This might be a great short film, but since the way the sound is mixed makes it impossible to understand most of what the characters are saying, who can tell? I'm sure the artsloitation crowd will claim to love it, but I don't just automatically love a film just because it has some attributes that satisfy my intellect; in this case, an admirable sense of social justice.
I generally don't have trouble understanding non-Americans speaking English. In this case, the trouble is the *sound* of the film.
The producers apparently didn't think that whatever they're trying to say is important. When Riz goes into his a cappella rap (it actually took me several lines before I realized it was a rap, since there's no beat or any accompaniment), no more concepts come through (not that many had come through before this), just a few words here and there. Enough to know that he's rapping about racial hatred, but I already know that exists in the world; I'm more interested in ideas that change my perspective. Maybe the ideas are there, but the producers apparently don't care whether the audience hears them. That's just contempt for the audience.
Another quibble is that I didn't know where the film was supposed to be set. In the last half of the film, you see men with uniforms that say "POLICE" across their chests, so I thought maybe it was a dystopian United Kingdom that they were showing. I'm pretty sure now that that's the case.
***Spoiler alert: I will say that the image of authorities pulling innocent people from their homes for immediate execution struck a chord. 10 years ago it didn't seem possible, but nothing seems stable anymore. It seems now like it could be possible in the not too distant future.
I generally don't have trouble understanding non-Americans speaking English. In this case, the trouble is the *sound* of the film.
The producers apparently didn't think that whatever they're trying to say is important. When Riz goes into his a cappella rap (it actually took me several lines before I realized it was a rap, since there's no beat or any accompaniment), no more concepts come through (not that many had come through before this), just a few words here and there. Enough to know that he's rapping about racial hatred, but I already know that exists in the world; I'm more interested in ideas that change my perspective. Maybe the ideas are there, but the producers apparently don't care whether the audience hears them. That's just contempt for the audience.
Another quibble is that I didn't know where the film was supposed to be set. In the last half of the film, you see men with uniforms that say "POLICE" across their chests, so I thought maybe it was a dystopian United Kingdom that they were showing. I'm pretty sure now that that's the case.
***Spoiler alert: I will say that the image of authorities pulling innocent people from their homes for immediate execution struck a chord. 10 years ago it didn't seem possible, but nothing seems stable anymore. It seems now like it could be possible in the not too distant future.