The Politics of Art & Authenticity

I’ve never watched a film like MORE but it was definitely something interesting. As we all discussed in class, the music and darkness in colors present gave the film a ‘depressing’ aura. At the same time, the detail and effort it took to make the film made it an incredible work of art. The same things that made us feel gloomy, were the very things that made the film so powerful.

The clay figure doesn’t seem happy at all even though that’s the name of the product he’s producing. He seems frustrated and angry and literally looking inside himself to escape this apparent misery. He creates his own product and for some time he seems as blissful as the name of his creation but that soon dies down. He becomes the image of the man he aspired to get away from and no longer has that spark he had within to keep searching for happiness. In class, Cassie mentioned that the film wasn’t depressing, rather a realistic take on life and watching it again made me realize that I agree with her. I feel like so many of us fall into the same cycle that the clay man fell into. Working, succeeding, feeling an ephemeral ‘high’, and crashing. It seems as though he has everything, but nothing at all. He has wealth and fame but not what he was searching for all along: happiness.