When all else fails, what do you do? We see a real man’s tragedy turn into a film. Knowing the film really adds another layer to the story that mystifies the audience. Believing what happen and having more empathy for our characters helps the storyline. This strikes something strange with Aristotle’s text. He mentions that poetics is greater than historians because historians only have real-life events to go off from while poetics can explore what might happen. Poetics are universal, but what happens when the story is based on a true story? Is the poetic a historian now? Having this be my first read of Aristotle, I see the importance upon which filmmaking is grounded. Aristotle’s ideals of the importance of the plot in his analogy of two paintings were brilliant. The film follows Aristotle’s ideals on tragedy, in the tragedy of suffering and character. He mentions the importance of plot and character. What character types thrive in tragedy and not. Our main character is in a downward spiral and becomes unrecognizable at the end. As the story progresses, it gets worse and worse with many dead and no good things happening to Jerry. There will have to be a second read to really consume Aristotle’s ideals.