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Jellyfish
Franki Starr
Jellyfish was an interesting movie. I watched the special feature with the interview with the writers and directors of Jellyfish, which were a husband and wife team. They talk about how it is a surrealist film. They wanted the lines to blend on what is real and imaginary. They seem to think that in their world of writing fiction it is not such a tall order to have that blending. It was great to get their perspectives after watching the movie. How they described the wedding photographer always trying to find the realness in weddings, she was essentially deconstructing the weddings, finding the realness not the cookie cutter fakeness. If I was in her position I would shoot weddings in that way too. Batya the main character is unhappy and envisions a child that represents her child hood where she might have been happier in that time. There was a sense of irony with the caregiver Joy that she had to leave her son with a caregiver to take care of somebody else, the elderly which there kids have left to someone else, how twisted was that.
What was frustrating is that I knew the little girl wasn’t real when I started to watch it. So through out the movie when the police officer and the taxi driver were talking directly to her it didn’t make since. I loved that little girl she was an essential part of Jellyfish, I wish she could have been real. There was even a picture that was taken of her in the movie.
The visual imagery throughout the movie is fantastic, the scene where Batya escapes the hospital in her gown in the rain and ties her shoe, even though what difference does it make, but when she stands up in front of her mother’s charity poster. The mother in the poster is doing this gesture with her hands that signifies something else but at that moment it represented shelter that Batya never got from her. All of these three women in the movie have a connection with the sea. This was where Batya came to mope, where the newly wed bride strived to see on their train wreck honey moon and Joys present of a ship to her son. They all find a comfort in the sea.
In the Village Voice review they said that the movie’s title suggests that its principles are amorphous creatures subject to the ocean’s mysterious currents. From what I can take from that is jellyfish are not solid shapes and seem to flow with the ocean currents, which is seems that’s what the characters do, just exist through life not having any control. The filmmakers said that the sea for people in Israel is a place where people can just be as they are, unconstrained by nationality and class. The sea is to be thought as another realm of the unconscious. That’s why through the movie if you didn’t realize the little girl wasn’t real you did when she and Batya had their moment in the sea at the end. There were moments where you start to realize the little girl is Batya like when they drink from the ceiling at different points in the movie. Everyone kept asking Bayta if she was okay, she was out of it, where maybe the police officer and taxi cab driver were humoring her. When the officer gave her food and the taxi cab didn’t charge her, I guess they felt sorry for her. Where it only seemed like some people could see the little girl.
Your formal logic is being questioned all the time with surrealist imagery that seems like reality. This movie takes analysis to a whole new level. I wonder if non visual people would get this movie.
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