A short film is a film that is not long enough to be classed
as feature length and it often offers a ‘slice of life’ of characters facing a
specific situation. Filmmakers often use short films to explore and discuss
political matters, as we see in Andrea Arnold’s Wasp, the storyline revolves around being a parent and the
responsibilities it entails such as constant supervision of your children. A
short film is often around 5-10 minutes in length but can be any time under 35
minutes as from around there on, films are classed as feature length. This can
prove hard for filmmakers to show a narrative that is interesting which is why
most short films contain a plot twist to make the short film more captivating.
In Arnold’s Wasp we
see the narrative of a British mum struggling to cope with the tasks she faces
as a parent looking after four children, such as constantly watching over her
children and balancing her parental duties with her social life. Most use of
the camera is handheld as it places the audience in the storyworld,
specifically in the place of the children and allows the audience to sympathise
with them. It gives realism to the shots that are shown to the audience. This is completely different to Lynne Ramsay’s
Gasman as most shots are steady from
the use of a tripod. Ramsay also shows parents facing problems; this time being
that a father has children from two women ad has to see both children.
Wasp shows a common misconception about
British parenting. Due to shows like Jeremy Kyle and stories that are
shared, people are
often led to believe that single parents,
specifically mothers, are incapable of being good parents. In the case of the mother
in the film, it is clear that she is struggling
with how to be a mother and so appears
as if she is unfit to be looking after
children, especially four at once. Mise-en-scene
is used in this short film to show her as an unfit mother such
as the moldy bread she has in her cupboard, her expletive language and the
children eating food off the ground as they haven’t
been fed.
In Gasman it appears as if
British parents have children with more than one person and often favour one
side of children which is another perspective people have of the UK. It could
also give people the idea that British adults are not traditionally monogamous
and parent from more than one person often.
One scene that shows the mother as being incapable of
looking after her children properly is when she abandons her children to go and
sit in a car kissing a man. The wasp then lands near the baby’s mouth and
enters the mouth while the mother just watches. The wasp here could represent
the mother, as earlier on the film there was a wasp trying to escape from the
family’s kitchen window and here it is shown crawling into the baby’s mouth.
This could represent the mother as, like the mother, it feels constricted in
certain situations and confined, whilst also damaging her children (like the
wasp) by using bad language around them, abandoning them and also feeding them
inappropriate food.
An example shot in Gasman showing how British parents, or
any in fact, may favour one ‘set’ of children rather than the other if they
parent children from more than one partner. Here we can see the two girls
fighting as the girl in the yellow dress doesn’t understand why another girl is
sitting on her dad’s lap. This connotes that children may be psychologically
impacted by parents being around children they don’t consider to be their
siblings or someone they are usually surrounded by.
Gasman is set in
Glasgow during the 1970s which is also where Ramsay grew up which suggests that
perhaps she drew inspiration from her childhood and she could have experienced
or witnessed a situation like in Gasman.
It is also thought that Wasp has
bibliographical references to Arnold’s life as she also had a mum who was only
16 when she had Arnold and her mother also had to support Arnold on her own
along with four other children as her parents separated.
No comments:
Post a Comment