Small Deaths Movie:
This film seems to be focusing on a girl, each chapter being a stage of her life. It seems to be giving the audience a feeling of what is going around this character. The audience can only see and hear what is happening, it also gives the audience an open idea of what can happen later on in this character’s life. The first chapter is Ma and Da, which for me means mother and father through the eyes of a child. The warm colors around the house evokes some kind of feeling, for me warm colors are comfortable and have feelings of happiness. The parents seem to have some kind of conflict, especially when he did not answer her question about “coming back tonight.” For chapter Holy Cow, the sound together with the curiosity of the two girls exploring the area evoked familiar memories from my childhood. There will be different feelings coming from the audience while listening to the sound of nature. The only color that I see contrasting with the other is red, especially coming from the cow’s blood. The Joke chapter, one that was hard to follow for me, especially the joke from her friends. The only thing I noticed is how the character’s emotions are well put into the situation that is happening in that room. Also, giving the audience the feeling of wonder when the main character is walking up the stairs not knowing what we will be seeing next.
The structure of this story is simple and can be followed by the audience. The story doesn’t have many conflicts that are visual, maybe there are more internal conflicts coming from the main character, especially when we don’t know what was going on in her house when she was a child. The ending is opened for the audience to interpret, which gives us more room to create our own assumptions.
She & Her Cat:
This film has an easy structure and story to follow. The narrator is the cat and his point of view of what is going around his surroundings. If these were only images with no narrator explaining what was happening, I would have a different idea of the story. It is intriguing how the cat narrator describes the sounds and the smells, especially because those are the two senses that are well developed in a cat. The black and white color scheme made it feel sad and emotive. There is a conflict that the audience is not aware of, just like the narrator. In this situation we are given the freedom to fill in a situation that might have caused the girl to leave the cat behind. We don’t see her face, but we see her body and listen to the cat’s description of how she is. A surprising ending coming from this story, something that maybe some saw coming, but I did not. Having a narrator to guide the audience can be helpful in some situations or stories, and having a narrator as a cat is even more interesting for some people. This story evokes the cat’s feelings, to which he sounds grateful for everything she has done and given to him. I hear no remorse coming from the cat at the end, it seems to be something that he in a way understands why she left.