User Reviews

Although it is very short and direct, this sonnet film does a decent job of introducing meaning to the text. At first glance this wasn't the case, because it did look like some of the films where the camera gets lots of shots around a landmark, some with the actor in shot, then they edit it together and slap a voiceover reading of the text on top. This is how it appears, and this is fine for what it is, but this film seems to me to make much better use of the landmark than I though. I took the text to be the actor referring to the statue as a piece of art (and it is a beautiful and complex piece, one I'd never seen before). The visual links to the statue are made when referring to verse and eyes, but they seem more informed where often they just seem obvious. It helps that the film gives us plenty of the statue, not just jumping on a word or phrase. Maybe I'm being too kind to the film because the series produces so few now (only 23 to go, but at this rate it will take another 4-5 years to complete this project), but I liked what it did.

Visually the images are striking, whether it be the actress or the location or both, but the main thing was that visually the film felt like it was connecting to the text in the way that the narrative-driven shorts usually do better. So while it looked like a straight "read it out over some footage" film, it gave me much more, which was an enjoyable surprise. In terms of the project itself, disappointing to see this film on the YouTube page but not on the project's official website, its Vimeo, or given so much as a mention on its Twitter (although to be fair at time of writing, that is coming up on 2 years since it was last used).