Sundays The Next Feature Length Sensation
Congratulations! Today is sweetness, light, and all things gumdrops and magic because I have a short for you that will bedazzle you into a full tilt state of agogery. Yeah, I just did that. But man, I’m still trying to figure out what the heck is happening in this thing. But here’s the thing, it isn’t supposed to make sense. What we have here is the results of a $50,000 kickstarter, which you can see here if you are interested.
Wait, too much too fast. Backing up. So, PostPanic pitched a kickstarter to help them create a 15 minute (below) concept sketch for a movie. One year later they present us with this (below). And all but simultaneously we get the news that Warner Brothers picked up the rights to the film. Three days later actually if my math serves me right (which it usually doesn’t, so caveat emptor). But apparently after this short went viral there was an epic epic bidding war that ensued. Entertainment Weekly has the full skinny on this story. But the basic skinny is that director Mischa Rozema will be heading to Hollywood to begin discussing the writing and creating of said film.
But because the interwebs are so über cool this way… you now get to enjoy the 14 minute pile of goodness churned the darkwebs into a frothing pool of chum and chaos. Enjoy it.
I have never wanted to do a full write up on a short film before. But I think I will for “Sundays”. This is such an awesomely enigmatic concept sketch for a full feature movie that I just have to tear it down and walk through it. So let’s just break this sucker down a little bit more.
Here’s the official synopsis as posted on PostPanic’s Vimeo page:
Set in Mexico City sometime in the future and starring US actor Brian Petsos and Mexican actress Sofia Sisniega, SUNDAYS is an ambitious philosophical science-fiction proof-of-concept short.
Basically our protagonist is unclear what is going on all around him. This end of the world shenaniganary is a bit too much to take in. He is obviously cycling in and out of these visions and dreams of a previously world and a lost love. Maybe its a memory of a past life that doesn’t belong to him? Ben starts to get the idea that this woman, Isabelle, the only love he’s ever known, is missing from his life. Poor Ben then begins to circle the proverbial toilet as he starts becoming more and more disconnected from this life is going on around him. Ben decides he needs to figure out what the heck is going on around him, and he begins to actively search for Isabella. Ben knows he has to do something because this world that surrounds him is obviously not his world.
There is one scene that interests me the most in this short concept sketch.
“The past, is written in books… the books that survive. This is the truth that has made us Kings. We trust that our memories are real. That our pictures speak a thousand words. And what they say will be the truth. ‘Do you feel like you were born in another time, that you belong in another place?’ ‘Never.'” We trust that when people say they love us, they mean it. Not just in their heads, but in their hearts.”
We see Isabelle, in dreams, and a woman that Ben believes to be Isabelle walking down the city street. But she doesn’t turn, she continues on. Which reminds me very much of Dark City, or possibly even better The Signal? This sort of reality within reality concept. Obviously it is evocative of The Matrix as well. But that connection will probably hurt Sundays more than it will help I’m thinking. But here we have the most obvious illusion to The Matrix imaginable – the snap awake, goo scene:
Which basically means our protagonist is definitely living within some altered illusion of reality. He is unaware of his true reality. And these visions of Isabelle that are haunting him are his only true anchor of any sort of absolute reality that is currently escaping him. So Ben begins his haunting hunt for reality just like The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind he is sorting through fact and fiction in an attempt to truly ascertain what lie he has been sold or mindlessly swallowed.
“What if we are not the Kings? What if I do not dream at night? Because this, is, the dream?”
This is going to be a great movie. I only hope that Hollywood doesn’t over invest and dilute the vision of Mischa Rozema. I’d rather it stay low budget and surprise us than to go big budget and thoroughly disappoint. Just saying. But so far, this looks truly mind blowing. I can’t wait to see what the next chapter unfolds for PostPanic.
If you are interested in seeing the making of video – the behind the scenes of Sundays – then you might just want to check this out.