TRAPPED IN A COCOON
Following her dream to further her studies in film, in 2009 Karolina Malinowska moved from native Poland to Sydney. It was a dream that required a brave decision and inevitable change. What about the dreams we do not follow up on or the people who do not follow their dreams?
In the second half of her course at the Sydney Film School Karolina attempted to answer this and some other related questions. She wrote and directed a short thesis film 5th Stage, a psychological drama about 44-years old Daniel – a grown-up man living with his parents who forgot or was not brave enough to follow his childhood’s dreams.
“Snug like a bug in a rug” Daniel is about to discover that nothing ever stays the same. Things change, whether we want it or whether we are ready for it or not.
“I wanted to make a film about my experiences but changes do not affect only me. They are inevitable aspects of life,” says Karolina. “Some of them are physical, some psychological, some spiritual but they always leave a trace contributing to the development of the individual.”
It is a simple wooden toy hanging down from the ceiling that reminds Daniel of what he really wants, pushes him to find something within himself that he forgot a long time ago, and to realize what he has to do in order to live the way he should.
Is he ready for action, ready for change?
“Is anyone ever really able to stand up straight and say ‘Yes…. I want change to occur in my life, because I am ready for it.’ We all know it does not work like that. It just happens.”
“Daniel is a romantic, introvert, sensitive, sometimes helpless creature. Anti- hero really. There is a moment in the film where the audience sees that he is trapped but he does not realize that. Then one incident takes place and he slowly starts realizing what kind of situation he got himself into. I wanted to focus on changes that are not that vivid at the beginning but as time passes they become very crucial in our existence. Aging, getting mature is one of those topics which I would like to talk about in my films. Everyone is changing day after day, but we do not seem to notice that. We say:’ I have time.’ Then one day you stand in front of a mirror and here you are, the same but somehow CHANGED. “
Expressed in a highly stylized way and inspired by David Lynch’s ‘Eraserhead’, the concept of Karolina’s thesis film is based on five stages of moth transformation in relation to five stages of human grief: anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Throughout the film we see Daniel lying in his bed in striped black and white pyjamas. His overbearing mother is constantly over him, his disconnected father is talking to walls using a particular kind of a “telephone”. Daniel is trapped but also motionless, action less. He needs to break through. But will the transformation he is about to go through end with development of an “improved” Daniel? Will he be able to get out of the cocoon (literally) created by his parental upbringing and maybe his own inability to act against the predisposed state of affairs?
“I wanted to explore whether changes, people are faceted with all their lives, end with a positive, better and developed ‘new self’. I am raising a question of how much of what shapes us in childhood we carry with us all the time. Thus, how much parental influence pushes us towards transformation. Can changes help us disconnect from the family roots in order to free ourselves from the domestic constraints?”
Rachel, Daniel’s mum is an archetype of an overprotective mother traumatised by the fact of ‘losing’ her beloved son. Daniel’s father, on other hand, is a typical family provider who stays apparently uninvolved in Daniel’s upbringing. Still, his voice is the last one Daniel hears before the metamorphosis.
“There is a paradox that usually people that are helping us are not those who pat us on the head but those who do not pity us and kick us in the ass. Father is unable to communicate with his son, but he understands that his son needs to change, cause this is the natural way of life. This is what father didn’t do himself properly and that is why he is stuck with Daniel’s mother in this toxic environment. He did not have the guts to change. He wants a different future for his son, no matter what the outcome is going to be.”
By the end of the film Daniel undergoes psychological and physical metamorphosis that finishes with him becoming a moth. In the final scene we see the moth trapped in the jar but we also see the light bulb flickering above him.
“I had a lot of conversations about how I present freedom in my film. For many people the character is trapped and enclosed. For some, he goes from one imprisonment to another.
In a way, that was my intention. If you think about it, I do transform my character into something that does not live long. Butterflies live for only a few days. However, this is how I perceive freedom. We sometimes fight for things in our lives for a very long time, so that we could enjoy them for only a few seconds.”
“At the end of the film you are supposed to see Daniel, transformed ‘free’ in his new self. However, I wanted to show another layer, a layer that he may not see, he does not have to. He may not be aware he is closed in a jar, but only you as a viewer know about it.”
The 5th stage in Daniel’s metamorphosis is Acceptance. Could it be that Daniel reached his emotional / spiritual freedom by accepting his ‘imprisonment’? Aren’t we all, at the end of the day, ‘trapped’ in some way or the other. Be it by our parents, the country of our birth, our social status, our physical or mental abilities.
“I know it from my own experience that acceptance is the most important but at the same time the most difficult stage in self-development. I was myself always swimming against the current. Passionately trying to stay on the surface and grabbing everything to help myself swim against what wasn’t the real me. I am swimming with the current now…. I think I am not a caterpillar anymore, not in the cocoon either…. I think I am still learning to fly…”
One of the first inspirations for Karolina’s thesis was a verse mothers say to their children: ‘I will tuck you in like a bug in a rug’. “The very fact that mothers are saying that line seemed very interesting to me. I thought “hmmm bug = caterpillar + rug = cocoon”. This is how it all started and this is hence one of the first scenes in the film.”
