‘Saving Green‘ is one of those complex animations that condense in a few minutes a dynamic, but quite brutal, narrative to address an adult audience, an attractive chromaticity and positive, delightful protagonist with which young spectators will resonate, but also a musical clip defying the age categories criteria. Thus, the basic message of this short film (protecting our nature) manages to activate a wide range of viewers, without overestimating the children’s understanding and without even disregarding the tastes of a mature receiver. Between the colourful interface and the engaging action, director Natasha Redmond is metaphorically questioning the galloping degradation of ecosystems endangered by the brutal intrusion of technology into a simple but suggestive storyline.
At first impression, we would expect this project to have a happy ending that would provide, like fairy tales do, a lesson on the responsibility of the modern individual whose excessive self-concern precludes them from seeing the fragility of their natural environment. However, the director’s choice for a rather pessimistic finale doesn’t diminish the force of the global message, but it works like a short-circuit that aims to rehabilitate, even violently, the sensitivity of ignorant spectators.
Living in a century that has reached the highest levels of pollution so far, a century that gave rise to a world buried in plastic and toxic waste, any apology to the health of nature seems to have become a cliché. There is no need to invent catastrophic scenarios of species extinction, we no longer have to identify the causes of natural imbalances that lead to the disappearance of food, there is no need to popularize the imminence of ecological cataclysm, because we already live this reality. That’s why Natasha Redmond’s project exceeds the formula of a warning clip, creating a parabolic scenario where the protagonist threatened by monstrous machines is our own planet. Thus, beyond its aesthetic mission, this short animation relies heavily on an ideological component that aims to offer spectators not only a visually and musically pleasant experience, but also the opportunity of a moral rehabilitation through which they can restore that lost natural harmony.
‘Saving Green’ will surprise, excite, revolt, and even terrify any spectator able to see, beyond the attractive interface, the metaphor of a dysfunctional world they have inherited from their ancestors but which they owe to make it a better place for themselves and for tomorrow’s generations.
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