Week 7: Diversity & Inclusion 3 - Instructions Not Includec

Good afternoon everyone! As usual, I will give a quick rundown of the week before jumping into the lesson and topics discussed in my FYE class this week. Classes started to ramp up this week in regards to the workload as the majority of classes are headed towards the midterm. Calculus and English were the two classes giving me a lot of busywork and assignments to crack down on. While I do not completely get the concepts being told in both those classes yet, I feel like I am not too far off from having a grasp on things. Away from classes, I was able to play my first flag football game on Tuesday. Our team did not do well overall but I was able to get an interception in the game which is a positive takeaway. On Friday, I was able to go back to my hometown to enjoy dinner and the Atlanta Braves baseball game with them. I came back to the college campus on Saturday to enjoy the rest of my weekend. Now time to backtrack to look at the topics from Monday and Wednesday's FYE class.

Before the Monday class, I was tasked with watching the film 'Instructions Not Included'. The film follows the life of Valentin Bravo who is left with Maggie, who is supposedly the man's daughter, by the mother. Valentin's inexperience as a father figure shapes up the film to be an interesting movie as Valentin does his best to provide for his daughter. In Monday's class, we were given a three question pop quiz to refresh our memory on the film and to generate discussion later on in the class. After writing down our responses, we took the time to discuss the themes in the film. I discussed with fellow classmates Matthew, Tonilynn, and Alicia about the themes in the film. Some of the themes we discussed were child custody, parenting, selfless love, and fear. Another thing we talked about in regards to the film was a scene that stuck out to us the most. The scene that stuck with me the most was the scene where the Valentin risked his life to jump from a thirteen story building in order to save the daughter that he barely knew from falling into a pool. That scene in the movie was an example of selfless love where the dad laid his priorities and life aside for the safety and life of his daughter.

On Wednesday. we continued the discussions from Monday and gave details on the stereotypes highlighted in the movie. Early the movie. the main character, Valentin, was depicted as a 'man whore' because of his lifestyle of getting and hooking up with numerous tourist chicks in Acapulco, Mexico. Valentin also provided justification to himself for trying to take Maggie back to her mother by saying that Mexico has 'drug dealers', 'police corruption', 'muggings', and many other things to profile his home country. Our class also took the time to go over any other key points or topics in the movie with fellow classmates including the surprising closing scene which throws the film's audience off.

Review and Reflection

To get more feedback on the film for this blog, I looked at the review of the film on variety.com which basically highlighted the major scenes and detected the change of the mood throughout the film. The review claimed that the film went from iffy to comedic to tragical. I pretty much had a similar view to the film as I believed that the film was not going to be that great considering all the sexual and 'kissy' scenes to start the movie but it progressed into a loving father and daughter film that ended in sadness. I enjoyed the film overall but it was sad that the movie ended the way it did.

Thank you once again for reading the blog and here are the sources for the sites and pictures used.
https://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/instructions-not-included-review-1200594529/
https://www.alternateending.com/2013/09/there-could-never-be-a-father-who-loved-his-daughter-more-than-i-love-you.html
https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/instructions-not-included