Highrise

Highrise by Gabrielle Russell (2002)
This short is about a mother who seizes the opportunity to escape her life as her child crawls towards the window of her high-rise flat.

As soon as the film starts, you were background noises of people talking and a screech, straight away that makes you uncomfortable and gives off the feeling that something is wrong. The camera pans across the blocks of flats and goes to this one room. It focuses on this one flat, one story of many in this area.

When first in the apartment, you see the mess and uncleanness of the place, as well as dirt on the baby’s face. It signifies her stress, how unwell she’s coping and maybe the state of the house represents the state of her life, just all over the place. The TV program is positive; a game show about winning, the mother is stressed and wants that to be the woman on the show.

She doesn’t want to pay attention to the child at all, she’s worn out and wants to watch the TV Show, but the child’s screaming is too loud for her to hear it properly.

When the child starts crawling, you get a close up of the mother’s face, which shows worry, and the music of the game show goes quiet and you get a wind effect to add tension to the situation. When she drops to the floor, you hear heavy breathing, once again to add tension to the situation. The dripping of the bottle could symbolize many things. Her life ‘dripping’ away, or the ‘fall’ of the droplet representing the fall of her child out of the window.

Throughout the film, you stay on the mother’s eye level so the audience feel that they’re there watching her. When she closes the door, there’s silence and darkness. Does the darkness represent how she feels, or is it symbolizing that what she is doing is wrong?

A scream causes her to run back into the apartment, hoping that it’s over, however it’s from the TV Screen. Show’s her post-natal depression over taking her in wanting her child dead – she wants peace.

The doll is significant. In the beginning, it’s just a child’s toy and the baby throws it onto the windowsill and goes after it. At the end it shows what could have happened to the child if he’d fallen out of the window. Using a human baby doll (which falls instead) is effective because of this.