Films About Shoes

I just checked out an interesting little Iranian Film from the last millenium (1997), called Bacheha-Ye aseman (Children Of Heaven). I always tend to enjoy foreign films, though it can be a challenge that I find it necessary to be in the right frame of mind for. There is always the issue of reading subtitles, which is distracting from following the visual action of the film, but then there are the cultural aspects that cannot be translated easily, which require some effort on the part of the audience to understand. I have always found that film is nothing if it does not edify its audience in some way, however small. I think that the best films leave you with questions and curiosity about the subject matter, to the point where you might even get on the internet or pick up a book and research more about it. So to me, it is worth the effort.

This film contained some of these references in small ways, but really was fairly universal. It told the story of a young boy who is running errands and accidentally loses his sisters newly repaired shoes. He does not want to tell his parents, for fear of punishment, and also due to the knowledge that his father does not have the money to buy new ones. So he works out a system with  his sister whereby they share the shoes. She takes them to school in the morning and then runs to bring them to him while he waits in slippers so that he can wear them to his classes in the afternoon. This little arrangement quickly becomes untenable, leaving them both in one sort of trouble or another. And so the two spend the rest of the film trying to find a way to get her shoes back, or find a way to replace them.

It's an unusual, but very engaging film, because it takes such a basic thing that most of us take for granted, such as the shoes that are on our feet, and spins it out into an 83 minute narrative. But it could just as easily be a short film, taken up from a multitude of different points. It actually reminded me of another film that I saw years ago on POV (a must see documentary series on PBS). It was a short that, as I recall, appeared at the end of the broadcast, in which a boy missing one leg from a land mine accident is shopping for shoes with his mother. A man comes into the store, also with one leg, but missing the opposite leg. He overhears how disappointed the boy is that he cannot have the pair of shoes that he wants because his mother cannot afford them. So he offers to take the other shoe for his foot and split the cost so that the boy can have the shoe he wants. The boy happily puts the shoe on, they pay and leave the store. He thanks the man and they go their separate ways and once the boy is out of sight, the man sits down to take the shoe off, which as it is now clear, was way too small for him, and it becomes apparent in that moment that he bought the shoe not for himself, but for this boy that he did not know, but perhaps saw some of himself in. It's a great little story, which starts with a great, but very simple idea. And in that short span of time that it takes for the story to unfold, it says so much without having to take the time to develop it more fully.

This is the key to making a short film really work is to have an idea of something that can be communicated quickly, without a lot of exposition or development, but that is not predictable. It is important that everything unfolds quickly. I think that the most common mistake that can be made when just starting out. It's easy to get caught up in some elaborate plot with all kinds of characters and locations, but is it realistic to do it in 5 minutes? Remember, you're not making a full length feature, so the scope must be limited. But that does not mean that the impact of the story has to be limited. No matter how short or long a film is, it is all about the effort that you put into it at each stage of the process that will make it succeed or fail.

That is not to say that we cannot learn from a feature like Children Of Heaven, and even find ways to adapt the story to a condensed format. Take any film and break it down into scenes. There are so many great scenes that we remember from films that we have watched. Rarely do we remember all the details within the film, or even the entire plot, but there likely are certain scenes that stick out. We might even know all the lines for that scene. And so that is what you must do in developing your stories, is to find that vignette of a larger story and try to tell it in a concise, yet evocative way.