THREE DEATHS | Omeleto Drama

Рет қаралды 5,290

Күн бұрын

Three strangers confront death.
THREE DEATHS is used with permission from Jay Dockendorff. Learn more at jaydockendorf.com.
In the middle of a cold winter in New York state, a well-off but sickly woman is on her way to the airport. She's going abroad for her cancer treatment but discovers her health is too poor for her to travel.
A pair of strangers drive past the rich woman. They are on the way into a house in the woods, where a poor man is dying. The younger man, who is perhaps a family member, asks for his boots for work since the poor man won't need them anymore. But the man exacts a promise from him to be buried in his backyard with a headstone. The next day, the poor man dies.
The rich woman eventually dies as well. Though surrounded by the comfort that her wealth can buy, her passing is painful and lonely, and she accuses her nurse of neglect and incompetence. Meanwhile, with the poor man buried as requested, the young man who inherited his boots is reminded of his promise. He goes out into the woods and chops down a tree to make a simple cross for a headstone. The tree dies peacefully in the forest, its wood used to mark the burial site of the poor man.
Directed by Jay Dockendorf from a script he adapted from a Leo Tolstoy short story, this elegantly crafted short drama is a poetic and philosophical meditation on mortalities of all kinds. Shot on 35mm, it has a luminosity to its cinematography, and its elegiac pace and attention to absorbing detail evoke the intensity of a spiritual epiphany, where ordinary life takes on new transcendence of meaning.
The film's craftsmanship takes its inspiration from European auteurs like Robert Bresson, eschewing the pacing and dynamism of classical storytelling in favor of patient observation. Shots are elongated in duration and capture time and existence in a way that both heightens and flattens ordinary life. This studied, distant approach emphasizes both the universality of death and the specificity of the responses to it.
A selection at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, THREE DEATHS stays true to the Leo Tolstoy story that inspired it. Though the characters are transposed into our more modern era, the narrative of the film also creates a collective portrait of humanity's response to death. One death is marked by pain and hypocrisy, with intense resistance to a life's final passage all the way through. The other human death is faced with great practicality and simplicity, though the aftermath of it is handled like just another daily chore to get through.
The final and perhaps most resonant death simply is, though it comes at the hands of the thoughtlessness of human beings and perhaps adds an environmental slant that nicely complements Tolstoy's original extolling of nature in his story. Simple, profound and rich in spiritual insight, it provokes questions of how we might ourselves face the one thing that no human can escape, no matter how much we live in denial of it.

Пікірлер: 29

@maryherl3573 5 ай бұрын

This is based on a story by Leo Tolstoy. If you read the synopsis of the story (or better yet read the actual story) you will see there are 3 deaths-the rich woman, the poor man, and the tree. The rich woman is angry, and can’t accept she is dying. yet she lies to others and probably herself, hoping for an afterlife which Christianity promises. The poor man lives off the land and is not religious really, he accepts what is, and asks only for memorial in his yard. The tree dies quietly in the woods, meaning to show the contrast between the tree and the human experience. Who are we to criticize the man who wrote “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenia”?

@charlottebloch 5 ай бұрын

I think the tree dies violently in the woods.

@Prizzy999 4 ай бұрын

Well actually the tree is the only one that doesn't really die as it grows back, so Tolstoj was wrong here.

@SuperCHERISHED 5 ай бұрын

This short film was beautiful and very sad. My husband died two years ago. I feel such heartache not about death and its finality but the process of intense suffering. My husband never complained but I could see the physical pain he was in despite the morphine. Let us all celebrate the people we love. There is no time to take them for granted. Let us also look for opportunities to share our resources for those in need and provide respite for caretakers.

@sgold989 4 ай бұрын

I am very sorry for your loss

@SuperCHERISHED 4 ай бұрын

@@sgold989 Thank you very much!

@000aleph 5 ай бұрын

The film feels very natural, as if we were simply observing something that actually happened in front of our eyes. The filmmaker takes his ego out of the film. The result is like something beautiful created by nature.

@Brooklynlife1000 5 ай бұрын

I love when I happen upon another Omeleto channel theme. I think I'm finally subbed to all lol. And I click like before I watch the shorts because I know it's going to be an amazing piece.

@markeidt6404 4 ай бұрын

Well done piece of film work. Very natural flow to the plot line and smooth ending.

@mackenzeestevens9711 5 ай бұрын

Loved this so much! But I missed what the 3rd death was? The tree?

@YT4Me57 5 ай бұрын

The deaths weren't the two people who actually died. They had accepted that they were about to transition and had lost their fear of death. The 3 deaths were the woman's husband and daughter, and the man's son. In the face of the impending deaths of their loved ones they were experiencing denial, bargaining and depression.

@jokrwx3 5 ай бұрын

Yes the tree

@eugenetswong 5 ай бұрын

@@YT4Me57 Your explanation makes no sense to me. I hope that you are joking. Maybe something about the deaths that we made along the way?

@KomalJhaOnline 5 ай бұрын

🌳

@jokrwx3 5 ай бұрын

@@YT4Me57I liked that, but the first death was a wealthy woman who died in pain and hypocrisy, even with all that wealth it couldn't help her.

@doganozkan2231 5 ай бұрын

Thank you

@12thDecember 4 ай бұрын

The tree was a needless death. What's the point of placing a cross on the grave of a man who isn't religious? Should have placed a cairn instead.

@KomalJhaOnline 5 ай бұрын

3rd *death* : 🌳

@tobe-you-tube6612 5 ай бұрын

Isn't it an image of a whole bloodline that had to pay the price for the man's death even if they have nothing to do with it? The cross, Cruz maybe🌲. I don't know