“My Production Designer, a fellow SFS student Agnieszka Baginska was definitely on the same brain wave of thinking about this film as I was. During endless conversations we were brainstorming all aspects of the design: How the cocoon should look like? How to make it? How does the room look like? Etc. I have to say the cocoon looked better than I have imagined it. It looked like a living thing. Agnieszka is a very talented filmmaker but a great artist as well. She just perfectly understood the mood of the film.”
The film recently screened at the BUSHO International Short Film Festival in Budapest where the jury member described it as a psychological, domestic nightmare.
“I myself find it difficult to define it. I would probably have to use a lot of words, which still would not be able to describe this style. It is like with an abstract painting. It is difficult to describe it, cause its perception occurs at an emotional, rather than intellectual level.”
“I was however inspired by the game of light in film by D. Lynch’s ‘Eraserhead’ and we were shooting on 16mm film to gain a grainy, very rough look.”
Lynch’s ‘Eraserhead’ also inspired the idea of the film where characters do not say too much, everything speaks for them, everything stands for what they feel and think.
“I am a big fan of Lynch films. ‘Eraserhead’ just blew me away. I loved the acting, quirkiness of all characters. For me, film is this medium, which is supposed to speak through images. Actors should open and connect with the audience through their physicality, looks, breaths rather than words. There are films that are to be contemplative and just be able to enchant you in the world of image, sounds and music. This is the magic of film for me.”
“I also paid lots of attention to the make-up. References for Daniel’s memorable ‘moth face’ were taken from one interpretation of Becket’s ‘PLAY’ where actors are trapped in sorts of urns and their faces are covered with something what I wanted to see on Daniel after transformation. The make-up artist MaZ Espiritu did a great job researching the ‘moth faces’ and textures of their skin to be able to reconstruct it on the actor.”
“Important were also the colour contact lenses, which, for me, were the most important aspect of the transformation. The eyes are the reflections of the soul, and I think they were reflecting changed insight of the transformed character.”
The 9 minutes long film was shot over 5 days in a photographic studio, a few hours away from Sydney. “The whole crew was isolated from the outside world for those shooting days. We had 2 days for building the set and we did the shooting within the next three days. These were the most crazy, most intense days in my life so far.”
A minimum dialogue enhanced the importance of strong performances which together with sound effects (such as the ones of squished cherries while Daniel is being fed by his mother) managed to create a real claustrophobic, dense, suffocating atmosphere drawing you into the depth of the story.
“I chose Karan, another SFS student, to play Daniel. He wasn’t my choice initially. I had already cast an actor before Karan, but there were misunderstandings regarding Daniel’s mental health - whether he is mentally retarded or not. I sat with Karan at Sydney Film School and I said: ‘Karan you need to save my film. You will save my film.’ I did not do a traditional casting session with him as with other candidates. I wanted Daniel’s character to act with his eyes. I wanted everything to be accumulated there. Karan and I lay down with the camera on the floor at the Sydney Film School cinema. I remember asking him one question: ’Have you ever suffocated in your life?’ Karan said he had, it was a very physical suffocation he experienced. I knew we would get something from that. Through the whole shooting period I was trying to keep Karan away from everyone else. He was constantly in his own world.“
“The actress that played Daniel’s mother (Adele Johnston) is an opera singer, so she comes from a background where the performance has to be ‘out there’, has to be vivid and strong. Her features are very strong as well, so I knew that we had to scrape back that ‘out there’ of her performances. She listened and was very open to suggestions. I told her that she needed to look more dangerous when she is not speaking rather than when she is.”
“I wanted both her and Daniel’s father (Brett Nevill) to be disconnected, a little bit artificial, as in the film they are filtrated through the main character’s memories. Although this was not something they were used to, they simply trusted me. Maybe they were a little bit sceptical about the way I see performances before going on set. However, when we were all there and started blocking everything, it all started to make more sense to them.”
The most rewarding process of making the film was “seeing in front of my eyes something I had seen in my head and putting it all together in the editing room”.
“Thanks to my editor Marta Maia, editing was an amazing process of discovering this story in a new, fresher light. Working with her was the most rewarding experience.”
“I’ve spent time working on sound design in London, where I moved to a month after graduating SFS and finishing my thesis film. There I met a very young but talented sound designer Simon Herron. From then on the sound design was happening very ephemerally. We had met once, and after three drafts of sound design, I had what is now the final version in the film.”
“Not only the sound design, but the music itself constitutes the integral part of this film. Sydney based Christina Christensen created something very close to my visions of how I wanted music to sound like. I think Christina grasped the feelings, tensions and claustrophobia of the theme amazingly. “
“Everyone I worked with was amazing including my devoted and talented DOP Zach Peel McGregor and there was a bit of magic as well. One of my colleagues from school Licia Heydrich brought me a cocooned caterpillar. I kept it for a few weeks but nothing happened. I wanted to throw it away. Then two days before me going on location I woke up and the cocoon was empty. There it was sitting on a wall, a young beautiful moth. I remember saying: ’Hello Danny.’
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