If only Stringer Bell would have made these kind of crappy floorboards in The Wire, he could have escaped Omar and Mouzone simply by scarfing down a hot pocket and tapping his foot.
This short is clearly NOT JUST an essay on the elites and their extreme excess. It is just as much about us. The young women sitting with the elites assumes the role of the audience. She looks on with disgust but by the end of the piece she too is consumed by greed and sloth. To reinforce this, the film opens with camera zooming out from the the Maitre D'. He is looking at the 'Establishment' with a masked revulsion. At the end, the film zooms towards the Maiitre D' with the same expression. Only this time, he is looking directly at us.
I also like how, at the end, those who are sitting at the table start to steal each other's food since there isn't much left. A great representation of the total absence of morality that greed causes.
She is one of the elites. That's why she is siting with them. I don't think it implies any sort of outside complicity. It just means if that's the seat you're in you cant try to resist, you have to give up your seat and leave.
my teacher showed me this in 7th grade (he would show us short films and animated clips that he liked at the end of class) and I remember being struck by the shots and the pace of the whole thing and to find out today that it was directed by Denis Villeneuve makes complete sense
I can definetly say that the first 4 minutes of this short brought me closer to becoming a vegetarian. AND , this is the best film on greed I have ever seen.
I’m actually a tad hungry for meat now. Lol @maxpayne930 - they hinted at that with the rib cage; fantastic cinematography. I’ll forgive that bit at the end being a bit much.
I saw that short film maybe 10 years ago at PHI in Montreal and it opened my eyes to the genius of Denis Villeneuve. Nice to see it again tonight, it has not lost any of it's allegoric pertinence and it's impact is shattering. Brilliant film really.
To me, the short film represents the endless greed of human in general which led themselves to self-destruction and keep falling deeper and deeper into the dark pit that has no bottom.
@@TarekMarzouki the only thing that separates you from "the elites" is that you don't have as much wealth. If you did you'd be as bad as imagine these "elites" to be if not worse. So get off your moral high ground so we can end the problem together. Not fulfil your wet dream of a Marxist revolution.
This reminded me of my battle with cigarettes. Every time I had a scare I would freak out and start thinking of quitting, then just gave in and continued smoking until the next scare.
@@abhishekkumar3679 such enlighten canalization of the human condition. your 100% correct. the elites are simply supplying a demand that's inside of us.
The elites feasting relentlessly, always demanding to be served, ruining societies and entire countries to the ground and not worrying about getting "dirty" as long as their pleasures and desires are being fullfilled. At the same time, the working class always have to keep the wheel spinning. Doesn't matter how weird, scary, dirty, shocking or meaningless, just "do your job and don't ask". Then, one day, the workers move ahead of the elites and let the rich destroy themselves. Only then the proletariat can finally rise up. Yes, this short movie was a magical-realism marxist tale.
but still with that... didn't he assume he was saving his workers time by not breaking the floor down another level by stepping out there by them but by going downstairs and just waiting for them to fall to the next level. And then everything beautifully worked out. If it were his primary intention to make them overeat I did not see any clues given to that theory, so both are just. fin
There are no happy end for us. If the elite disappear today, tomorrow everyone would celebrate, then they would tear each other apart a day after tomorrow.
Yea I would not say that this is about the proletariate (working class) rising up. It seems almost the opposite. Like the workers and the boss of the workers are actually the driving force taking advantage of the consumers. He looks at us like we are next at the end. He even counts the receipt like he's keeping track of how much they are consuming and possibly how much he's profiting?
There isn't enough for everyone. We need at least 2 more Earth's of habitat to keep the human species going. Right now we are depleting our resources as fast as we can and we have already destroyed our habitat. Climate Change combined with habitat loss means this is the last century Humans will be around. 99% of all species that ever lived are already extinct. Humans are now functionally extinct and we will be going out this century for sure along with 95% of all species alive today. We are wiping out approximately 200 species per day and as we knock them out we lose many species everyday we need to be here just to make it possible for us to live. Climate change is not in the future and it neither imminent...It is here already killing us. Look out for first Arctic Blue Ocean Event(BOE) within the next 3-5 yrs, Economic collapse, Agriculture failures on very large scales and mass migration because this is all coming and the elites have known about this since the 1950s which is why they are making as much money as possible and building enormous underground bunkers the size of small cities. They need to control us and this is why we have lost free speech and homelessness is being criminalised in the USA and here in the UK. I am just waiting now for the Hammer To Fall...!
