Motifs in the film

There were a number of motifs that were in throughout the film, but the one that stuck out predominantly was the vast amount of people. Just the fact that there were so many people, and that life in general was viewed apathetically. When they listed the statistics of deaths, they also mentioned how no one cared about it. Everyone only minded their own business, it didn’t matter what happened as long as it didn’t involve them. People were even somewhat apathetic about their own lives. At the railroad crossing, despite the gates being down, everyone just walked up next to the railroad waiting, somewhat impatiently, for the train to pass by and would rush across before the next train came. Along with the overcrowded population, the traffic infrastructure was affected by how numerous the people were. Traffic was at basically a standstill due to the number of vehicles on the road. A more subtle motif was the contrast between the modernization of the country and the socially downtrodden. While there were all these businessmen rushing to get on the train, at the same time there were people with little marketable skill hawking trinkets and petty services like shoe shining. It was also exhibited with the broken down slums right next to an airport runway. There were whole families living in very close proximity to a landing strip, which would never even be considered as a residential area in the US.