LA CABINA

Film viewing for my presentation for the Criticism and Interpretation Elective.

Film: La Cabina
Director: Antonio Mercero
Year: 1972
Running time: 35min
Language: Spanish (English Subtitles)
Country: Spain

A man gets trapped inside a telephone box. Onlookers unsuccessfully try to free him. Then the men from the telephone company arrive, but relief turns into puzzlement, then horror, as it transpires what they have in store for him.

An allegory for the isolation of the individual in modern society. The confrontation of the human and the machine, the way the human exists within the rectilinear modernism, relationships to the Holocaust? The visual relationships between the phone booth, the glass walled coffin, the glass walled skyscrapers. -

http://criticism-and-interpretation.wikispaces.com/Week+7+La+Cabina%2C+Hirst%2C+Flat+Time+House



Notes:

The victims isolation turns into a tool for entertainment. He becomes the centre of attention yet while the crowd that gathers and laughs at the trapped man like a caged circus freak left to entertain the audience, he notices societys flaws and notices things the others wouldn't in real life.

The color of the telephone box and positioning:
- inviting
- tool for danger
- a warning
- stands out (center)
- surreal in the way it is placed yet appears to look ordinary.

Soundtrack is playful at the start but becomes dramatic towards the end when the victim meets his fate.

Lots of symbolism with the objects in the movie:
- Football
- Bottled ship (held by the circus clowns, only few that don't laugh at his pain and can relate to him)
- Funeral Coffin (see his own fate)
- Buildings/construction site (everything starts to fade away and become simple)

The Movie can be found on Youtube!