Advanced Short Film Analysis 1

Manah Manah

This incredibly unique short film is very rich for cinematic analysis as it is very playful with technical codes, genre, narrative. The work opens up with an intriguing POV shot of someone being pulled through a snow covered field which is disorientating for the viewer but triggers their interest. This POV shot forces the audience to ask questions about the event, location, and who this possible victim is. There is no backstory or reasoning given which makes the opening that much more interesting and makes the audience actively participate. The camera work pulls out to a shot-reverse-shot to evoke the confrontation between the two characters: the attacker and the victim. Initially this highlights the difference in emotions between the two characters until they engage in humming 'Manah manah' in which the shot then shows the similar emotions they express, making the film that much more bazar by bewildering. Furthermore, establishing shots are used to show the surrounding landscapes in which this is taking place. Interestingly, the work ends in a POV shot juts as it opened. Except this time it is through the eyes of the murdered victim in the grave.

Accompanying the various camera angles to this is the Mise-en-scene. Establishing shots depict the isolated characters in a barren snow covered field surrounded by forests. Iconography of a Thriller or Nordic Noir is established through this landscape but also the close ups of the blood, the gun and the shovel which generates confusion and mystery in the work.

From a genre aspect this short film transforms from a Thriller in the beginning, a black comedy in the middle, and then a Thriller at the end. It opens up with mystery and suspense, then changes into a surreal but hilarious black comedy during the song, and then again reverts back to a Thriller in the attacker act of murder. Questions are still left unanswered at the end, but the viewer puts asking these questions out of their mind during the comedy scene. Therefore, the short film is composed of two different genres in three different stages. This directly relates to Todorov's Narrative Theory in which a story begins with an equilibrium, a disruptive event creates a disequilibrium, and then the new equilibrium is re-established. However in this case of 'Manah Mana!' it is the complete reverse. It begins with a disequilibrium, relief in comedy that creates an equilibrium as the two characters engage in song together, and then the film ends with a new disequilibrium where the victim is murdered after singing the song.

'Manah Manah' is a convention of the short film genre in its length and that it condenses a lot action and emotion in such a short period of time. As a viewer you suspend disbelief, but the inevitable that you suspect from the very beginning (murder) happens anyway.