★★★
Directed by: #AleixBuch
Written by: Aleix Buch
Starring: #JuliaMolins, #JosepMAlejandre and #VeronicaRobles
Hope Movie Review
The mind is a fragile thing. You can be sane as you like one day, then suffer a touch of trauma and that’s it, gone, you have lost your mind forever. Pleasant dreams everyone.
The point being the mind is a crazy thing; it will do anything to protect itself, it creates pain to make you fix the body it lives in, it creates hunger to make you stop, sit and replenish, and it also can create fun little mazes within your subconscious in order to protect you from some sad memories, like when they cancelled M.A.S.H. Writer/director Aleix Buch has decided to investigate this fun mind game in the new short film Hope.
Hope opens with the tale of a young girl, she has been through trauma, she has seen some stuff, maybe the Nazis threw her jewellery into the river in front of her, or she only just realised Little Chef is no longer a restaurant chain, either way...she is sad, and her way of dealing with that is to be interviewed on a TV show.
Her reality seems shifted, she seems to not be connected to the world around her, she clearly has been affected deeply by her past and although that could be storyline enough we are thrust into storyline B.
A man who watches the news, watches the tale of this young girl in front of him, but it’s not long until he decided to take a stroll to see her, oh and he is packing heat...like you do.
As a short movie, Hope has visuals and camera angles that any film nerd is going to go heavy over, Buch is a natural behind the camera, angles and lighting styles are implemented to make us feel uncomfortable, from intimate close ups, to distorted angles that allow the audience to feel that everything is not quite as it seems. An atmosphere of disillusion and discomfort scream at you from the screen.
And while this is all good and essential to quality #filmmaking, I as an individual don’t seem to really get the storyline, as enjoyable as it is, there seems to be a lot of essential information left out, and while I’m all for questions being left unanswered and #filmmakers not treating the audience like idiots, it would be nice to have a little more of an idea into what is the drive behind the characters’ actions.
Hope is a stunning piece of filmmaking, Buch is a force to be aware of in the movie industry, and me, well I’m off to find Mars delight pictures on the internet and deal with my trauma...because if I don’t, well who knows what could happen.
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