@@MICKEYISLOWD I think you didn't fully grasp the original quote by Ghandi. "Need" has nothing to do with our way of living. I agree with you on the climate change side, but still it's not valid comment to the quote. What your're describing is mostly, if not solely, caused by greed and selfishness. Cheers.
I feel like with just this setup there's an entire world being built. the fact that the place is prepared for them to fall thru, the fact that the chandelier lowers and the place doesn't even have clean floors, the fact that the waiters clean them but not too well since they'll soon get dirty, the fact that they have a feeding tube for the guy speaks tons about how many times this was done, probably by the protagonists. I appreciate how she's judgemental in the beginning and then becomes influenced, maybe infected by them.. maybe the peer pressure she might be feeling.. howevaaaa as stu from the ghoul gang might say, I had the feeling that this was an execution (maybe for poaching) and this was their last meal, because of the woman's reaction when she started eating. maybe they were made to choose between dying a slow death eating or a relatively fast death by falling, and the reason they become more voracious is to get it over with. whatever life they have left has become torture. so many things in such a short time... enjoyed this gem very much 💎
@@melinteteofil4636 I think you missed the part where he said "made to choose" and "execution" At no point in such scenario would you ever be allowed to stand up and leave In such a scenario you have no say.
It also seems with the slight dramatic pause before continuing on just as before there's a slight tension where they kind of go is this alright... Well these people are still doing what we fully expect them to do and looking around for communal approval until he gets it and they all hold hands as they fall deeper and deeper into depravity while making it okay for each other.
Beautiful presentation of human greed and no control over it. They know they are gonna fall through the floor, and yet they keep eating. And that important detail about a girl who at first resists, but in the end starts eating...Thats exactly how it happenes when one person doesn't agree with egocentric desires and arogant ignorance of their family/community. Maybe, she was the reason they were falling one floor at a time, but in the end fell straight into the black whole? Cause she gave up?
I think what this film wanted to portray was how GREED outweighs human instincts & the sense of morality. The people shown in this could've stopped eating (maybe signifying their hunger for power or money or any thing that wanted by society) but they didn't and because of this they kept sinking low and low ( maybe signifying that their greed destroyed them). In one scene they all jump to the food table...desperately eating which is shown like they are trying to not let other one eat, maybe that's what the creator wanted to showcase. How greed is destroying us. But hey if I am wrong, please do correct me!
Yees, and the way the table and them get more dirty as they pass to another floor really makes sense when you think of blood money and illegal stuff motivated by greed.
This is awesome. I've never seen a "comedy" from Dennis Villeneuve, but I think this very close to that. Besides, I must say that it seems to have influences from Jean Pierre Jeunet and Terry Gilliam. I love it.
I remember seeing this on a field trip when I was in grade school so many years ago. it made a huge impression on me that I can't quite put my finger on. I never forgot it and still watch it every once in a while.
I have been looking for this for years.saw it in IFC like 5 years ago.Ive thought about it a lot trying to understand the meaning behind it or what it represents.It was hard to watch at first and stuck in my head I was going through heroin withdrawal and it was so intense to watch.
I'm not quite sure where to begin... Aside from illustrating the consequences of taking shortcuts in basic construction practices... 😮 But there's a reason why gluttony is considered one of the 7 Deadly Sins. Along with Greed 💀 Excellent short film 👍👍👏👏
Greed comes dressed in a velvet glove, greed is not the want to possess everything, greed is simply wanting more than the person next to you". (SUMNER, Bernard, 1995)
this hit home. I remember seeing a quick snippet of an interview with Marc Cuban, and he said he knows he's rich, worth over 600,000,000 BUT Jeff Bezos is worth MORE, and you can tell he's pissed about it, he's jealous that someone has more money than him, fueling more greed. its burned into my memory. He KNOWS he's stupidly wealthy, yet his jealous greed is more powerful.
