The Jokes | Short Film of the Day

Spotlight July 27, 2024

The Jokes

By Eli Speigel with 7.2

dark comedy · Short Films · english

The film presents to us three seemingly unconnected narratives that glimpse into the lives of characters who would be anywhere but where they are.

A man goes to a restaurant to read. After finding himself distracted at home, he literally physically moves himself from his immediate circumstance, and yet, here again, there is no sense of belonging to be found. A state of emotional unhappiness follows him, irrespective of the change in his physical space. The same is true of a young woman who wakes up with a start only to spend her first few waking moments doomscrolling on her phone. The movement that might have the potential of making either of the two feel even remotely better thus seems to be an internal journey, as opposed to an external, literal movement.

The third circumstance is of a little girl who is entrapped in a world constructed by adults with virtually no power of her own. While adults might spew unsolicited life advice, her eyes remain wide with the inability to make sense of a world she finds herself located in.

Without a single thread that emphasizes the explicit coherence of the three components of the narrative, a lot is left up to the viewer to take away from the film. Or perhaps the film’s job is to simply present disassociated, disconnected characters locked in a world of mindless consumption as well as creation of content. The emptiness and vapidity of it all indeed seem to be the underlying message of the film, the thread to tie it all together. Though the performance, screenplay, and narrative-building, all are achieved with skill and seamlessness, the obscurity inherent to the narrative might not be for every viewer. The door is left open for them to approach and interpret it in their own manner.
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