The Politics of Art & Authenticity

…with a much longer story.

This movie hit me very hard because just this morning, I was so upset and complaining about my life. I was thinking about how all my friends are going to fancy and expensive schools, how I can’t get everything my friends get, etc. And then a few hours later, I saw this film that put my life in perspective.

When Wasp first started, I first thought the family was getting evicted from their home. The raw, choppy footage, the dim lighting, and the grainy view all created the picture of a poor, somewhat broken family. When I’ve seen TV shows and movies on one of those giant-screen-HDTV televisions, I always felt like I was living in the movie. Although this footage was not a super high quality like an HDTV – it was the exact opposite – this videography made this movie also come alive, in a kind of different way.

I found so much symbolism in this film – namely, obviously, the wasp. At first we see the main character, watching the wasp on the window sill, and then she opens the window, and the wasp flies away. It is free. And she is watching, wistfully, I think, imagining what it would be like to just fly out that dirty window into the wide open world. And then, through the rest of the film, we see her running to start a fight with her neighbor, running to the bar, running to an old car to fool around with a guy. We see her trying to escape from the reality of her life. This is completely understandable, as her life is obviously terrible and any normal person would try to find a way to escape. Unlike the wasp, she is a person, and people can’t do that – we can’t just escape.

I think it’s so interesting that Andrea Arnold was the oldest of four when she was growing up – I think she chose the oldest daughter in the film to portray herself growing up. Because the film seemed to end on a somewhat uplifting note, I couldn’t really tell if Andrea was trying to spin a positive or negative perspective on the story. I came to the conclusion that Andrea was creating a neutral voice, not putting her opinion, in the movie. She was showing us the reality, painting for us the stark picture, of what that kind of life – her life – is. The perseverance to live in that world, the brutality and the horror, the effects it can have on people, the lengths people take to try to break free, the strength one learns to go on. And she lets the viewer decide what to make of it, what his opinion of that kind of life really is.

Andrea Arnold’s depiction of a poor, uneducated mother of four scared when Professor Davis said the short film was a combination of her own childhood and her imagination. If Andrea Arnold’s mother was the same as young Zoe then she had to grow up fast the same way the oldest girl did. Looking at what some of her other short films were, they involved some sort of mother-daughter relationship gone wrong. I’m sure this alludes to her own life also which makes the characters so real and believable. The characters are relatively poor or uneducated, get into fights and other troubles, and simply don’t seem to make the right decisions. I would guess the camera usage would also be a signature of Andrea Arnold’s style. The way the camera is focused up close on the character’s face during a moment of intense emotion and the walking feeling as if your walking with the character. It made me feel closer and more connected to the character rather than just watching her. Overall I do believe Arnold is a great film maker and shows a story of warning as well as love. Don’t make stupid decisions because you’ll just end up being some poor mother of a poor child who has no future, love and care for your family and care for yourself as well.

Family Fun
Source: http://iwff.net/images/films/wasp09.jpg

“MORE”

I think his “bliss” is malfunctioning.

The moment I saw this video, I instinctively thought of the 1984 Apple’s Macintosh Commercial.

Their depiction of grey, emotionally deprived society, and the “greatest” invention that would attempt to bring change seem to draw interesting parallelism to our lives as well.

The film starts off by showing a scene of children in the merry-go-round which is the clay protagonist’s dream,inspiration and motive behind his making of the “bliss.” This allows people to see what they want, and moves him to his success and to become the “world’s greatest inventor.” However, despite his achievement, he consumes all his light or driving force and is left with his empty shell.

