The Gift. the response.

The Gift from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.

“The Gift” is a short sci-fi film that takes place in a futuristic looking Russia.  This is a future in which technology is heavily rooted in the everyday life; where your identification can be taken from a machine that reads your saliva. I still don’t fully know how to feel about the whole film being centered on an upper ranking man in society wanting to see a unicorn; the unicorn, which is miniaturized and hidden in a box that opens with some special piece of hair. Then again, the viewer never gets to see the miniature unicorn, so it really could be anything that is in the box. And then it is odd for me that the higher-ranking man then is killed.

The theme that I get from this film is knowledge is deadly; put more simply, this film could be visually representing the story/proverb of curiosity killed the cat. This then would teach people to just accept what they have and is given, not hoping for something more.  This message could be further seen through the depiction of Russia being similar to how it may have been during the Cold War, or at least how I think security and all was similar to. There were not many people out in general; police looking forces mainly guarded the town/city.

The main emotions that I received from this piece was fear/the fear of a higher-ranking people or organization to be watching your every move. This was shown in every scene, as the film camera and we were always looking down/centered on the gift deliverer. It was interesting for me and I was not expecting the dead man’s robotic servant to take the box and run away with it; it is almost a major disconnected moment for me and I don’t know how to interpret it. Did the robot actually know what his boss has been up to? Was this moment to show again that knowledge is powerful and can get those close to you killed?