Plastic Bag By Ramin Bahrani
Credence was given to the supposition that Werner Herzog, or someone who may sound only somewhat like Werner Herzog, can add tremendous weight to even the most mundane and innocent of children’s tales; his intonation imbuing the words with a profound sense of existential navel-gazing.
Ramin Bahrani understands this all to well and therefore enlisted the talent of Mr. Herzog to give voice to the titular protagonist of his short film, Plastic Bag; a film described thus:
Struggling with its immortality, a discarded plastic bag ventures through the environmentally barren remains of America as it searches for its maker.
I like to imagine that whenever a script like this arrives at his mountain-top fortress, he reads the script and, upon finishing it, bolts upright. Standing there, arms akimbo, he exclaims “This is a job for…WERNER HERZOG!” to the chagrin of his ever-faithful manservant who can do nothing but go ready the Herzogmobile.
via kottke
March 25th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
One of the most brilliant, sad, funny, devastating, RELEVANT short films I’ve seen in ages. The fact that it’s my favorite director’s voice tenderly anthropomorphizing an immortal piece of plastic makes it all the more heartrending. Thanks for finding this, Ross. In my opinion, it’s the best/most affecting thing that’s been posted here recently.
March 28th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Beautiful and moving. Thank you.
April 8th, 2010 at 12:18 am
I shared this post with a number of people, all of whom found it beautiful and affecting. So affecting, in fact, that it has made us all look at random windblown plastic detritus with newfound eyes (easily supplanting the pop existentialism of “American Beauty” in this regard). So we send you belated thanks for alerting us to this meisterwerk. Danke!