Departure

A short animated film with plenty of fantasy and technology and also beauty.

This wonderful computer-animated short has a narrative that is separated into two storylines that alternate between them. One follows a young woman as she wakes up in her home and gets ready to go out. The other is more...enchanting. It involves a robot in the form of a young woman, who is initially sitting on a throne inside a large church. The cyborg then gets up and proceeds to walk across the large hall, picking up a large mirror and accidentally breaking it. What follows is a great deal of imagination.

The two storylines are quite different from another. As mentioned, the one with the robot is the one that contains fantasy and science fiction, while the other is normality, a person preparing to go out, nothing extraordinary. Therefore, it could be said that the film keeps on switching between fantasy and reality. There are similarities, most notably that both stories have a protagonist who is a young woman (even an artificial one) and both characters appear to be in the process of achieving a goal (one is to go out, the other more significant). The scenes with the woman in her home are interesting, however the ones with the robot are more impactful due to the exciting and magical things that take place, which involve a machine that selects and plays CDs, countless of butterflies, laser beams and a powerful explosion of colours.

What is the film trying to communicate? It appears to be exploring themes regarding artificial intelligence and religion and about the achievement of something remarkable. If one does not wish to understand the intended messages, they will still be rewarded by what they see and hear.

Visually, the film looks great. The computer animation looks terrific and bears resemblance to the Final Fantasy video game series. The point-of-view shots are effective and the lighting and use of colours creates quite a show, particularly during the climax.

Regarding the audio, the music that is heard throughout is beautiful and dynamic, with wonderful piano melodies. There are no spoken words, only texts that appear briefly, which is not a bad thing, however, there are creative sound effects.

This short takes the viewer on a five-minute-long mesmerising journey. The message that it attempts to deliver might be open to interpretation but what is certain is that this film had a great deal of work put into it and the animation and score prove that.