A Critical Analysis of Own Video Work. Hush (2013) - Essay Example

?A Critical Analysis of Own Video Work The short movie d “Hush” produced by TIFA productions and directed by a team comprising of Beiyi Jiang, Hephzibah Kwakye-Saka, Jamilah Leigh, Natalie Nicolaides, Akash Pithia and Sonal Vyas, casts Meesha Turner in the lead role of Alice. The movie focuses on the illustration of the psychological disintegration of the lead character, Alice, who bereaves the death of her son, Jason. She appears obsessed with her son and while doing the chores in the course of her daily life, her attention goes back to her son. Her son’s memories haunt her through his possessions such as his guitar and mask, the room he had used, his pictures and even the “Spiderman Song” from his favourite cartoon. She also seems to be haunted by her own childhood, which reflects on the fragmented manner in which the thoughts about her son come to her. She lives alone and the movie makes no reference to her husband or any other relatives. Thus, it transpires that her son was the only person she loved and cared for and this explains her obsession for him. This obsession with her dead child destabilizes her present life and finally erodes her sanity and she ends up in a mental hospital. The movie eloquently portrays the disintegration of the young mother by relying purely on the actions of the protagonist within 4 consecutive days inside her house and using distorted images of her daily routines. In doing this, the movie seems to have drawn inspiration from many acclaimed directors of the horror and psychological thriller movies, especially from David Lynch and Sharon Maguire. The movie has several elements that conform to the concepts of horror and psychological thriller movies, including its theme, the sequences of action, setting, sound and music. Rather than revealing characterization through dialogue or plot development, the movie focuses on simple and routine actions of the protagonist to reveal her psychological condition, trauma and obsession with her son. It, however, follows a systematic approach albeit through the depiction of the changes in the character’s routine to illustrate how her behavioural pattern keeps changing within a matter of a few days, due to her disintegrating mental state. Thus, the movie, through illustrating the changes in the behavioural pattern of the protagonist portrays her mental state and shows how the obsessions can devastate the lives of human beings. The creative minds of people can sometimes follow a similar line of thinking and, as a result, one artist may perceive the same method for illustrating a particular in the same way that another has done. David Lynch is a highly popular and critically acclaimed director who has created many a masterpieces that have been celebrated as epoch making events in movie history. He is also known for his style of depicting the psychological traumas in individuals by showing distorted images from their daily lives to allude to their deteriorating mental states. The movie Hush also displays several traits that are typical attributes of Lynch’s style of representing the psychological problems in his characters. This can be evidenced from how the character in this movie displays the disintegration of her mind through the variations in her actions. The audience initially sees Alice in the movie when she does her make up in a leisurely manner, paying sharp attention to the details. She works on her eyelashes and cheeks in an unhurried manner and the cosmetics and other items are kept neat and tidy. Thus, the movie creates in the audience the understanding that things are normal for Alice and she is in a relaxed mood. In the next scene she is again shown tidying up the house, slowly dusting the surfaces and then she wipes the framed photograph of Jason, pauses to take a look at him, touches the picture and then moves off. But the memory lingers in her mind, as suggested by the tune of the lullaby with its ending note. Alice prepares tea and sits down and stirs it when the camera zooms to the door of Jason’s room. Here the music suggests her state of mind, which is fresh with the memory of Jason that she had when she wiped his photograph and, thus, the movie provides the audience a clear understanding that the memory of her son has begun to haunt Alice, thus offering a glimpse into her state of mind. This is also a good instance where the movie uses a combination of sound and camera angles to refer to the character’s state of mind. She then throws a casual glance at the door and walks away into the kitchen, which indicates that the character is making an attempt to brush away the daunting memory. Thus, the movie has been effective in providing its audience several clues about the state of mind and intentions of the character through her action and body language. However, when Alice sits down to sift through a magazine, the TV beings to play the Spiderman Cartoon with its title song, with the sound at a high volume. Jolted, Alice suddenly jumps from the sofa and fumbles around for the remote control, retrieves it from the floor by the sofa side. She presses the button to lower the volume, but it does not work and she hits it, jams it on the table surface but with no results. Finally, she removes the connecting wire from the socket and the