It shows the futility of life in such a society where people attempt to temporarily satisfy oneself by avoiding the reality and seeking what they want to see through gadgets. This idea struck me as I recalled the Apple commercial. Steve Job’s idea was to liberate us from the 1984 “big brother” life through his “Apple products” but look where we are now. People, while praising the revolutionary products of Apple and Google, such as their smartphones and tabulates, are driven into the digital life, constantly influenced by the media’s glamourous pictures of celebrities and propagandas. Are we not becoming like the people wearing “bliss,” constantly straining our eyes with electricity and excessive amount of information? (If you take a look at the protagonist, you can see that his dark circles have become even darker as it goes to the end of the movie.) Although our lives, for now, do not seem as grey, it really gave me a chance to look back to our physical lives and think of what can be done to solve the problem from the root cause, not by just averting with an almost drug-like gadget.

As “MORE” showed a “symbolic” escape from reality with “bliss,”  “Madame Tutli Putli” depicts an actual running away from an unknown, sinister force.

It illustrates madame Tutli Putli’s  journey throughout her train ride. A normal “Chatelaine” reading women, she is in an unusual surrounding, in which two men are playing chess in the suite cases up on bag storage. And in front of her a tennis player, an asian boy, and a grandfather sit. Everyone and everything, but her, seems to disappear as the train is invaded by some dark, ominous group of people. Terrified, she runs around the hallways and end up in the dining section of the train as she discovers a butterfly which almost resembles a women waving her arms as it continues its fluttering.

Despite its longer screen time, compared to “More,” its unusualness added to my befuddlement. However, I was amazed by its delivery of atmosphere. How the real eye integrated with the rough surfaced puppet added to the uneasiness of the audience while, at the same time, leading us to the climax as the women runs through the narrow corridor of the train. I also liked how it started and ended with the butterfly, giving a sense of closure to the incomprehensible plot.

Sources

snap shot image : http://vimeo.com/7306050

Just a friendly reminder from your ITF–don’t forget to cite your sources when using images, music or video that is not your own.

Check out “Adding Footnotes” and “Adding Captions to Images” for ways to help you cite your sources.

And for more details, check out  Using Music, Images & Video on your Baruch ITF site.

Short films are intriguing in that they don’t normally use dialogue. The person viewing the film has to figure out what’s going on by listening to the background music and paying close attention to the actions and facial expressions of the characters.
While watching More by Mark Osbourne I felt an overwhelming depression come over me.  The background music helped set the tone in the short.  The music was simple and repetitive, like life for the main character.  Almost every scene in More was done in gray scale which added to the dreary feel.  Without color there is no variation in life, it gives the sense everything is exactly the same.
More is the perfect representation of the average worker. They go to work then return home to sleep only to wake he next morning to the same exact routine the following day with no chance of escaping the cycle except by being promoted.  That’s what the main character in More did.  The main character wanted to return to the simpler days of childhood when life was easier and there was fun to be had.  The character used this to draw upon inspiration to create the new product Bliss.  Bliss was supposed to make everyone happy for, like our world, the main character lives in a very materialistic society.  This reminds me of the line from The Incredibles said by Dash, “If everyone is special no one is.”
The scenes which stood out to me most were the opening and closing showing the kids playing.  At first the kids shown are gray and then the kids shown at the end are in color.  I believe this shows that one can always find hope in the darkest of places.  As long as you never give up you’ll eventually find what you’re searching for.
I think Madame Tudli Pudli was a very fascinating short film to watch.  I believe that everything that happened was in her mind.  I have heard people say “train of thought” many times and I believe that’s something that trains tend to represent in movies, books, and even video games.  For example the train in Inception, the train in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and the train in the video game Alice: Madness Returns.   In all of these the train represented the thought process of the main character.
The train represents the woman’s mind.  All the baggage she is bringing with her represents useless thoughts she no longer needs that she’s bringing along with her as a major change occurs in her life.  Among the items seen there is a record player, lanterns, and an open bird cage with no bird.  There are so many she can’t hold them all.   When she boards the train she’s sitting with a child whose reading How to Handle Your Enemies, an older man who’s sleeping, and a middle aged perverted man.  Each of them represents a different side of her.  The sleeping old man may represent her lethargic side, the older man represents her “looser” side, and the child represents her own childish side.
At one point the lady is gassed and put to sleep.  When she comes to the three of them are gone and so is all of her luggage.  It is not clear as to what happened to the three people however I believe they were killed.  If the excess baggage in her mind and the parts of her mind that she does not need disappeared then she would be able to clear her mind and move on with her life.  When she finally comes to terms with what happened she sees a light at the end of the hallway.  This means she came to terms with what had happened.  This is shown by her transformation into a moth.
What I found most amazing about this short was that real eyes were used for the puppet.  This made it come to life.  The puppet’s emotions were far more lifelike than anything I had expected or seen.