Man, those are some seriously healthy appetites!!!🤢🤮 I loved this film❤💯 10/10 If someone would put Kaleo's Way Down We Go track behind this when they start free-falling that would be so cool and fitting! Those good folks in the movie are going way down to hell for the sin of gluttony
My guess is they are incapable of getting full - what initially may seem like a reward is turned into a torment, and as they rested briefly in limbo, they eventually passed to true Hell where they are most likely going to “ravish” one another last.
Oh woaw !!!! This is exactly how our society is actually. Have more and more ! Food, car, big house, everything that the society push them to have.... extreme consomation ....
Why do I feel like this is what inspired the recent Spanish film "The Platform" which was also an absurd social commentary on greed about a table filled with indulgent gourmet food prepared by a team of chefs, to be scoffed down by hungry people, and which is lowered down hundreds of floors through a hole in the middle of the room. I mean, the similarities are uncanny right?
@@dddDimi I don't think he meant it as a critique. THat's precisely what he wanted it to be same goes for the "matrix" color grading which it isn't a direct copy by the way, it's more of a greish turquoise , far more desaturated and less monochromatic, you can see some emphasis in browns and yellows all of this to create a disgusting look for the food as well. In any case it's not like the Matrix franchise owns a monopoly on the color green. color grading is a tool and he made great use of it in this short film I think.
رأيته يعكس بشكل كلي شكل الحضارات على مر العصور وحتى شكلنا الحالي،الجشع الذي يعمينا عن إدراك الخطر الشامل، لابد تكون النهاية مؤسفة للجميع رغم إن الأمر تكرر الا إنهم ينجرفون وراء شهواتهم، التفتُّ إلى نظرة المرأة على المائدة التي كادت تدرك الأمر إلا أنها رغم ذلك انجرفت مثلهم ربما اعتقد في هذه الحال أن الأمر كان بإرادتها،لكن لم أجد عذرًا للمبصر في مدينة العميان أن يتصرف كأعمى هو الآخر. التصوير والإخراج تم باحترافية شديدة❤
Some of the men seemed out of the 17th or 18th centuries... mustaches, dress, hairstyle. The bald men seemed to me to be of European Germanic, who knows... but almost nazi like.
I love this movie and have watched it many times. Do the floors represent the different circles of Hell? The head waiter definitely has a Mephistophelean look.
For me the people at the table seem to experience a "hellish" loop of events culminating in torment in the end. They do not seem to really enjoy the dinner. Might this also allude to urges or wishes that will never be satisfied?
You can throw Munger, Buffet, Gates, Zuckerberg, Waltons and the Koch brothers on that list too. Or at least the one that hasn't kicked the bucket yet.
I grew tired of my masters and thus proposed a feast. The first to leave the table would be ranked the very least. They came with hungry egos and fed on meat and fear. Such was their greedy focus, the creaks they did not hear. A failure to imagine the offense of decadence. A failure to learn from the first fall’s evidence. How many floors you fell before the fall straight down to hell!
Only meat is devoured, most of it exotic. The dominant life form destroys its world without thought, though it is perfectly capable of seeing what's going on. The Great Filter, eh?
Yeaaaahhhhh theory under the cut I'm going to say that this was an execution of some kind, taking place in a purgatory at a feast where they can always eat as much expensive food as they want, more than is physically possible, but the more they eat the closer they get to never seeing the light of day again.
What was the moment in history when the music ended? Napoleonic wars? Or much later? Still in antiquity or much newer, with the discovery of oil? Maybe he hasn't even stopped yet
If you liked this, there is an animated one with a tiger and pigs with similiar theme. I can't recall the name. This movie is excellent and revolting. It does its job well. I cannot stand the sight and sounds of anyone chewing like this and it conveys the message well. I don't think I will be eating any meat for a while.
This film is a cross between the spanish film The Platform, & has the elements of a Rallph Fiennes film, (althought twisted & made more grotesque), The Menu.
Esto para mí refleja al ser humano en su afán de ver y probar todo aunque no haya necesidad pero a su paso van causando daño a todo incluso a ellos mismos.
... i thinks this means that somewhere something has to give and we need to consider the structural integrity of our systems if we are to sustain our rate of consumption...
Some animals kill preys and leave the meat because they weren’t even hungry in the first place. Some animals kill for fun. Stop glorifying animals just to demonize humans.
