Review
'Soft' plays on that age old rule which of 'The Father must protect the house' and the fear which every Father has which is that one day they will be put to this test and they won't be able to protect their family. As well as using some great camera techniques with making the footage recorded by the horrible kids actually look like it was recorded on the old smart phones. The quality of this helps with the story as well as it shows the story from the 'villains' point of view rather than the Father's which we see through the majority of the story. Through the beginning of the film we are already given plenty of information about the Father character and only 2 lines of dialogue are spoken. We see that the son and Father don't really get along as soon as the Father walks into the house, by him not even going up to see his son and by the only thing he says to him is to move his cricket bag out of the way. As well as this we see the son run back into his room as soon as his Father walk into the door which shows that he doesn't want to talk to him for some reason which we learn about later on. As well, we are shown so much at the beginning about the Father's personality with his actions on the way out of the house as he walks out, his neighbour happily says hello to him and asks how he is, the Father just smiles and avoids the conversation as much as he can and doesn't stop at all. This shows he isn't overly friendly but also doesn't like to stop and chat, straight away telling us about the character more. Moving on to the Father getting called an 'old fart' after leaving the shop, we see him turn and question what the kid said and see him get defensive but then stand down and get kicked due to being scared. We start to see that he's not very tough here and start to see the meaning of the title soft. On the way back to his house we don't have any dialogue but his facial expression and flash backs to him getting kicked shows enough of what he thinks. We see the angry and frustration from the Father as he walks back to the house but you could argue this is actually self anger by allowing those kids to actually get away with it. 
Looking to when the Father is home. The writer and Director feed the audience more information with, again, very little dialogue until we reach the conflict of the film. When the son says hello and the Father just ignores him and continues to wash the dishes, we see again their relationship isn't great and there's some conflict there. What I also like about this film is the conflict and plot twist which we get at the end of the film. As it leads to the 'fight' between the Father and the 'villains' we see the Father get knocked down and then a sudden shock to the audience as we see the son come out and beat up and scare away the groups of kids and actually do the Father's job of protecting the house. This twist really shocked the audience and also gave one of those important 'moments' which Steve talks about that the audience will remember. This is clearly one of those moments.
Inspiration taken
What I've taken from this short film is not only the relationship from the Father and Son, but actually how the relationship is shown between them. The actions between then shows their feelings and relationship better than using dialogue to explain it. This uses the rule that Steve told us which was 'Show don't tell'. Simple and subtle ways like having him walk in and just walk past without saying hello. The way he ignores him when he comes in and begins to clean the dishes and how he speaks to him when they finally do talk. "hi dad" "put that milk away when you're done with it", "What times mum home?" "What d'you want for your tea then?" these ways of showing the relationship quickly and effectively without the audience needing to know any back stories or loads of information. This is what I'd like from my characters if I can, without giving away any information about the death of the Mother, just small hits towards this fact like maybe a photo of her or even having the Father still wearing his wedding ring and maybe rubbing it with his thumb or kissing it to show he misses someone and give suggestion to the lose of his wife. As well I also want to try and show their relationship with their dialogue. Although I may have more dialogue than what Soft has, I want to have the bitter relationship shown with the dialogue, for example:
Lily: I didn't do anything!
James: Don't talk back to me!
Showing the Father not listening and show their relationship as Father and Daughter isn't very good and then I can slowly show more information as to why which will be the lead up to the reveal of the fact the Mother past away and we get to see what broke the family apart.
No comments:
Post a Comment