Spencer Beeson - Short Film Clips

Bunny

This was an interesting short film that captured the stages one goes through before death. Psychologists often break the process of dying into a few stages; mainly, anger, confusion/hopelessness, and acceptance. At the beginning of the film the bunny was clearly angry with the moth who was symbolically heading toward the light. Much like finding out one is about to die, the bunny is initially frustrated because the moth interrupts the bunny’s everyday life and leaves the bunny wondering, why me? As the annoying moth does not leave the bunny’s home she begins to become tired, confused, and even hopeless until she finally believes she had defeated the moth. The bunny is still confused when the oven bursts open and she goes over to check it out. In the end, similar to what one might experience in the few days or moments before death, is a peacefulness/calmness that accompanies an acceptance of passage into the afterlife. This is when the bunny willingly climbs in the oven and when she stands up there is a vast starry sky behind her and then she flies towards the light.

Northfork

The short clips from this film had some powerful religious symbolism that centered on the relationship between man vs. nature. First was the buffalo who were stuck in one place while the boy was running free in the background. The tendency for man to take buffalo from their natural habit and place trap them in one area shows how humans tend exert their dominance over nature and view it as separate from man and thus, capable of being controlled. The other part of the clips seems to provide different insight on the man vs. nature relationship. The two men in the black car are trying to decide what to do about the dead mother, and eventually decide to bury her on top of the mountain looking over what will soon be a man-made lake. The vast landscapes with mountains in the distance and the dead mother represent how temporary human life is and how long-lasting nature is compared to man.

Paris, Texas

The clips from this film revolved around a central theme of re-connecting with people who haven’t been in our life for a while. Each scene where the brother is walking west he is either following a road, railroad tracks, or power lines which all represent him trying to re-connect with his family from which he has been absent. The director used the mountains in one scene to represent the personality of each brother, with the “normal” brother having a regular looking mountain behind him and the brother who has been disconnected with a rugged and mysterious mountain behind him. The connection theme continues as he begins to reconnect with his son under a bunch of overpasses and with his wife who works in a club where she talks to men over a phone and behind a one-way mirror. During this scene they both come close to the mirror and their faces overlap for a second visually showing their reconnection. The one-way mirror made it appear as if the wife was there and not there at the same time and I found this to parallel a connection we sometimes have with God. We are always drifting away and reconnecting with God, and God is always here and not here at the same time.

Pink Floyd’s: The Wall

This film was loaded with powerful visual imagery that suggested a decline, and almost an apocalyptic attitude, towards the world. The first scene shed negative light on the war and showed the negative consequences of the world wars. We then moved on to “Another Brick in the Wall” in which the education system was turning children into mass produced robots who were then ground up into meat which suggested that our culture allows little room for creativity. This made me wonder how will one find God if he/she is just a mindless clone with no longing for creative and abstract thought? The last scene we watched was the focused on the wall that has been built up around Pink blocking him from the rest of the world and driving him crazy. I think this film had excellent visual imagery and placed importance on the individuals creative capacity and why we should suppress it.

Cabesa de Vaca

This film was important because it showed the differences between two opposing cultures and that we can learn from other cultures. When Alavar tries to escape from the shaman’s camp he puts a spell on him using a baby alligator tied by a string to a stick. Every time he would do something to the alligator Alavar would trip up or something as he was trying to run away until eventually he ended up right back a camp. To a westerner this makes no sense at all, we would just chase after Alavar until we caught him. As Alavar began to trust/interact with the shaman’s culture more he was able to adopt some of their rituals and even perform some healings of his own. The most powerful scene is at the end when Alavar reunites with the Spaniards and there is a ditch between him and his captain, with fire and slaves on the captain’s side and a beautiful nature landscape on Alavar’s side. When the captain asks him which God he is talking about (ours or theirs?) Alava realizes that all this conflict between cultures is unnecessary and that there is only one God.