The two videos we went on a journey of weirdness watching left me with a sense of, well, a sense. A feeling that was indescribable then, and remains so now. So, this post is going to have more questions than answers. Enjoy.

Mark Osborne’s “MORE” is a color-heavy metaphor for happiness and creativity and where one truly finds it. (Hint: Check his stomach box-thing. It’s very Tellytubby-ish?) The use of color throughout the piece is what captivated me first and foremost: from the spectral, orange glow of our protagonist’s vision, to the overabundance of gray everywhere, to the rainbow vomit-like HAPPY state of mind, and finally to the colorful “children” laughing and playing in a far-off corner of this gray world. I’m a fairly big believer in the use of color as a means to convey emotion, but Osborne appears to be taking that use in a strange direction.

Literally my face watching “MORE.”

The vision of happy, playful children when we see into the mind of “Blobert,” as I’ve decided to call him, should give us the impression that this is a goal for Blobert: to restore this happiness to the world. It’s supposed to be a good vision, even possibly a desire to restore the past happiness to the present bleakness. But then there’s that orange glow. When I first saw the film, I began to think that scene represented ghosts, or something of a spiritual, spooky nature. The laughter seemed chilling, not warming, all because of that glow. It’s a warning? Does the orange mean caution? Who’s being cautioned and why are they being warned about these creepy orange-gray blob people?

Then you have this gray city, with gray people and gray skies and gray buildings and gray gray in all shades of gray. Maybe about fifty of them? Fifty shades of gray?  I’m going to stop right here this isn’t funny or relevant at all. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that upon viewing the short film for a second, third, and fourth time, my thoughts immediately went to the use of color and the unusual questions they posed in the face of a fairly straightforward plot.

And now we come to Madame Tutli-Putli, a cinematic enigma by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, filled with puppetry and human eyes.

Here, Madame Tutli-Putli plays coy with a male suitor. Such a charming scene.

What impressed me most about this short film was that in the four years it took to create the seventeen minutes of footage… I understood next to nothing. Or rather I understood, but can’t explain. In a way I felt like I was on that train ride with the Madame, and that when she cried, I cried too. No, really, the moment the film ended I felt this uncontrollable desire to just bawl senselessly. The more I think about what this film is trying to say through metaphorical journeys and an abundance of imagery, the more questions and possibilities I think of, none of which I can fully elaborate upon. It’s an overstimulation of sorts: escape, mind games, gross seduction, murder, kidnapping, mysterious sleeping gas, chasing after a magical butterfly… It can mean so much, but it’s too much to take in at once.

Understandable? Not really. Interesting? Completely.

More, a short film about a lonely inventor, takes the viewer on a grim journey through the colorless world. Mark Osborne does this by using stop motion animation along with eerie music to captivate his viewer’s imagination. This eerie music coalesces with the colorless world to create a sad atmosphere. This sadness is palpable throughout the short film.  The lack of dialogue further instills sadness in the viewer. Claymation serves to further enhance the visual effects and make the characters more grim. During the day the inventor leads a boring life of toiling on the factory line while being yelled at by his boss. He reminisces about his blissful childhood and hopes one day he will be able to create an invention that makes his life more enjoyable. Once the inventor finally makes his dream come true, he becomes known as the the greatest inventor of all time. His new product called Bliss fills the store shelves and he becomes very successful. But his success comes at a great cost because it changes him. The inventor realizes happiness cannot be invented.

