Get Low

On the Friday night, a few of us went to see Get Low at Cineworld. The place was packed as this was a special screening where the director, Aaron Schneider was doing a question and answer session afterwards.

Set in 1930s Tennessee, the film tells the story of a village hermit, Felix Bush, and his struggle with his past. The people of the town have concocted many stories about Bush and vicious rumours have circulated the town for years. However one day Bush learns about how everyone in the town seems to know a different story about him and he is eager to hear them. So he decides to arrange his own funeral and invite everyone from the town who knows a story to come along and tell it. The town's fast sinking funeral parlour business is only too happy to oblige when Bush comes in with a large wad of money demanding his own funeral party.

If I'm honest I really enjoyed the film from start to finish. I think you actually know after a few minutes of watching a film if it's any good or not and how much you're going to invest yourself in the story and its characters. Well right from the start of Get Low I was hooked. The cinematography and style of the shots were really crisp and beautiful right from the start. The story unfolds gradually and we begin to learn more about the hermit character and what he is apparently hiding. There is also a great cast which helps to really bring the film alive with Bill Murray and Robert Duvall playing leading roles.

The film was also funny as well as it was moving. And although it deals with deep themes of love and guilt it never got too heavy with moments of comic relief made easy with Billy Murray's performance. Overall, I found the story greatly moving especially at the climax which is more about learning about what happened years ago than it is a new event. It felt like a proper cinema experience with everyone sitting going through the emotions of the film at the same time. And when it was over it was a really good experience as well to hear the director talk about the making of the film from what it was like directing big stars to how he had to edit the whole thing himself in a couple of months using Final Cut Pro because they had literally run out of money. I really hope a company in Britain buys the film so that it can be released over here because, in my opinion, it was a lot better than most of the junk released every month at Cineworld and it deserves to be shown worldwide.

Discomfort Zone - International Shorts

Another highlight of the film festival was getting to see four international short films in the compilation, Discomfort Zone.

Birthday

This was an interesting short film. Birthday was excellently shot and I think the cinematography was the most notable thing about it. The film consisted largely of close-ups of children eating pieces of chicken at a dinner table while a man watches over them. They then all get presents given to them which appear to be old and dirty. It is only in the final very shocking shot that we realise the whole film has been taking place in a huge dump with rubbish flying everywhere and large trucks surrounding them. This was deliberately shocking as the rest of the film is quite light and cheerful due to the music. There were different interpretations of what this ending meant. Sam thought that the massive landfill site was symbolic of how much waste there is today in the world, as they are still able to eat and receive presents of items which are supposed to now be useless.

Incident By A Bank

I liked this short film. It tells the story of a true incident which happened in a European city when men attempt to rob a bank. The most interesting part of this film for me was that the entire film was shot from one camera position in one take. This made the film quite different as we are always used to the camera cutting away to close ups or different angles and you were always waiting on this. Instead, the camera simply zoomed into different bits of the action and panned with different characters. This must have taken a lot of work to get the timing and coordination of every part right. The film was also quite funny at parts when it wasn't even meant to be explicitly funny I don't think. Overall, I thought this was a good short film with a clear narrative and it challenged the conventions of cinematography.

Out In That Deep Blue Sea

This film was one of the least popular among the class I think, but I'm one of the only people I think who quite liked it. The film focuses on a middle-aged American man who seems to be losing control in his life. His daughter is at the age where she wants to leave home and he is doing his best to dissuade her as she has nowhere to go but this only increases her will to rebel. In his work life, things seem to be piling up and causing a great deal of stress. His health is not as is should be and he is having to work on a fitness regime to lose weight. Then at a dinner party in his house, everything seems to be getting too much and he has to go upstairs to lie down while his guests and family are worried. The final shot of the film shows the protagonist trying to put a piece of thread through a sewing needle which symbolised to me the strengh of his willpower and his determination not to give up and try to get his life back on track. At the end he succeeds in getting the thread through, which is like him starting a fresh chapter in his life.

Teleglobal Dreamin'

This was quite an odd short film when I look back on it and I don't really know what to make of it. The story is set in the Philippines and follows an American man who is some sort of boss and comes to visit a call centre. There are a couple of funny moments when he is mistaken for the actor Brandon Frasier. Most of the film tells a simple of story of the man being shown around the local attractions, he is taken to a cockfight for example. But then on their way out of town their vehicle is ambushed by masked gunmen who think he is the famous American actor. The film then takes an extremely different route and ends quite bizarrely. All in all I don't really know what to think about it. The story seemed simple and bland then suddenly veered down a totally different route in the last couple of minutes and ended quite strangely and in a way unsatisfactorily.