La Maison en Petits Cubes
The Oscar winning short animated film this year. The protagonist stays in this small cube of a house surrounded by water. Flooding rain results in the water-encompassed village and forces the villagers to continually build their house upwards - stacking one "house" over the other as the bottom one becomes fully submerged by the rising water level - with only a man-hole linking the current home to the previous ones below.
The structure of the house, coupled with the images that flashed through the protagonist as he descends into each room, is the outward manifestation of his life. Each house holds a specific memory to a stage in his life - his wife's sickness and eventual death, his daughter's marriage, his marriage and his youth. The scenerios flash backwards; a twist to the usual term "walking down memory lane". The floodwaters represent time which blurs the events and forces us to move forward; or in this case, upwards. It is also representation of the unconscious part of ourselves which hinders us from remembering the past, a protection from the many emotions - happiness, sadness - and we have to make an effort to delve deeper into the waters, into our memories to recover or relive the events.
When the protagonist eventually reaches the bottom of his "houses", the revelation of his youth and his initial construction of the home with his wife, is bittersweet as he was shown repeating the construction in the earlier part of the film, alone. The cycle of the repetitive building is a survival instinct - the need to build his home again and again to protect himself from drowning - and a movement into the next stage of his life.
The neighbouring shorter houses which have been engulfed by the flood may spell the death of the people around him - his neighbours or his relatives - as the height of the house represents the length of lifespan in this particular village or the desertation of the village and it's type of living. In comparison, the protagonist's continual preseverance to continue to carry on living in this village instead of leaving for elsewhere with his child and son-in-law is indicative of his dedication to his roots and his life. The strength of his endeavours is striking as his house of cubes is one of the highest and made up of the most cubes.
Overall, I feel that the film draws contrast and comparison with the way we live. The building of house cubes is reflective of the human behaviour of compartmentalizing memories into small boxes; as in the waters which those cubes are engulfed in - the inertia which we face when we try to rediscover the past memories . We are eventally sole surviours of our own destiny (as the protagonist lives his remaining life by himself) and we have to take charge of our decision towards our way of life - either by presevering or finding another option to overcome the challenges that are thrown at us; which in this case is the never-ending flood.
Listening to: Rachael Yamagata - I'll Find a Way
Mood: Living (on my terms)
ラベル: Current Fascintation, Ramblings
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