Street of Crocodiles

The videos we watched in class were all symbolic in some way. Dimensions of Dialogue, while could be confusing, I still understood some of the overarching themes. While I can usually get the symbolism or get the gist of what the film is getting across, Street of Crocodiles had me confused. . In all honesty, I still do not really understand the animation, even having watched it more than once and after a couple of days of thinking about it I still had a hard time trying to connect all the pieces. 

 

Even though I had some trouble picking out the symbolism, I still acknowledge the fact that it had some; I just cannot understand some of them. I still picked some elements out however, for example, the very first thing I noticed about this animation was that it was a lot darker than others that we have seen. Not just in theme, but in the physical lighting. The characters and some of the images were also grotesque in appearance. However, I was able to understand a few things. The main character, is a puppet and is full all around, while the characters in the ghetto are puppets with masks and look rather hallow. I think this shows a kind of decay and a sort of death that was created. Many of the characters in the film were not fully “human,” some had different machine parts to them. Almost dehumanizing the people. Saying that they are nothing more than the elements around them and that they do not associate with anything but what is placed around them, hence the objects taking the place of body parts. Another interesting element was when the main puppet was put down into a chair and his head taken off. Then replaced with a hollow mask filled with stuffing. I know one idea is that this is an example of the people trying to make the character mod into what is usual and to try and make him just like everything else. However, it could also be seen as an evolution to becoming what the other characters are. By replacing his head, it is as if they are saying that he is a shell of who he once was. Meat is showed shoved into different objects and white stuffing is put into the heads of the mask to give it substance or something to fill the emptiness that had formed within them. At least that was my impression. 

 

Another element that I thought was interesting was the fact that the characters, or the main character, was a puppet and had one facial expression throughout the entire film. Even with this element, I found it interesting that they could get many emotions out of the one facial expression, just by the lighting and the position of the face. When the mood was more serious and more disturbing, the lighting was dark and when the story seemed somewhat as though it would lighten up, the character’s face would be shown in the light. Also music really helped with the film, seeing as how there was no dialogue. The music speeding up gave a more anxious feel and the softer music gave he film an easy tone, yet still maintained the seriousness.