Hello fellow readers, this week after knowing how many blog posts I need to pass my class and a desire to try to make this blog exciting I decided to try something different. I love feature films, they are what I’m used to watching like any other person sadly take up a lot of time and energy to review; it’s very difficult to capture all the elements of a feature-length film but I do my best. So I’ve decided to review short films as well, given the fact that these are the films I write scripts for in my class it would be fun to learn more about them by examples. This film in particular captured my attention, while scrolling though my Facebook newsfeed at 1 a.m., due to its dystopian theme, being a simple sci-fi animation with a powerful theme is bound to capture anyone’s attention. Most importantly because of the sexual tones it has due to the cause of the world’s dystopian nature, all created under Paw Charlie Ravn’s brilliant mind. He has made other short films ”Daughter: A story of Incest” and ”Borneans Verden” but the one we are talking about is his most famous one so far and it even won a Danish Academy Award for ”Best Short Film” in 2011, which is great considering the simplicity in style and storyline.

The short centers 8 minutes around a world where there are no longer women nor children in the world, as they were wiped out by a mysterious disease, only men live in this world and not normal decent ones either. Besides the men there are also these two orphans named Albert and Jonas, who are two little boys who are friends and try to survive in the world on their own. They live isolated from this ”men only” world in what looks like an enormous cathedral, going outside cautiously to explore what is left of the world. One day they find a doll with the shape of a girl and Albert mentions that maybe someday a girl would come to save the world, restoring it to its previous order. But when the men come around they have to hide, only to watch how they try to shag her as if it were a real female and rip her apart; which honestly gives me goosebumps as I am a girl and in a way reminded me of the rape culture a lot of women have to live through everyday, with fear that some strange man will try to hurt us. Thankfully both boys still have a sense of innocence in them, especially when Albert mentions that if he ever met a girl he would just hold her hand. The next day he finds Jonas bleeding, when he tries to get near to check on him he discovers (Spoiler Alert!) Jonas is actually a girl. At first Albert gets mad at her, but them vows to take care of her realizing she is the girl that could save the world and that the legend was actually true. Suddenly the men try to go after them inside the cathedral and the kids hide inside some sort of coffin. Albert holds Jona’s hand and gives her a kiss on the cheek, which makes her glow (literally a white beam shines from her cheeks). That’s it. Cliffhanger. We don’t know if whether the world was saved of if the men go to them, which in a way is so frustrating.

I loved the simplicity of the animation and how it had such a huge impact inside of its short time span. I loved the way the atmosphere reminded me so much of paintings, sort of like old style animations where the backgrounds looked like paintings marking a huge contrast between them and the characters. Can’t go wrong with loving the plot twist either, never saw it coming to be honest. It did leave me with so many questions like : How did they manage to survive against the mortal disease the wiped out half the human population? How come Albert never noticed that Jonas was a girl? I mean her hair must’ve gotten long at some point, maybe she cut it secretly like she did with her period. How long had they been friends? Sadly the world may never have answer for these other than speculations.

One message of this film could be that men shouldn’t try to view women as these sexual objects to just satisfy their needs, that you can’t force a woman to be yours and then expect her to love you. Just like what happened with the doll scene, the man could’ve been gentle and I don’t know hug her or something but instead he tried to penetrate her. Men basically lost their humanity and became sex crazed animal, it was good that Albert being a boy didn’t follow that example and instead representing the kind of thing women would want from a man: to be gentle, respectful and affectionate.

This was a very interesting short to watch, hope you guys can give it a try and come up with your own conclusions on it. I’ll leave a link down here so you can watch it. Have a nice day!

To Venner