Short Film analysis

Replay

This is a short foreign animated film about a mother and her son in an abandoned area. The film begins on a disrupted equilibrium as the spectators are shown fast paced editing of the woman running to safety. We see her running from a point of view shot and also a close up, this allows the spectators to see the environment and where she is and so can also be classed as an establishing shot. We see that she is not being chased and as she is shown to be wearing a gas mask we are led to believe her running with a sense of urgency is because of this.

This film has an omniscient narrative as we are told the story from both main characters point of view. It is told from in a non-linear way as it jumps forward in time, shown when the narrative skips a day shown simply through a fade. There are action codes which move the story forward, these include the mother showing her son a tape of children playing.

The main narrative techniques used in this film is enigma codes, from the start the narrative provokes a question in the audience. The first being why is she running and where is she. Other enigma codes are who are the children heard on the tape. This is shown in the scene in which the mother is showing her son what she brought back, we see a deep focus shot showing the tape recorder in the front of the screen in a close up and the young boy staring at it in a mid shot, dialogue begins as he asks “what is it?”, the voices on the tape are high pitched connoting children as they say “do you want to play with us?”. This is another enigma code, as the spectators were lead to believe they were in an isolated location.

The next day the boy goes out looking for the children on the tape, we see extreme long shots of him walking across the shot, showing the isolated location he is in. This is another enigma code, where are they and why are they the only ones there. He finds the children who are glowing, connoting that they are not real. They repeat the dialogue on the tape “Do you want to play with us”, he takes off his mask and joins them. This is both and enigma code and an action code. The mother finds him dead in the same spot in which he took his mask off and the film finishes. The film has an open narrative as there is no resolution at the end.