went to watch the movie called ‘The Leap Years,’ the first English movie product of Singapore. For me, ‘The Leap Year’

is a perfect non-verbal communication piece. Please does not misinterpret this with a silent movie, ok? Im saying that this is a really good piece of romance that has well illustrated different types of non-verbal communication.

1.     Paralinguistics: study of vocal nonverbal cues like quality of voice, vocalics, or even silence.

In this movie, paralinguistics reflects through soundtracks. This is also my favorite part of the entire movie. You can refer to the link below for a soundtrack of the movie, The birthday song, performed by famous Singaporean singer Corrinne May.

 

 

Music was added in to make the piece more emotional, hence get more tears from the audience. Soft and slow music has been used in ‘The Leap Year’

to express the romantic mood through this whole piece of romance. 

 

2.     Chronemics: study of how time convey meaning

The title of the movie itself, The Leap Year, already tells the meaning of time in the relationship of the two main characters. The story is based on the special Leap Four Years day, February 29^th. The movie moves back and forth between the Leap Years days, which are also the birthday of the main female character, Li-Ann.  12 years time was condensed into a 95 minutes film, shows how fast time passes. In this particular movie, time conveys a deeper meaning: trust & love; because it is not easy to wait for each other 12 years and only meet once by 4 years.     

Not only the movie touches on individual time (past, future, present), it also shows the cultural association. The story was written base on the romantic Irish Leap Year custom, which allows woman to propose a date to a man.

 

3.     Objectics: study of how meanings are conveyed through physical objects

      As I observe, most of the movies in which the screens taking place in a long period of time usually use text, ‘Next 2 years’ for example, to indicate the change in time. In the Leap Year, the calendar with the date of February 29^th was shown to mention any timing change.

      The windmill is another object that was seen quite often through out the film. It symbols the male character, Jeremy, as the fortune-teller has told the Li-Ann that her real man is like a strong wind, comes and disappears. So when she first meets Jeremy at the Windows Café with a lot of windmills in his hands, she knows that her destiny has come

4.     Oculesics: study of nonverbal meaning associated with the eyes

There are a lots of screens in ‘The Leap Year’ where silence rules. The two main characters do not say a word, but by observing the way they look at each other, the audiences can already feel love in the air.

It’s so true that “Eyes are the windows to the soul.” On Li-Ann wedding, the day that meant to be the happiness moment in a woman’s life, Li-Ann’s eyes contacts show the sadness hidden deep inside her heart. Please take a look at the trailer of ‘The Leap Year’ below for more details.

  Some words for the conclusion:Just now when I was about to add this part in for a deeper content of the blog, I saw a guy also choosing “The Leap Years” to talk about in his blog. May be it’s because the movie was quite recently, but not exclude the fact that actually this movie was really well made. ‘Well made’ here means it has not only had a good story line, but a effective way in interaction with the audience at well. I myself as well as others who ever watched this romance, I believe, were really touched by the movie. Every part of it conveys something to the viewers, even the non-verbal communication factors. I guess that’s the main reason why the movie is evaluated as one of the best piece of romance produced by Singaporean.