The Fiftieth Gate By Mark Baker: An Analysis

With the creation of any text comes the influence and the manipulation of the audience into adopting the composer’s values, ideas and ultimate perspective. In representations of history and memory, the natural instinct is to promote one above the other. Nevertheless, texts show that the truest understanding of the past is heightened when historical documentation and memory work in unison to obtain the closest possibility of the truth. The biographical memoir ‘The Fiftieth Gate’ by Mark Baker is an inclusive mix of different textual forms including historical documents and recollections of memories told by his parents. This comparison between history and memory highlights the fallacies of both and how when used together they provide a more cohesive

‘The Fiftieth Gate’ is a biographical memoir where Mark Baker explores his parents’ personal history and is taken on his own journey on the understanding and importance of memory when discovering history. Baker shapes the audience to his view of history and memory through the exploration of his own journey of understanding and discovery. The text being written in a personal, memoir style text aids in shaping the audience’s understanding of Bakers actions, making the text seem more relatable by speaking in first person. Baker combines and gathers different types of text along his journey, including; conversations, documents, statistics, video sessions and various perspectives regarding the Holocaust. The use of various text types creates a sense of credibility with the audience. The structuring of the text into fifty ‘gates’ is characteristic of the Jewish belief, all of the forty nine gates present a personal discovery during Baker’s journey, however the fiftieth and final gate represents the enlightenment and knowledge gained as a result of Baker’s historical quest. Baker uses Roman numerals at the start of each

It is a memory of a young boy, who was in a concentration camp with his father. As a boy, he does not realise his surroundings, and thinks it’s a game like his father tells him, but by what is seen around him, the audience is able to see the truth in what is happening. While he now knows where he was, and the danger he and his parents were in at the time, Joshua can only remember the camp in the context of this game. He is able to gain an understanding of what is true, but this memory was "his father's gift to him". While this is undeniably a false recount of what happened, it is how the event was perceived by him at the time. Therefore he cannot change what he remembers into what he is told or reads in history. In this film Benigni plays on the reliability of memory and how ones context and experience of one event in time can be contrasted compared to another person’s experience. Benigni’s use of colour and lighting, or lack thereof is symbolic for the mood and tone he wishes to set for the audience, the first half of the film it is full of colour in the movie where as in the second half it is gloomy and dim lighting to highlight the horror and bleak attitude towards the holocaust. This is also symbolic for the ‘light’ being the history and truth of the event and the “dark” symbolic of the memory. The use of comedy throughout the film is a