Directors Garik Wiskin and Wayne Scott choose a mime as their main character to try to cinematically philosophise about the power of imagination and the highly stimulation of the introverted life that this kind of artists must have. According to their ‘philosophy’ there is much compatibility between the job of a mime and their solitary life. And if you think about it they are made for each other. This must be because of the silent nature of mimes in a very talkative social world. It’s like they auto exclude themselves through their ‘oath of silence’ from any human contact. That is why they experience life mostly through their imagination.
It’s the same with the character in ‘The Place Is Now’. He is miming his reality, mixing it with dreams, wishes and ideals. But due to his loneliness his dreams and wishes become so intense that his inner will is practically materialising them in mirages that even himself finds them hard to have a part in reality and fiction. ‘Now’ – a temporal abstract notion – becomes the place where he projects himself every time he lets his imagination break free for the mere pleasure of miming it.
But what happens when he actually meets the real corespondent of his imagination? Or is it real? Well we think it is and we also think that his imaginative mind places the mime in a surreal dimension of himself that when he actually meets reality he finds it hard to deal with: he is only capable to use things that he imagines, maybe because they are predictable and easy to handle. Reality however binds you to a total different approach to life, annihilating the manipulative fiction and forcing you to answer according to a certain set of rules. The mime understands that the moment he will accept reality, reality will annihilate his fantasizing side exposing him to rules, unpredictability and conventions – this is a world he is not adapted to. It is a world that takes ‘now’ away from him because ‘now’ is only what reality manifests and it can be nothing else.
This short film makes you think about the costs of bright imagination, about the power of inner worlds and the fragility of people reigning on them… or better being reigned by them.
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