Sentence/Microcosm
We often say that the world is impermanent, life is so fragile, you don't know which tomorrow and accident will come first, so don't waste on unnecessary people and things, live in the moment, love life.
"Life is cruel, but what can we do but continue?"
The 82nd Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film, The New Tenant, illustrates this issue well for us.
The film has four murders in just twenty minutes, and the story is divided into two story lines, one light and one dark, revealing a story that is both absurd and romantic.
Frank and Peter are a gay couple who have just moved to a new apartment.
Frank is a pessimist who always complains endlessly about the terrible world, from terrorist attacks to environmental pollution, he thinks that no one can escape the world alive, everyone will eventually turn into fertilizer, and usually in the most disgusting and least perverted way, and at the end will make the most common exclamation "No, I have so many regrets!" ”
Peter, the exact opposite of him, is a peaceful and friendly man who pursues an active and healthy life, he hates that Frank is smoking all the time while he is eating, and he always complains about the world.
While the two were discussing how to live, the upstairs neighbor, the old lady, came to borrow flour from them and wanted to bake a cake for her favorite granddaughter to eat, so Peter lent the old lady a whole bag of flour left behind by the previous tenant in the cupboard.
Immediately after, the house broke into a big man who was out of control, the big man asked them where the previous tenant was, it turned out that his wife would often come here, he wanted to protect his wife's reputation, he wanted to get back the love he had, he told the two people about his daily life with his wife, how he loved his wife, this big man who looked like a tiger's back and a bear's waist actually cried.
Frank and Peter pacified him, but the big man was suddenly shot down by a second intruder, a drug dealer.
It turned out that the previous tenant was a drug dealer, and the bag of flour turned out to be drugs.
So we can see the old lady who got the flour come to question the two people, because her granddaughter ate the cake but went crazy, and then the real owner of the drug was furious and shot the old lady who came to question.
Just as the owner of the drug was about to shoot them out of control, the two men thought that they were going to die too.
Unexpectedly, the drug dealer was attacked and put down by the granddaughter of the old lady, who turned out to be the wife of the big man, looking at the old lady and the big man lying on the ground, the granddaughter could only say hello to her beloved before dying, and then the old lady's granddaughter also died of excessive drug cake.
The whole room was full of victims of this tragedy, and one thing after another happened, and it happened to themselves in the room of the two of them, and finally the two people sighed of life, embraced each other, and fled the house.
When tragedy happened, when real death happened before their eyes, they finally had an epiphany, a sense of relief, how to live, how impermanent death was, and how great a gift it was to live.
The story is really very powerful, the film creates a lot of possibilities, but they are not played according to common sense, the details are great, you need to watch carefully, the double dance at the end of the film is quite clever and wonderful, and the story ends abruptly, bringing people room for reverie.
At the beginning of the film, it does not take you to recall the plot, nor does it tell the story from beginning to end, but through the successive intervention of different characters to create the beginning and end of the chaos, through everyone's telling to piece together a complete story, quite comedic.
finish
82nd Academy Awards Best Live-Action Short Film
Image from the short film "The New Tenant"