Haaratus (Obsession)

When we remember events from our past, we reconstruct, reshape and reorganize them in order to give them meaning. Also, we forget about 90% of it all. Then when we tell the story of our life, we leave out even more, all the boring bits, and we construct an interesting narrative in the hope of pleasing and engaging our listeners.

 

When that listener is someone of the opposite sex we really like and would like to entertain and impress, we skip even more of the stuff and concentrate on a few events, memorable moments, single sentences. Even worse: if in this relationship fantasy and romance were to be rewarded much more than sincerity and truthfulness (as in most cases, it well should be), some surreal exaggerations and moments of absurd fiction would find their way into our narrative. We would lie. And we would shorten some more, until it usually wouldn't take us longer than, say, a quarter of an hour to tell our life's story. It takes writer/director Andrew Bond and writer Alvar Koue the same time with their short film OBSESSION to ask the question: What would this kind of narration look like as a movie?

 

OBSESSION is a film about many things: About storytelling, about fantasy, about a man who was born at mach10 and another that feels at home only under water, about a young man and a young woman sitting on a bus top. It is about re-invention of self, about how we fictionalize our memory, about the nature of narration as construction. But in the end, it is all about love.

 

We know nothing about the two main characters, sitting at this picturesque bus station at the ocean, telling each other their life stories, presumably not for the first time. We will learn practically nothing about them, except this: They love to tell stories. They value imagination and fantasy. And they are wildly, unabashedly and unashamedly in love with each other. You might speculate how their lives are not dramatic enough so that they have to re-invent increasingly kitschy and absurd origin stories for their love; you could speculate how they are just bored waiting for the bus to come and dream up nonsensical alternative lives. But that would be besides the point: Fantasy for them seems not only very real, but affects their happiness in real life. Fantasy doesn't have to be self-deception and escapism – it can also be pure joy of life.

 

So we hear their cute stories, mostly made up on the spot, about the boy who could live under water and is of course called Cousteau, about wild car chases, about flirting with mermaids in swimming pools and jumping out of speeding cars, and about pregnant women in outer space! And a happy ending is guaranteed – that's only one of so many advantages of making up stories. Director Andrew Bond tells these episodes in bright colours and cheap but thoroughly effective visual tricks and effects. Like the narrators he might shorten time, jumping from plot point to plot point like in a montage; he might employ wild mood swings and opposite tonalities, as he is hopping through the life stations; he might show people actually wearing labels like “bitch“ etc.; he might have voices from the background story enter and change the fantasy flashback sequences; he might even change styles from 50s schlock SciFi movie to 80s action flick to fake news footage to Jeunet-esque magical realism. But all that surrealism is rather the point: This is a film about storytelling, and there's no greater compliment a director can pay his audience than to describe that relationship between teller and listener as a love affair.

 

So it's about love. And about the joy of being alive and in love. And about the fun of telling each other great and wonderful and crazy and overbearing and absurd and funny and suspenseful and wild and romantic stories. And if you don't feel good by the time the little cosmonauts dance over the end titles you should probably have yourself medically checked: you might have a particularly nasty bout of cynicism. Thankfully, we know the antidote – a lot of love, and a great story.

 

Interview with Andrew Bond

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