Review 4. Contraction

Contraction
Director. Christopher Hewitt & James Cambourne
Duration. 3 minutes
2009

Contraction follows the idea of life literally being pushed back into a person and how it effects the immediate surroundings
It starts off with a close up of a mans face, he is still and his face is emotionless, the shot lasts approximately 30 seconds, before this shot ends he closes his eyes and the screen turns black.
The next shot, he is laying on the floor with a woman, perhaps his girlfriend kneeling over him. She attempts to give him CPR and the audience is immediately pulled in. As she pushes down onto his chest, the paving slabs surrounding them lift up as though the impact of pushing life was shaking the ground beneath them. The more the woman pushes the higher the slabs lift up. This creates suspense and the audience feel emotionally attatched to both of them.
The man starts pushing his body upwards just like the slabs, the idea of life being impacted into a person. He gets up and the next shot we see the woman ask the man "where did you go?" The man does not reply. There is light above them and to me this is a very spiritual sombol of God, and the light raining above life.
The film is very abstract and uses digital and 3d editing to create the lifting slabs.
The makers of this piece wanted to create something that would make the viewer question, what had happened before and this does that. It makes the audience want to understand.

There arent many concepts in this piece other than the most obvous ideas which are; life being pushed back into someone and the impact that it has on the surroundings, and the light symbolising life and maybe even spiritual beings.
The idea of contraction is to depict the concept of rebirth, this is something that is followed by many religions and this is the main concept of the video and also the reason that the video was made.