Synopsis
A young woman lives in the upstairs of a house. One of her neighbors is an old man who gets up at five o'clock in the morning and goes to work at same time that she does. In the young woman's back yard, there is a sow bug that tries to leave the yard. When the young woman goes out of her room, she realizes that she left her keys in the room. After sunrise, the young woman and the bug meet each other while the bug is passing by. And she also collides with the old man in the front of her home while listening to music on her iPod. That afternoon, she comes home from work. when she is walking across the street to her house, she is not aware of the bug passing by very close to her. When she digs in to take her keys out of her pocket, she realizes that she left her keys in her car. When she turns to retrieve her keys from her car, she unconsciously steps on the bug and squashes it. The old man is also coming home from work. He is frustrated by experiencing a dropped call on his cell phone,and he is trying to dial again. While he is looking at his cell phone, he ran over the young woman.
Although on the surface, the story may appear to be so simple, underlying that simplicity, there is a profound complexity. The young woman keeps forgetting things, distracted by music on her iPod. On the other side, the old man, one of her neighbors, is also being distracted from his surroundings by talking on his cell phone all the time.
Opinion
When a viewer sees the surface of the story, he or she would suggest that the cause of the woman's death was those gadgets. It can be right, but it is not quite right. It is like asking, "What caused Beethoven to create those beautiful symphonies?", and the viewer responds, "He needed money fast." The answer doesn't contain the whole aspects of the power of Beethoven's creativity. In this story, there are many possibilities of what could have taken place to avoid that mishap. What if the old man had not been the young woman's nieghbor (space); what if their work schedules hadn't been similar (time); what if one or the other hadn't wanted to go to home after work (want); what if one, at least, had been aware of the possibility of the accident (consciouness)? would she have died anyway? There are innumerable other ways in which the the event could have been otherwise. Many elements, such as sound effects, traffic reports, news, and the like are embedded in the film to challenge the viewers' minds to distinguish between what we are conscious of with its consequences and what we are not, between what we have control over with our free will and what we don't, and between what the young woman's destiny might have been and what her desiny must be. No one's life is predestined. For each of us, there are an infinite number of possibilities. When we are conscious of those possibilities, there is a good chance to be the architect of our own lives. But in the real world, it is almost impossible to be conscious of everything and to have control over all upcoming events all the time. When time and space are fixed and consciousness and want are varied, anything may happen.
Written, Directed & Edited by:
Saeid Bagheri Moghaddam
Assistant Director:
Mahyar Alahyari
Starring:
Roger Harper
Christine Hampen
Music Scored by:
Farzin Moridi
Cinematographer:
Masoud Allahyari
Special Thanks:
Shumin Yang
Shirin Shirvani
Paul Culton
Thomus Ngo Mike Johnson
produced: 2007
