Live Action Narrative | UK
Why did we programme this film?
Aurora Fearnley directs a short ambiguous film, packed with clues and character-driven intrigue, is hard to ignore. Murmur is certainly a film we’d be sure that many people would find interesting.
The key cast members Lucy Russell and Olivia Morgan give great performances. It is very well acted, and has an extremely tight script. It’s setting is small and simple, yet the dialogue and conditions release a larger unseen and dramatic world.
Our Global Audiences Responses:
It’s a talking point, the films narrative commands discussion. Wether as a person you believe yourself to be a leader, a follower or indifferent, a story like this easily taps into a collective conscience and sparks debate. Many of us have allowed themselves or have observed others being led into a false sense of security by powerful forces. It is a very real horror for the average individual, which is why it resonates with our audiences whom are usually made up of people from all walks of life.
Iconifying is a curse of the human condition. An ability to remove all logic and to focus an emotional determination toward either another person, group or idea. Some extremes have gone as far as self sacrifice, walking to the ends of the earth, even giving up their own lives. In many cases we see today, people spending time and money devoted to the utter fixation, a practice of following, believing everything – brain washed into a state of devotion. People can be easily manipulated, tricked into imprisonment, fooled into giving up everything for nothing.
A cult taps into the fragile desire of wanting to belong, to be significant, important to humanity. It is a sensitive and broadly expressed anomaly taking many forms, which is why it is used so often in literature, film and stage plays as a source of dramatic condition.
Murmur, is a film which picks up as the title suggests during a period of bubbling doubt from within a young follower. It’s an interesting piece, which could be more about gender than humanity on the whole, but as the viewer and programmer I felt largely that this film was on the surface a simple gender issue complaint, but deeper I became connected to a certain paranoia, an idea that no matter what, the path is the path. The followers will always follow.
Aurora Fearnley manages to create with very limited space, and a slim production something very good indeed. The story is thick with ambiguity, along with sprinkles of suggested rules and law, she paints in the performances a bizarre but believable delusion. An eerie reminder of what might be possible if we are to allow ourselves to become overtly suggestible to a ever manipulating power.