In this recently-completed nine-minute film, bodies are thrown around, hands are shaken and breakfast is consumed — all in the name of ambition. Everything revolves around George, his girlfriend and his friends, his boss and his worshippers. ‘I want to be awed by my own accomplishments’, he declares, ‘I’m good at what I do’, and he is too. But according his boss, George is wrong and he either has to be indoctrinated or sacked. His girlfriend Trish has a lyrical and urgent piece of advice George: ‘Think about uncomplicated beauty. The landscape. The sun in your face. Always keep with pleasure the image of your death in mind. Gain insight. Try to clarify and to comfort, not to obscure or mystify.’ Nevertheless at the end of the film, it is not clear whether George will take these words to heart and renounce his pride.Ambition, just like Theory of Achievement, is characterised by sharp dialogues, a subtle plot and dry humour. The characters are engaged in life, freedom, the search for happiness and a good job: often volatile and contradictory goals.
‘Young, middle-class, white, college-educated, unskilled, broke.’ These are the words which the people paying the lead in this short film use to characterise themselves. They…
@ Surviving desire is about a brilliant but absent-minded professor of literature, Jude, and his obsession with a passage from The Brothers Karamazov. The professor…
