Pappy's World

Directed by Matt Wisniewski

Starring: Fred Polone, Jaz Frazier

Year: 2018

Country: USA

Christmas has its own ritual, every gesture, every act of the holiday has great importance.

Above all, gifts have a structural presence. They symbolize tension, anxiety, nervousness because they embody both the dream of fulfilling one's desire; and the fear, the disillusionment of receiving the wrong, useless gift.

Therefore, naughty children in disrespectful, because they want to anticipate Christmas, provoke an ironic and sarcastic disaster.

The American director Matt Wisniewski narrates it in his short film Pappy's World, a genial black Christmas genre.

There is no doubt, it is Christmas time. In a room, gifts are highlighted, they fill the image. The parcels are big, colourful, they attract a young girl. The author films her showing her splendour, she is a freckled charming girl; from a soft-focus the camera shooting her close-up. It is a significant frame because it reproduces the desire, the malice, the cunning in her eyes.

The packages are many, too many, are stacked upwards. Too high. The young woman is not interested in everyone, she wants the one on top, the unreachable one, the one impossible to grasp on her own. Why just that big parcel with a green bow? Why not the lower one, the easiest one to reach? Also, others seem interesting.

It is the youthful tensions, the film symbolic beginning.

The room is coloured and the grandfather asleep on the rocking chair; the director films it from the floor with a long shot, we can observe the bright colours; the room is full of warmth. The girl finally grabs the gift; sin is reached, the apple is seized. The package contains a disquieting puppet with immense eyes, the director introduces it in a threatening close-up using a slow and scary zoom.

What's going on between the girl and the puppet? The camera turns 360 degrees, fast, frenetic, frantic, obsessive, possessed, everything is changing in the house, a supernatural force is taking over all.

The plot continues with a transformation of everything, including puppet and characters, even for the return to the past, the return to a ruthless war. Wisniewski is keenness because he is able to represent the inhuman sense of war it in a small space and with just a few things. A helmet, toy soldiers, a cake, and a lot of imagination are enough for him. War is violence, and violence modifies, distorts realities.

Puppy's World is ironic, funny, amusing, pungent, like when the girl hops behind her grandfather to take his walking stick, she needs it to capture the highest gift. The movements are funny, nice, it looks like a theatrical scene with medium shot framing. In a few acts everything changes, it is a shocking act, it is something traumatic for Christmas.

Brilliant film, intelligent editing, exactly matching cut for a linear story, a subject written at the limit of horror and irony, with a shrewd presence of a social theme but without taking it too seriously. As it is not serious the wallpaper containing so many merry and schematic Christmas trees. Above all, it is great the sexual allusions between the doll and the soldier in a disturbing position. It is the final pulp of a satirical story.