In this essay i will be evaluating the short film, Autonomy, by David Tree, which I found on Youtube, about a man, who’s looking for a way to get out of his life’s repetitive cycle.
The film autonomy is about a person who wakes up every day and is faced with the same routine, same job and the same exchange of pleasantries with the same people over and over and over which quite frankly he’s getting tired off, the film’s genre is a somewhat typical one, as a good amount of short films out there dwell on everyday life, reality. The narrative of the film is quite simple a man is simply bored, sad and trapped in this thing we call life and he tries to find happiness through dropping everything he’s worked for, his job, his house, etc, and moving away to find adventure, to mould his life away from the thing it’s becoming.
The film had very good cinematography. In the opening scene a crane shot was used to show a train passing by, this shows that the film’s a well financed product which means it has the prospect of being an overall good short, which grasps the viewer’s attention. As the film carries on a medium shot of the main character is shown, through a medium shot, he’s sat down, inside the train, the glass window capturing his reflection, the shot was also focused well on the main character slightly blurring the background. The Film is accompanied throughout by a Voice over of the man, this adds a “Shawshank”-ish feel to the film as if he’s talking directly to the audience, walking them through everything that happens. The last scene I’m going to talk about is the Bathroom suicide scene, the main character was making his way into the bathroom, looking for Carla, as he opened the bathroom door, blood meets his eye sight, a first person shot of the sink is shown, covered in blood still fresh the shot then swings left to the bathtub revealing Carla lying looking lifeless in the tub filled with blood and water, the shakiness of the camera work and the flash cut editing intertwined with the mixture of the high pitched ring and the low pitched drum sound, adds tension and terror into the scene, it also puts us in the same position as the main character, what he felt, what he heard, what he saw.
The throughout the film, the main character was represented to be depressed and trapped by his white collar job routine, seeing the same people, doing the same things. In a way he is portrayed to be strong willed to be going off his route to a lifetime of boring office conversations and same train rides but with the financial stability, to a more unstable fun filled, eventful life, this shows him to do what not a lot of people venture to do, and that’s take a risk. His situation could also be looked at from a different angle, the way his life goes at the time before he left everything was stable, he was well off, compared to situation of other people around the world his life was good, keeping this in mind, he could be thought of as a person who’s never content, given his current situation is repetitive but he’s living and healthy which is more than other people can say or do.
The film is a good example of a good script and good directing making a very good short film, I loved it from start to finish, the editing in the bathroom scene was delicate but hard hitting with the sudden flash out white with the strong hitting sounds of the low pitched drum sound and high pitched ringing interfaced with the shaking camera work made the bathroom scene the best part of the featuring. All in all the film was very well directed, the music went beautifully well with the pictures that was moving on screen and the editing and cinematography just rounded up a great short film that is Autonomy.
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