song stops. For a discerning viewer, the scene offers many clues as to the state of mind of Alice. First of all, the remote lies on the floor, which indicates that she is not aware of its falling down, meaning her mind is not conscious to the facts of life. The sound is obviously in her mind only and she believes that no matter how she manipulates the remote control, it will not work. On the other hand, her mind is conscious to the fact that if she disrupts the power flow, it will stop and, therefore, when she removes the connecting cord, the song stops. This scene, thus, depicts an abrupt transformation in the protagonist’s state of mind, which begins to entertain hallucinations. Thus, she becomes unaware of the difference between reality and imagination and traverses into the realm of delusions. The film’s resemblance to Lunch’s style becomes evident in the transition in these scenes as the character’s state of mind transforms. Lynch uses “Colour, furniture, sound and speed of the film” to create the atmosphere in his movies (Dries, 1999, p.4). A similar use of these elements can be evidenced in the progressive sequences in Hush, during which Alice’s mind disintegrates. The movie initially depicts the well arranged furniture, cupboards and the meticulous manner in which Alice tidies up her home. However, as her mental state deteriorates, she becomes careless as much in her makeup as in her other chores. Thus, in the subsequent scenes as her mental problems increase the audience is presented with images of her home in a disarrayed manner. Movies have the advantage of excellent scope for presenting meaningful visual imagery to the audience, but suffer from the lack of leverage for exposition, which books have. Thus, movie makers will have to rely on other elements to communicate to their audience about the specific state of mind of their characters. Therefore, Hush, uses the changes in the arrangement of furniture, sound, colour and behavioural patterns of its character to convey the meaning to the audience, and it does it with a reasonable amount of success. However, the above scene basically suffers from a flow relating to the pitch of the sound used. The audience hears the title song of “Spiderman” cartoon, which makes the protagonist’s obsessive memory about her son so strong that she becomes hallucinated. The scene, while deftly portrays the mental state of the bereaving young mother, would have been much better if the audio’s pitch were gradually increased as Alice kept fumbling for the remote and then frantically went of pressing it, to reduce the volume. Such an increase in the cadence of the voice would have offered the audience a sense of the escalating confusion and mental disintegration of Alice. This would also have aligned quite well with the next scene where Alice becomes disturbed at the sound of voice from Jason’s room and again at the sight of the rice crispies and throws them into the dustbin after which she pops two of her tranquilisers into her mouth. The increasing of medication denotes her rising concern and that she is getting more confused mentally. She has become frantic because of the haunting memories and is trying to escape from them through the tranquilisers but those are insufficient to wipe out her trauma. Her tendency to hallucinate heightens in the next scene, when she sees the image of the clown in the bathroom mirror and she glances back to see that there is no one. Thus, Alice can be understood as undergoing a state of mind where she is unable to separate reality from the myth and remains in a state of utter delirious confusion. As she keeps disintegrating, the hallucinations keep occurring more frequently and at one stage she perceives the clown walking hurriedly from her room. In the next scene, Alice appears in a bathrobe, and closes the doors of the kitchen shelves, all of which had been thrown open. This alludes to the possibility that Alice has become quite disorganized and forgotten to close them the previous night. One of the kitchen drawers is broken and she pushes it close. Going to the zinc she is shown frantically scrubbing a bowl, which she droops and then picks up another. All these actions show that she has lost her bearings and is in a frantic state of mind, trying to elude her memories. On hearing sounds from Jason’s room, she opens the door and goes inside to investigate. Removing the curtains, she is shocked to see the clown against the windowpanes and yells. Thus, the audience realizes that her state of mind has now reached the point of no return from the disintegration. As transpires from the above sequence of events, the movie has used visual images quite effectively for portraying the character’s psychological disposition and confusion between the real and the imagined. Her desperation has made her forget routine matters like keeping doors of the shelves shut, the broken drawer remains unattended and hallucinations keep daunting her. The storyline bears a striking resemblance to the movie “Incendiary” (2008), which narrates the story of a bomb explosion in the soccer stadium of Arsenal and deals with the issue of global terrorism. However, its subplot is the relationship between a mother and her son. She has sex with a journalist neighbour while her husband and son are away watching a soccer match at the stadium. A