The review of The Lift that I read was posted on this website:
http://gorillafilmmagazine.com/2011/08/07/lift/
Marc Isaacs is a BAFTA Award winning short film Director from North London. He has made several different short documentary films and has been included and celebrated in many other documentaries and articles. In 2008, he received a doctorate and has been a guest tutor at the London Film School. His latest film, Outside the Court, is very similar to The Lift, only this time, he stands with a camera, outside of the Highbury and Magistrates' Court in London, talking to people who enter in and out.
LIFT REVIEW
The Lift is
a very odd film. It’s not particularly exciting, nor is it particularly
interesting, but then again, it may just be the most interesting short film
ever made.
The short documentary film
is centres around a lift, or an elevator in a block of flats. We see the
residents of the flat come and go with their daily routines aware of the fact
that there is a man standing in the lift with them, holding a camera and
capturing their every move.
The residents are all
equally interesting people, although it does not look like it. For the first
half of the short film, we just see the residents get in and out of the lift,
having just come home from the days events. Nothing captivating or interesting
happens, nobody even utters a word. But eventually, the director, Marc Isaacs
begins asking simple questions to each and every one such as; ‘How was your day?’ and ‘What was your favourite childhood memory?’,
it is then at this point where we begin to connect and sympathise for the
people, who then become characters with distinct personalities. Some of them
are very humorous, and the others are just quite depressing.
The great thing about Marc
Isaacs work and most importantly, this film, is that he doesn’t want to show us
things of great importance, for example; Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine questions gun laws in America and ‘who should
get the rights to own a firearm?’, a very important issue indeed, but not
something can take a moral interest in.
Now, The Lift is something much better, because, not only is it just
about regular people with regular lives, it can be watched by regular people
with regular lives, and people would feel a connection, whereas in Bowling for Columbine, I highly doubt
any viewer would feel a moral connection with Michael Moore, or any of those
gun wielding Americans.
Overall, a very good short
film, and something that a lot of people could take a great interest in.
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