Without is a very unconventional film, to say the least. It is a film about a girl named Joslyn who is hired to play babysitter for a disabled, mute, elderly man. She is hired by a quasi-atomic family that lives pretty much in the middle of nowhere. As the main character spends more time in a completely isolated and anti-social environment, she begins to show subtle signs of mental collapse. The movie is very unsettling because it is difficult to latch on to the tone of it. It switches between suspense, dark comedy, and horror at times. This ambiguity is reflective of Joslyn's inability to remain attached to her reality as every day presents a new facet of her inner struggles with love, mistrust, death, and solitude.
Egri mentions premise. This is the assumption that the most 'effective' stories follow a changing dynamic in storyline, and presenting a thesis, antithesis, synthesis, and dialectic. All of this is basically to keep the story in check so that the storyline can remain ever-changing and interesting. In Without, the storyline is rather disguised. To the naked eye, the entire film is about Joslyn becoming bored and slightly delusional. But through an applied analysis of premise, I believe it is a commentary on the human psychology. It shows how Joslyn is constantly met with a new problem or issue, most of which are rather distressing in their randomness and lack of connection. She constantly faces a new enemy, but with no strengths in sanity to fall back on, especially with external influences such as the death of her girlfriend and her lack of social connectivity (no internet).
Egri also mentions character bone structure. This is the complex that makes up the character in terms of mental, physical, and contextual traits. This plays a very important part in Without, as Joslyn faces a number of changes to her structure in these three ways. Her mental structure could be seen as a primary focus of the movie: her mental stability has a gradual decrease throughout the entire movie. For example, she begins to question her surroundings and sanity when she awakes with her phone in different spots on different mornings. Her background plays a part as well. Her origin is not discussed much in the movie, but it is safe to assume that she is not used to her situation which is depicted in the film: solitude, unfamiliarity, and debilitated communication.
No comments:
Post a Comment