Sentence/Microcosm
Today I would like to recommend the 15-minute short film "Time Code" from Spain, which shined at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival! Moreover, director Jia Zhangke created a "global short film Chinese premiere platform" - "Ke Premiere", which took "Time Code" as the first short film work officially launched by the platform.
When I first saw the name of this short film, I thought it was a sci-fi crossover film, but I didn't expect it to be a romantic romance film.
The short film tells the romantic story of two dancing underground parking lot security guards "meeting" in a camera monitor.
How do two colleagues whose lives are not intersecting and who only greet each other during shift changes become each other's most important soulmates? In the cracks of our daily boring life, how to squeeze out the space for soul enjoyment?
This short film tells us that even in the way of life and work, we still have the right to pursue what we like to do, and it is a uniquely conceived short film.
At the beginning of the picture, a woman walks expressionlessly to the underground parking lot to change into her clothes, and then we can see that she is a security guard in the underground parking lot, and she and another male security guard work during the day and one at night.
The daily conversation between the two people is also extremely concise.
Good morning.
Hope you had all the best last night.
See you later.
It can be seen that these two people do not have any emotional intersection, and they are very strange. However, one day something happened that changed the two people's otherwise boring lives.
One day, the daytime female security guard received a call from the boss, saying that a customer complained that the lights were good when the car came in during the day, but after one night the lights were broken, and then the boss asked her to check the monitoring.
It didn't matter, she actually saw her night shift colleagues dancing under the monitor on the monitor, and accidentally kicked the headlights while dancing. To be honest, when the screen first appeared in front of the camera, the male security guard of the night shift danced in front of the camera, my inner OS: What is this dancing? I can't appreciate it at all.
The female security guard quietly watched the dance of her colleagues and told the boss that everything was normal and there was no problem.
By the time the two men took over, there was still no more conversation between the two men, but the female security guard left a note on the monitor.
It turned out that the female security guard was also a dancer, especially when the female security guard looked up at the surveillance and looked at the same camera, she couldn't help but start dancing. When the female security guard on the day shift appeared in the camera and began to respond to the dance of the male security guard, I understood that this was a dance dialogue between two people.
They found a special way to communicate — dancing in surveillance video and waiting for the other person to respond.
These two people should be dancing modern dance, modern dance is the use of natural movement of dance movements, freely express people's true emotions, modern dance life concept is also tolerant and generous, optimistic, and then its artistic concept is also seeking common ground while reserving differences, so these two people through the love of dance in their hearts, life also began to become positive, the face of the female security guard also showed a smile, the two people for this boring work every day is also full of expectations, no longer boring.
Staggered working hours allow them to exchange dance steps with each other through video time codes, and two lonely people secretly dance together in surveillance, a surreal romance at boring work.
The cleverness of this short film is that the way the two communicate is closely related to their work, and the silent number becomes a code word that belongs only to two people.
At the end of the film, when the female security guard and the male security guard take over, this time she does not find a secret code that belongs to them, but finds a note outside the window of the studio.
The picture turned, the boss recruited a new security guard, when explaining the work content to the new employees, the surveillance video that happened to be entered played the two dancing together, the two people should have regained their dreams, and finally did not have to wait silently for each other's response, but could dance together.
The creativity of this short film is still very attractive, showing the loneliness of modern people to the fullest, and leaving room for layers of aftertaste.
When the picture shows the two of them dancing in the underground parking lot, the audience's viewpoint and the perspective of the garage monitoring coincide, in this overlap we feel the greatness of the dream behind the dancing posture of the two people in the underground parking lot, as well as the joy of the confidant's mutual heart, when the perspective is switched from the monitoring to the character in the film, the reflection from the character is another taste.
There are too many ideals and passions buried in boring life, and perhaps at a certain moment, it will erupt with unparalleled power in front of the world.
finish
Image from the short film Time Code