powder keg

This is the slowest and the most boring short film according to my classmates and for the BMW made films but for me, this is the best short from BMW films aside from my second favorite, entitled beat the devil, starring my favorite artist Marilyn Manson but anyways, I’d like to focus with my chosen short. This short is directed by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu last January 2001 entitled Powder keg. Powder keg is small barrel used to hold gunpowder or blasting powder or a tense situation that may easily erupt into violence and I can say that the title is pretty much related for whole meaning of the story.

The film starts with a group of terrorist killing their slaves somewhere in Mexico and it reminds me the movie of Leonardo di Caprio, blood diamond, the mood of this film is the same compared to powder keg and it’s like the continuation of blood diamond movie. Harvey Jacobs is photojournalist and I can relate to him through his shots, he witnessed the last massacre that he saw and he took a shot and for all the shot that he made and printed for his article, none of his subjects (victims who asked help for him) is being rescued by his hand. He ran away and was wounded. When the united nations knew what happened, they sent a professional driver (Clive Owen). When they were on the road going home to US, they are being followed by a jeep and a helicopter (terrorist), and they escaped but on the end of the road. Terrorist checkpoint waits for them. Before Harvey died on the checkpoint, the driver asked Harvey, “Why are you a photographer?” Harvey replied, because my mother told me to see and my mind was tickled at this scene. Harvey gave the last film to the driver that he took for a long time to deliver it to his company and to his mother with his dog tag. At the last part of the film, I realized that Harvey’s mother is blind that few of us noticed it, that why Harvey’s mother told him “to see”. In my own opinion, the SLR camera is the eye of Harvey’s mother. It is the media to visualized violence and to be shared to other people for a CHANGE by printing it to a newspaper. And at last, Harvey finished his article through his death.

Short films are the hardest film to do, because here, the only chosen sequence and the important one is the only thing that you need to put to complete your film, in short the film is being compressed but be sure that the film that you did is complete to make a story for the audience. Not like in a normal film that ranges about 1 hour to 3hours, you have a lot of opportunities to put long sequences to complete the film.