Palíndromo

.trohs etunim-11 siht rof yaw gnivap, sehsinif mlif 8691 a dna (KU) 4 lennahc no pots I. slennahc eht hguorht frus I os peels ot kcab teg t'nac I. (kcolc o 3 tuoba) gninrom txen ylrae yllaer pu ekaw, gnineve eno ylrae pellsa llaf I.

My story, in case you hadn't guessed, was told in backwards as is the main character's in Palindromo. A palindrome is a word which reads the same backwards (i.e. racecar). But this film doesn't quite live up to the title, as it is told backwards and the only thing the same at beginning to end is the main character walking down the street and screaming, which coincidentally is the only thing not told backwards.

Yes it is gimmicky, and the story is simple, but if you were to make a film in which everything was told backwards (the gimmick and hence the title of the short) you wouldn't want a story that went on for hours or had a story too complicated, or the audience would get bored.

Having said that I do have some thoughts.

The only amazing thing about the film was how amazingly easy it was to piece the story together at the end. It wasn't anything special, pretty average, but well acted.

So what's next? Well apalrtnepy a hmaun bieng can siltl raed wrdos eevn wehn the lterets in the mddlie are mddlued up, as lnog as the frist and lsat ltetres are in the rghit pacle. So mybae a film wrehe the fsirt and lsat sneces are in the rghit pclae but all the oherts are msesed up. By the way it's my idea. HAHAHAHA!

A word or phrase whose meaning does not change whether spelt backwards or forwards. A young man loses everything he has in one day. He is fired from his job, kicked out of his hotel, betrayed by his colleagues and turned down by an old flame. We see this ordinary tale told backwards in time.

The message of this film is that any story can be made interesting with the telling - as Jimmy Cricket used to say `it's the way I tell 'em'. Here the actual story is almost a side issue and would be almost dull if it was told forward. The backward telling makes you focus on it more than you may have done simply because you are having to piece it together from the end to the start. However the telling makes it worth watching.

As the title suggest the film is told backwards - not backwards as in Momento but actually running backwards. The sentences come out of whack, people walk backwards etc. This is interesting for most of the film but at some point you'll realise that this is an ordinary story and that it isn't that interesting. What followed that for me was the feeling that this short was not being driven by story, characters or acting but almost exclusively by this gimmick of running backwards.

It is a gimmick - even if it is a clever one, and it does feel like that the longer it goes on. It's hard for a short to be overlong but this one is. It also suffers from having nowhere to build to - it starts at the end and therefore has no plot-driven reason for you to keep watching once you've got the gist of what brought this man to the despair we find him in. The closing (opening) voice-over is good but for me, wasn't enough.

Overall this is worth watching once. However the lack of strong story leads it to rely heavily on the backward running trick. trohs eht morf yawa sekat yltnacifingis dna ykcimmig sleef ti dne eht yb.