The mysterious short film, Madame Tutli-Putli, takes the viewer on suspenseful train ride. Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski do something for the first time in film history. They incorporate live human eyes into their masterpiece. These human eyes play a significant role in the development of Madame Tutli-Putli. At the beginning, she is beautiful and has young looking eyes. As the movie progresses, she becomes worn down and you can see her beauty fading as bags appear under her eyes. The animation for this film is almost life like. This serves to incorporate the human element into the film and allows the viewer to feel for Madame Tutli-Putli. We feel for Madame Tutli-Putli when we see her at the beginning of the film cluttered with heavy luggage. The short film has some gruesome scenes like when a man is gets his kidney stolen by organ harvesters or when noxious green gas pours from the vents. But these gruesome scenes serve a special purpose. These scenes transform Madame Tutli-Putli into a completely different person. She is carefree and is not afraid like she was at the beginning of the film. The auditory effects further enhance the film and create suspense. The music keeps the viewer on his or her toes, and the music prevents the film from being completely silent. The sound effects instill empathy in the viewer like when the viewer hears the shudder of Madame Tutli-Putli falling to the ground. There is hope at the end for Madame Tutli-Putli as she escapes the robbers, the noxious green gas, and the dangerous train ride.

Image Source: https://files.eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3239/2012/09/15221309/more-picture-300×164.png

 More directed by Mark Osborne beautifully encompasses many art forms into a very brief but dense short film. Osbourne’s claymation skills are what bring this film alive especially with a script lacking dialogue. The music sets the mood and keeps the audience in an anxiously entranced state, never waking from Osbourne’s world. And off course there is the storyline. The protagonist, a gray blob with eyes, extremities, and a hatch door to his “inner creative ability and drive,” tries to invent a “Bliss” device which will make everyone happy. After struggling with his invention and being under the scrutiny of a boss for quite some time, the blob finally comes through and becomes “The Greatest Inventor Ever.” After achieving fame and fortune our hero quite literally feels empty inside. The audience is left with a shot of the protagonist longingly looking towards children playing. All of this points towards the idea that people are often times misguided in their ventures for fame and fortune, which won’t “invent” happiness.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_uYbY1MBsmGU/SvzKzj2GVgI/AAAAAAAAH_M/qK55S1H15GQ/s1600/MadameTutli-Putli0.jpg&imgrefurl=http://damewallis.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/friday-morning-movie-madame-tutli-putli/&h=165&w=116&sz=7&tbnid=evTVW0dxQWaouM&tbnh=0&tbnw=0&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmadame%2Btutli%2Bputli%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=madame+tutli+putli&usg=__JjHtj0QiYIyXJtqtwc0ZPWWEa6A=&docid=HqJ52-sQvcYwrM&sa=X&ei=BmJbULCkNYrg0gH-ooFY&ved=0CIgBENUX

Madame Tutli-Putli directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski is a very metaphoric short film using puppets as a medium. The puppet work is excellent especially in mimicking real life bodily movements and the addition of real-life noises such as a character’s teeth clicking on a pen cap. The opening scene is a slow pan across a train platform of this woman, Madame Tutli-Putli, and her luggage. She clearly has a lot of baggage behind her and the weight she is carrying is immense. Her train cabin features five characters. men sitting in suitcases playing chess with “the board they have been dealt” as the train’s movements keep rearranging their game. Then, sitting across the cabin are three other people, an old man sleeping, a boy reading a book which will be preparing him for life, and a middle-aged rather crass gentleman. After a disgusting suggestion from the later, Madame Tutli-Putli looks up at his tennis bag and imagines him playing tennis. This suggests everyone is carrying baggage of some kind. Unfortunately for the woman with all the baggage in the world, this is a train where ghouls come on board and steal it from you, forcing you to move on. And this is exactly what happens. As Madame Tutli-Putli wanders the train after losing her luggage, stumbling her way through muck and the trains violent rocking, she is saved by a (recurring image) moth, which lifts her on her feet and leads her into the future. (?)

