Customer Reviews

Short 7 - Utopia

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Not long ago I saw 'More' by Mark Osborne on SciFi Channel's 'Exposure'. What a fantastic commentary on society! It's Nick Park (of Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run fame) meets Oddworld. Considering this DVD costs less than most CDs, I felt it was worth buying for More alone.

"MORE"..., reason enough to buy this compilation. Quite simply the best short film I've ever seen, bar none. This is a 'must have' for every DVD collection.

i would buy this for more alone. that is an incredible short film.

I only just watched Short: Utopia, and I must say that I find the DVD a fantastic forum for new film. I am a British filmmaker myself, and find it hard getting my work out to the public. This DVD shows cutting edge film making, in a way that is obtainable for everybody. The DVD itself, is great, there are some weak pieces on the disk, but these are out weighed by the quality product. More is pure beauty to watch, with a fantastic soundtrack. I love the Lion and the Lamb, well made, visualy stunning. Buy this DVD if you want to see something new, and experience the future of film making. I hope to have one of my films on one of these disks soon!

I must say right away that the only short that i have seen from this dvd is More, and am thus basing my rating solely on that. However, imho, the 5 mintues of the film, more has been stated - without the utterance of a single word - that in many feature films. The detailed and graceful stop-motion, combined with fitting music all shrouded in a soul of meaning create one of the deepest and most intriguing short films ever. Just prove me wrong. 8-)

Eleuterio Sánchez (a.k.a. El Lute), who appears in this DVD, became a nationally famous folk hero, anti-Franco symbol of defiance, rebellion and, ultimately, redemption.

Two movies were made about his life: El Lute I & El Lute II. El Lute Amazon review:
Generalissimo Francisco Franco ruled 1960s Spain with an iron fist, but even he could not break the spirit of Eleuterio Sánchez, a.k.a. El Lute, the Robin Hood of Spain. Born into abject poverty, El Lute soon ran afoul of the law and found himself sentenced to a lifetime of incarceration. Any other man's story might have ended there, but El Lute had other ideas. Based on the memoirs of Eleuterio Sánchez, this powerful, captivating film tells the story of a common thief whose daring escapes from police custody and anti-Franco stance made him a most uncommon folk hero.

From Wikipeida:
"Eleuterio Sánchez was born in 1942 in Salamanca, in western Spain. He was born into a desperately poor Merchero family, while his father was in prison.

Eleuterio Sánchez was sentenced to six months in prison for stealing two hens. Shortly thereafter, in 1965, he was sentenced to death over the robbery of a jewelry store in Madrid in which a security guard was killed. Eleuterio Sánchez claimed he was not guilty of the murder, and was imprisoned because of his poor background as a convenient scapegoat. The sentence was commuted to thirty years in a military prison. Eleuterio Sánchez maintained his innocence and fought his conviction. He escaped several times and was Spain's most wanted person.

Although he entered prison as an illiterate peasant, he taught himself to read and gained a law degree, authored five books, and continued his fight to clear his name. He was finally pardoned on June 20, 1981."

NYT Movie Review:
"Policemen everywhere are sometimes lampooned for their self-importance and pomposity, and it is not unusual for a particularly impudent thief to become a national hero. However, Spain's Guardia Civil in the 1960s were an unusually self-righteous lot, and the real-life exploits of the young thief Eleuterio Sanchez, nicknamed "El Lute," thrilled the nation.

This crime adventure drama retells his story. After being arrested for a robbery gone bad, the young thief refuses to finger his partners in crime even under torture. Despite this, they are rounded up and executed for the murder they committed while robbing a jewelry store. El Lute received a commutation from General Franco, and was on his way to prison when he escaped, eluding a nationwide manhunt for several weeks despite having a broken arm."

I follow the last reviewer's comment on the theme of innocence lost, however the central emotion I capture is alienation. For the main character, the longer he toils on the assembly line, the prototypical example of the faceless capitalist existence, the more he loses his sense of self, that which he ceaselessly seeks in his moments alone. Daily, he travels on the faceless bus, past the massive uniform apartment buildings, where one is incapable of fostering any sense of individualism. Society at large has found a way to counter his alienation and subsequent depression through the offer of the generic "happy" supplement. It serves as a mass-produced path for escaping from the hollowness of modern society, shriveling the substance of the human existence. Only when the main character devises a better way to escape the empty existence that exists beyond his doorstep where he finds temporary contentment. This feeling is short-times, as he soon discovers this additional tool simply further numbs the realities that modern life manages to stifle in his flickering sense of self. These mechanations leave him empty. The melancholy nature of the closing scene reminds him of the innocent, vivacious nature of a life lived before being tainted and tortured by the banal, vacuous, monochromatic realities that plague modern adult life.