"The
Observer sees the world in a very specific way. It has to.
There just isn't any way to look at the world from every
angle at once."
This is, in essence, the theme of the short film Fish Eye.
Alex
is a newspaper writer who is bored with his life, tired
of his boss, and feeling increasingly claustrophobic both
in his cubicle and in his tiny apartment. While leaving
a Halloween party one night, he is handed a fish in a bag
of water by a little girl wearing devil horns. Alex takes
the fish back to his apartment and begins to take care of
it, because its plight of being stuck in such a tiny living
space seems to echo Alex's own claustrophobia.
Dissatisfied
with his boss' narrow worldview, Alex finds an old typewriter
and sets himself up on a street corner, promising "instant
novels" to passers-by. He asks them a few questions
about their life, and then hastily turns out a well-written
short story that sums them up as a person. At first, people
pay him little heed and simply look at him as if he is crazy.
But gradually, one-by-one, people being to sit down next
to Alex and begin to tell him some of their most important
life stories, about their hopes and dreams, or just about
life in general. Alex soon becomes obsessed with the lives
of these people -so much so that he completely neglects
his own, almost to the point of insanity.
Content
The idea of living in a fish bowl, feeling closed into a
small, confined space, only being about to see the world
from that one narrow perspective- this is something that
the artistic mind throughout the centuries has been trying
to escape. It seems even more ironic that now in an age
of increased technology and awareness about the world, people
tend to be gravitating toward a fish bowl kind of existence
-crammed into office cubicles or cookie-cutter houses in
a sort of self-imposed solitary confinement. This film reminded
me almost of Fight Club, in that a man who is dissatisfied
with his life attempts to change it in a way that is initially
productive, yet later spirals out of control.
The
actor who played Alex did a very good job at portraying
this Jack-like character, as did all of the extras whose
stories he wrote. I especially liked the montage of people
relating their lives to Alex as he obsessively typed them
out. My favorite moments, however, were when Alex was writing
his first two stories -about Yvette the wannabe ballerina
and Mr. Nistler the adulterous art teacher-; Alex actually
pictures him and his typewriter as observers in the story.
This is even more interesting than just the vignettes themselves,
and considering how involved Alex becomes in these stories
later on, this is a really nice touch.
There
were a few moments, however, in which it was difficult to
make sense of exactly what was happening in the film, because
some of the scenes were shown out if chronological order.
For instance, we see Alex sitting at the street corner with
his typewriter fairly early on in the movie, yet it is much
later that we actually see him pulling the typewriter out
of its plastic storage case. On the one hand, this does
fit in with the slightly dreamlike element of the film itself,
as well as Alex's obsessive and rather disjointed nature.
Still, at this point the audience is still in the process
of figuring out this character, and how his sitting on the
street corner with a typewriter relates to the goldfish
in his apartment that he continues to obsess over. It may
be a good idea to switch the placement of some of these
scenes, or to at least use a little more narration to explain
why these scenes are out of place. Fish Eye does
a good job at employing narration (once again, another similarity
to Fight Club). Though Hollywood tends to want to
avoid narration, it's a good convention that, if done well,
can significantly enhance the quality of the film, because
it adds a psychology to the character or characters who
are doing the talking. And in a film like Fish Eye
that already is significantly psychological, it's definitely
something that shouldn't be lost.
Visual Look
Without
a doubt, the best effect in this movie are those that seem
to be from the fish's point of view. I don't know how these
filmmakers managed to get these shots from inside the aquarium,
but they are quite impressive. Not only do these shots just
look cool, they also are a nice reflection of how trapped
Alex feels by his own life, and how taking care of this
fish reminds him of his own claustrophobia.