series of “bomb blasts” occur in the stadium, in which the father and son get killed; the mother becomes laden with guilt as she primarily feels a sense of guilt about it (Incendiary Movie Review, 2013). This makes her incapable to involving in love and in one scene she laments, “You have blown away lives, Osama” but “I have blown away love” (Maguire, 2008). In the same manner as in Hush, the protagonist becomes obsessed with an overriding sense of guilt about her son’s death and slowly her mental condition disintegrates. The similarity may be a simple coincidence but it is quite obvious as the viewer can see the thread of a common theme in both these movies. Similarly, the movie, albeit as a matter of coincidence, shows traces of the influence of Alfred Hitchcock style especially in terms of its manifestation of the “moral ambiguity as well as the “transfer of guilt motif” that motivates the character of Alice (Sterritt, 1999, p.7). The movie eloquently captures the sense of guilt that overrides Alice through a variety of images from the past as well as the belongings of her son that she has kept with her at her home. Each of these memories and the belongings of her son taunt and haunt her, pushing her finally into the vortex of guilt that totally obliterates her sense of reality. This similarity can be more significantly found in the Hitchcock movies such as Spellbound and Marnie, in which the protagonists are the “victims of their own overactive superegos” due to the fact that they feel guilty about the deaths they are responsible “physically, but not morally” (p.8). So far as it relates to Hush, the audience is not sure whether Alice is actually responsible for her son’s death either physically or morally as the only clue they have is a passing scene in which she presses a pillow onto her son’s face. However, it is amply evident that just like the Hitchcock movies, it is an overriding sense of guilt that controls and motivates the protagonist in Hush. This resemblance may only be coincidental but it places the movie in the classic horror/suspense thriller style. One major area that the movie lacks clarity is the scene where Alice presses the pillow onto Jason’s face. This scene, immediately after she paces across a room, can be interpreted in two ways: either she has killed her son, which accounts for a sense of guilt in her that has caused all her mental trauma; or she is trying to shut out the memories about her son. It will be a good idea to further clarify this point by adding some more details or monologue from Alice. Also, the scene, where Alice paces up and down the room in a bathrobe, appears a bit melodramatic and overdone. This overshadows the otherwise sober performance of Meesha Turner in the lead role, which has appeared quite natural and realistic. Another aspect where the movie could have given more attention is the use of light and shading in creating cinematic meaning as well as to show the emotions of the characters. Cinematic devices such as “lighting, sound” etc need to be used effectively to “create cinematic space” as one can see from the classic works of Alfred Hitchcock (Jacobs, 2007, p.11). However, the movie has, in one occasion, made good use of the element of light effectively, where the scene dissolve into a white blur when Alice walks out of her home, in the climax. Similarly, the use of black and white for depicting Alice’s memory of her serving rice crispies from a pack works well both to indicate the flashback as well as to allude to the sudden shift in her mood because of the memory. Overall, the movie Hush has been quite effective in the portrayal of the mental traumas and the disintegration of the mental stability of the protagonist, Alice. It also follows, albeit as a matter of coincidence, several classic theories that define movies that fall in the categories of horror/psychological thriller. Thus, it bears resemblance to many other movies in this category evoking memories of such great movie makers such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and Sharon Maguire etc. The movie primarily uses the changes in the daily routine of the protagonist to indicate the deteriorating state of mind of Alice rather than dialogue or other devices, which has been effective. Similarly, it has attained effectiveness in creating an appropriate setting and environment that befits a horror movie by using a combination of action and music. However, the movie can improve in a few aspects to make it more appealing to the audience. On the other hand, the creators can definitely be proud of having created a piece of work that eloquently captures the traumatic experience of a guilt laden young mother. Reference List Dries, Manuel. 1999. David Lynch’s Lost Highway: Perpetual Mystery or Visual Philosophy. Retrieved April 16, 2013, from Maguire, S. 2008. Incendiary. Perf. Michelle Williams, Ewan McGregor and Mathew Macfadyen. Incendiary Movie Review. 2013. Contactmusic.com. Retrieved April 16, 2013, from Jacobs, S. 2007. The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Retrieved April 16, 2013, from Jiang, B. et al. (Dir). 2013. Hush. TIFA Productions, Perf. Meesha Turner, Jason Appah and Sonal Vyas. Retrieved April 16, 2013, from Sterritt, D. 1999. The Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved April 16, 2013, from Read More