Morning Fall
I liked this short film, even though it made me really sad. The ending definitely took me by surprise. The film starts off pitch black and silent, then begins to turn into shot of a sunrise with the sounds of wildlife in the background. This opening kind of mimics what is happening to the main character - he is unconscious and he wakes slowly to the light and the sounds of nature. The man doesn’t really seem to know where he is, but at the same time he isn’t totally freaked out either. He doesn’t even bother to assess himself for injuries right away, even though he clearly sees the damage done to his helmet. Nope, instead he just stands up and tries to smoke a cigarette. But he can’t find a lighter. Some crucial and necessary object is missing… foreshadowing?
He spots his motorcycle and hobbles over to it as quickly as he cans. While digging through his bag, he momentarily pauses on a pink brush, as if he vaguely remembers something, but then tosses it aside and goes to looking for a lighter of some kind. He also passes over a first-aid kid, which he could probably use. When he finds the matches he was looking for, he discovers that what he needs is all gone, perhaps foreshadowing the ending again? More of this foreshadowing occurs when he finds the lighter, and reaches to get the cigarette out from behind his ear, where he would normally keep it, but finds out that it isn’t there. He left it by the motorcycle. Just like he left his wife.
More behavior of his that I found interesting was that he petted the deer and covered it with his jacket - did it make him realize somewhere deep down that the accident killed his wife? Or did he realize that he hit this deer and killed it, and maybe he feels bad about it? I think its pretty safe to assume that he did hit the deer and that’s what caused his wreck, because in the opening scene there’s a watch out for deer sign along the side of the road.
We don’t realize the irony of his phone call until the very end of the film. He keeps saying, “I wish you were there” - as in picking up the phone. But she was there - as in at the site of the accident. And then there’s the song saying “you wish you wore the rings I bought for you,” and it zooms in on her hand, where she’s wearing the same ring that he was wearing. Poor woman.
