Good morning. There is something that was brought to my attention by a friend last night, and I would like to share it with all of you now.
Jonathan Glazer, director of such wondrous works as Birth (2004) and Under the Skin (2013), has released a new short film. It’s less than 7 minutes long, it won’t exactly take much time out of your day. Or will it? It’s been on my mind for quite a few hours now. Hit the link below to check it out on the official site.
So that’s wild, huh? It has some of Glazer’s token disturbing-yet-banal imagery, masked performers, and a weird soundscape provided by Mica Levi. I made the mistake of watching this before bed and it’s been unsettling my mental state with its macabre imagery ever since. I’ve been a fan ever since I sat down to indulge in Under the Skin, a fan of the book and a fan of how he changed it to fit the medium of film, and have been hoping for another project from the man for quite a while.
And what a film it turned out to be! It’s very dream-like, lacking specificity in facial details and completely devoid of a beginning or ending. Dreams stand out from a certain reality, our brains trying to compile information from our lives and jam it into non-specific programming for our nighttime viewing (something that we will, in all likelihood, forget instantly). Glazer has captured this kind of emotion well, the feverish discomfort one can feel when your days are beset upon by forces around you. They shake you from the trees, they throw you to the depths, and the long climb back up may or may not yield positive results. We don’t know, but we’re sure as shit scared during the entirety of it.
Take a few moments to enjoy this one. It’s odd, disturbing, and some of the most interesting visual storytelling I’ve seen in a short like this. It feels like a proof of concept, but anything more than this would ruin the non-reality of the brief narrative. It’s a great reminder that these bits and pieces can often be just as interesting as a full-length feature and I can’t wait to see what Glazer gives us next.
WRITE DRUNK; EDIT DRUNK 