In the future a telepath searches for his mother. Lost in a desolate world of his own making, he thinks he has found her on a remote shore, however his discovery is not his alone.
That this film is written and directed by Steven Ilous is something that will probably not mean anything to most of us at first, but is worth a look to see his other works since this will tell you a lot about this short. I did this after watching Polis but I was not surprised to find that he is overwhelming in the world of visual effects. This is not to say there is anything wrong with that, but just then that it should probably not be a surprise to find that Polis is very much about its design and look. To those that watch a lot of short films, there may be a certain wariness and weariness with short films which are futuristic sci-fi's coming from people with a background in VFX – mainly because so many of them are calling cards or proof of concept shorts rather than projects in their own right.
I do not know for Polis what is the case, but it does feel like a short make to show that they could. As such I do admit that it works on the level it aims for – which is style. The design looks good, the ideas are nice and generally everything looks good (even if the robots at the end are perhaps not as fluid as you would like). On top of this we have very familiar ideas which helps the short because most viewers will bring lots of other films into this one due them knowing where we are already; this is not an excuse for the lack of content, but there is a certain shorthand usefulness to the concepts of a controlling government, a character with special powers fighting back, and so on. The delivery is also generally good, in particular I liked the electronic score and felt it worked well.
So, lots of it does work, but only in the limited ways it sets out to do so. The effects and design of the short is good, and all looks like a more polished and expensive product than it is, but the problem is that it is nothing more than this, with only an interest in the superficial aspects and nothing really beyond this.
That this film is written and directed by Steven Ilous is something that will probably not mean anything to most of us at first, but is worth a look to see his other works since this will tell you a lot about this short. I did this after watching Polis but I was not surprised to find that he is overwhelming in the world of visual effects. This is not to say there is anything wrong with that, but just then that it should probably not be a surprise to find that Polis is very much about its design and look. To those that watch a lot of short films, there may be a certain wariness and weariness with short films which are futuristic sci-fi's coming from people with a background in VFX – mainly because so many of them are calling cards or proof of concept shorts rather than projects in their own right.
I do not know for Polis what is the case, but it does feel like a short make to show that they could. As such I do admit that it works on the level it aims for – which is style. The design looks good, the ideas are nice and generally everything looks good (even if the robots at the end are perhaps not as fluid as you would like). On top of this we have very familiar ideas which helps the short because most viewers will bring lots of other films into this one due them knowing where we are already; this is not an excuse for the lack of content, but there is a certain shorthand usefulness to the concepts of a controlling government, a character with special powers fighting back, and so on. The delivery is also generally good, in particular I liked the electronic score and felt it worked well.
So, lots of it does work, but only in the limited ways it sets out to do so. The effects and design of the short is good, and all looks like a more polished and expensive product than it is, but the problem is that it is nothing more than this, with only an interest in the superficial aspects and nothing really beyond this.
