Reflections Movie Critique
Liberty Universty graduate student, Jonas Larson, had a showing for his short film, Reflections, at Venue Cinemas on Sunday, March 27. He is the first Liberty student to use a film as his thesis.
The film opened in a house with two sisters going through their morning routine. Ella is an outgoing energetic girl that likes to sleep in. Dani is much more reserved and seems to get a lot done before 10 a.m.
You can tell from the beginning that the girls struggle with their clashing personalities. They both give off a little bit of “pick me” energy in their own ways.
On Friday, Ella was going to be debuting a song she wrote, and Dani had a pitch meeting for her book. Both of the girls struggled to show how much they wanted to be there for each other made it seem like they were being selfish, even though they weren’t.
That night, their father came in to town to have dinner with them at their house. There was this one scene where he was looking at a painting of Dani’s, and it took a while for the audience to be able to see what it was. While some people disliked how long it took, I liked the build up to it.
The dinner scene was a little bit too dark for my liking, but it was still well lit. The use of candles was clever, but realistically, you would normally have the lights on while you eat. There was also one moment when the father picked up a knife to cut his chicken, but it was upside down. It probably wasn't noticed until the editing portion, but that does happen sometimes.
During the scene at the movie, once Ella and her boyfriend went outside, the shot was a little crooked — that could have very well been a directors choice to show confusion or something of that nature, but I think a straighter approach would have maybe worked better.
I thought that the scene of Ella’s friends coming in and the following scene at Water Dog were tastefully put together. I liked all the choices that were made in them. Everything in the Water dog scene specifically felt so real and something I could envision happening.
While Dani had been with everyone at dinner, she decided to leave and ended up burning Ella’s song lyrics. As revenge, Sarah painted across the cover Dani had been working so tirelessly on.
Dani came home to find it and was completely distraught and ran out of the house. Ella ran out after her and they fought on the street. I thought the dialogue was good, but again, the shots were a little crooked for my liking.
The short film ended with Ella getting to debut her song at Water Dog, her first strum lead into the credits scene, leaving you on a cliff hanger. It left me with so many questions, but it was done very well.
To the audience’s suprirse, Jonas ended up showing a second part at the conclusion. The original film had shown everything from Ella’s point of view, this go around, it was from Dani’s point of view.
This way, you had the chance to vote for both characters because your perception of the film was tainted with. I found myself rooting for the protagonist in each film, which was Jonas’ goal and proved the point he was trying to make in his thesis.
