Fairy Tales 2010

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Mysterious Wolf



This video completely fascinates me in the same way that the video from today did. This piece took a classic fairy tale and "experimented" with it (as is said in the description) in order to make it a short film. Clearly, the point of the film is not to tell the true story but to show off David Lehre's ability to direct a short film. Seriously, his name spent probably more time on the screen than the wolf did. 
I think this video really mixes a lot of genres and labels. The music is meant to be a bit sketchy, scary, or creepy (or all of the above in my opinion) and tells the story as much as the actors do. It also by no means holds onto the idea of being composed for children. There are themes of beauty, age, sex (and violent sex like rape from the wolf), heroism, and love (between Red and the lumberjack?). It doesn't teach much of a moral to me (other than the fact that pretty girls apparently have to stay away from the woods). I also think that the choice in the actor for the wolf is very interesting. To me, the lumberjack seems like a bigger, burlier man than does the wolf, and the wolf is clearly very primal with his bare chest and "scary" mask. 
In terms of sticking to the story, this video obviously did anything but. There is no background and no real idea of a future. In other words, we know nothing about the characters except the little that we see based on clothing, actions, and expressions. Also, there is no true ending to the story, unlike the tale where it's quite clear. Red seems to have been saved but you just never know... (again, Lehre is really forcing the creepiness here...)

3 comments:

  1. I think that this video was really interesting as well. Partly because we can only identify it as a LRRH story because the girl is wearing a hood, there is a wolf and a lumberjack. Other than that there is no tie to the story whatsoever. I thought similarly that it reminded me of the movie watched in class in that it had an somewhat artsy take on the whole story. however I feel as though this version is disregarding the plot completely whereas the one we watched in class read word for word the story itself. Still it makes me wonder why so many film directors choose this story as their inspiration.

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  2. I agree that this film is different from the original story. It is short, to the point, and cuts out grandmother completely. However, the basic, raw aspects of the film are there. We all know LRRH is about a girl who meets a wolf on the way to grandmother's house, and the wolf, therefore, tries to eat her in the end (sometimes succeeding, and sometimes not, but always trying). This cuts out the why... why was she walking in the woods? Yet, the rest is still there. This version included the hunter/lumberjack character which is prevalent in many versions. So, I found this interesting because it shows that all we need are the basic elements of the story, and we can change it up quite a bit, and people still connect this story to the original LRRH. They even completely cut out the grandmother who is very important as well, and we still connect it to LRRH. That is what I find fascinating.
    Not only that, but I find it interesting how they almost tried to make it even more like a fairy tale in my opinion. In many fairy tales, the hero gets the pretty girl in the end. LRRH is not like this, but in this version it was as if the director thought it was necessary. He also left the ending open, but we can probably assume that the wolf gets defeated again. So, even if he changed the story quite a bit, we still recognize it as a LRRH story which is very interesting to me.

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  3. I also thought the casting choices for the wolf and lumberjack were interesting. The wolf, besides seeming on the slim side for such a character, had a relatively nondescript presence on the screen--certainly not the predatory beast we've come to expect, but not different enough to really be subverting the traditional character. The director seemed to be shooting for equal parts cheese and beefcake for the lumberjack, strangely making him the hero but not really letting that play out (a consequence of the absurdly short run time). Red Riding Hood herself came across as passive, pseudo-sultry, and more than a little detached from the other characters, though I'm not sure if that's a conscious decision or just youtube-quality acting.
    The one issue that I felt this version provoked was how much the story depends on the plot, and how much it depends on the characters. While looking for my own video, I often felt that the narrative became a little tired, like the journey to granny's house and the "oh what big whatevers you have" were slowing down the real essence of the story. But if you reduce the "story" to only the most basic of relationships between the characters (as in this version), something is lost.

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