At first, I wasn’t really such a fan of short films overall. Because they are so short, with no voices, and just simply so short, I thought I couldn’t find any meaning or expression in them. I like reading books or seeing movies where I can get a grander idea of the character, and understand the character’s personality and motives. But these two films, MORE, and Madame Tutli Putli, were different – they were new – and they changed my view. I enjoyed them.

The film MORE was so intriguing and to understand it clearly you really need to see it a few times, and continue going over it and exploring it. This picture displays the main character – looking at it you can see the dilemma he faces – one of hopelessness, a life, a career, that seems to have gone to waste. Although there are no voices or dialogue, which is something that at first made me resent these movies, as I began to dissect the imagery, I realized the movies are actually quite powerful. In MORE, the audience goes on a journey with the protagonist. We see how he works so hard to create his revolutionary breakthrough, and then how he realizes he has become just another great tyrant, and through the director’s dry colors, somber music, gray images, and tone, we feel the great loss and depression, we become a part of the story. We see ourselves, we think about our own lives, what makes us happy, what are the colorless tones and shadows and images in our lives. What is our true secret to happiness.

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I didn’t realize at first that the eyes were real – but then when Professor Davis told us the eyes were real, it gave the film more meaning. I think it’s a really interesting choice that the director put in human eyes – it gives the character a more lifelike disposition, and the entire film a more real edge. This reflects the entire real-life side of the film, how the train was breathing, which personified the train, and then the train sped up so quickly, as if running away from the reality of the situation. The entire film seemed to be alive, and the viewer could see himself in that same situation, the idea of running away from one’s life. I think this film begs the reader to imagine himself in Madame Tutli Putli’s position. What would we do if we were on that train, wearing that hat, carrying her luggage? What have we done in our predicaments, our own positions in life?

In each of these films, rather than looking for a purpose they conveyed, I found myself imagining myself, seeing myself, in those same situations. I could see the overpowering boss in my life, the “happy products,” the harrassing man, the confining train, and the butterflies in my life. These films came alive to me in a way I didn’t think I would ever relate to short films. They were really interesting, and this post doesn’t even do them half the justice they deserve.

At first glance, More seems like a depressing film, yet viewers come out with a life lesson. I watched as the inventor looked out onto the city with wistful, longing eyes, and the only ray of light he sees zooms into children playing together. It seems that he’s nostalgic for his past, his childhood, and that’s the only light he can see in his black-and-white world. I think it’s a sad reality of many people in society who look for happiness elsewhere, outside, when in fact, happiness is something that people must create for themselves with what they have,  inside. The inventor is not happy with the way his life is but he looks to the wrong places to find happiness. He tries to manufacture happiness in a “Happy Product” but ultimately learns that it’s impossible; happiness cannot be bought, with even an infinite amount of money.

Maddame Tutli Putli (Photo Credit below)

As I was watching the film Maddame Tutli Putli, I thought the character was dreaming, or more accurately, having a nightmare, and that she’d wake up at the end. I realized that it’s not a dream though. All the while that she’s on the train she acts very cautiously and warily, as if trying to confront the evil that might get to her first. Her eyes are full of emotion and display her feelings  in a very life-like manner. It seems like she’s running away from something big, perhaps her former life and the different traumatic aspects of it. Her journey on the train is symbolic of her journey to her new life. The many suitcases she carries resemble the heavy burden she bears, with the stresses and the troubles from her past. She is trying to leave her past but the memories keep coming back and plaguing her. The viewer travels the adventure with her.

In More and Maddame Tutli Putli, both characters refer back to former times during their life. However, there are opposite reasons in each. In More, the inventor looks back longingly at his past, with a desire to go back to it. In Maddame Tutli Putli, the character tries to avoid her past and run away from it.

(Photo Credit: http://tiff.net/blogs/archivedimages/Canadian%20Film
%20Programmes%20Blog/Shorts/Madame%20Tutli-Putli%2003.jpg)