Director: Grzegorz Cisiecki
Starring: Marta Szumiel, Grzegorz Golaszewski, Oriana Soika, Bartlomej Nowosielski, Katarzyna Dalek, Hubert Jarczak, Malgorzata Kocik, Mark Malak, Krzysztof Wach
The One Where I Try And Dissect Dym… But It’s All Smokes And Mirrors
Live For Films continues my film education. Because, if I were honest, if you asked me to watch a 7-minute short film, I’d say I had a better idea…
NO FUCKING WAY! *
The reason behind that was simple. What can you get across in seven minutes? Nothing. NOTHING! So why bother? Just About Famous started to change my views on this, but that was a documentary. (A brilliant one, too. See my review, HERE).
But Smoke? Smoke was meant to be a film. A short film. A very short film, in fact, at seven minutes.
Well, I’ve had to eat a lot of humble pie in my time, and maybe none more so than here. It’s brilliant. Absolutely spot on.
It’s difficult to talk about why I loved it so much with out paying it a backhanded compliment. Essentially, that is that it reminded me of loads of different films. I would hope the people involved take that as the compliment it is meant as, because we are talking esteemed company here.
So what do we have? Well, the obvious ones are nods to David Lynch. And when I say nods, I don’t mean the cliché bits. There are no dancing midgets, or Kyle Maclachlan. Here, I mean the nightmarish images. The woman shot in reverse, whose hair gets pushed over her face, rather than away from it. The lighting in some scenes that just feels awkward, and uneasy. That is absolutely the intention, and on a couple of scenes, I was actually squirming. Anyone that read my review of A Serbian Film will know I have been haunted by subliminal images, ever since that bastard white face in The Exorcist. Here, the Director manages to get onto that list.
It is a credit to anything that is seven minutes long that makes you want to investigate. Anything that makes you want to dig deeper. A film trailer can do that, I guess, but that’s its point. What the team behind Smoke has done is to create something that can stand-alone. And I did try to dig deeper.
“I have just watched “Dym” a.k.a. “Smoke” three times trying to find a clue to understand the plot. I have even checked the dictionary, where I found that smoke can also mean “something insubstantial, unreal, or transitory” – IMdB
Interesting…
So I watched again. And I saw bits that jump out as genuine talent. The way the sound kicks in when a lone man, in a room lit like it’s from a Film Noir, starts the tape recorder. A large man in the back seat, as our loner drives him. He’s eating in that horrible, fat, queasy way where he’s licking his fingers. I squirm.
Our loner is looking in the rear view mirror, and then the images kick in. Characters shrouded in smoke, looking directly at the camera, but somehow not breaking the fourth wall. The images are from our Loners past (or future?), and he slams the breaks on. Opens the fat mans door, and just stares at him. Is that blood dripping from the fat mans lips? I am uneasy. I squirm.
I need something cheery. Something hopeful.
Then, a woman. Her hands in front of her face. We see what she sees, (or do we?), as she walks dressed in red, with our Loner. She is gorgeous. They are in love. Except the camera swings around, and we see our Loner with his hands in front of his face. Whose visions/memories/perspective is this?
And before this becomes a shot by shot dissection (that I would love to do, and the film totally deserves), I’ll leave it there.
Check this out. Try and interpret it. Tell your friends. Get them to do the same. This is the best thing I’ve watched in a long time.
* Sorry for the potty mouth, it’s part out of necessity. I joined a Clan (of two people) that wants to bring MacGruber to the masses.
You can see the full short film in all its wondrous glory below.
