Love Hate textual analysis

 

Love Hate is a short film, it is a comedy. It is approximately 20 minutes long, therefore fitting into the short film time span. Moreover, it features very few cast members and the locations are minimal, they are either free public spaces or someones house. This suggests the budget was limited. Love Hate is considered to be a comedy, yet it has a somewhat, deeper meaning. The plot revolves around a man called Ben who is a friendly, decent guy who works for a charity. Then out of nowhere a peculiar woman, who happens to be the stark contrast to Ben, turns up and turns his life upside down. She makes him self-centred, rude and agressive. It turns out that infact she is his Id, the hating, angry, negative side of Ben. Whilst managing to turn Ben against his friends, this woman convinces Ben to attemot to beat up one of his friends, which backfires rapidy. Ben then realises that this whole life style/persona change is not him at all, and since he's let out all of his suppressed anger he is infact able to go back to his normal self. The moral of this story is, regardless of how nice a person may be, it is natural to get angry, so releasing the anger once in a while is better than keeping it bottled up until it takes over.

 

The beginning few scenes have a vaguely positive vibe about them, the use of pathetic fallacy displays this. For example, despite the fact the clouds are grey, the ambient light is reasonably bright which could be representational of his life, as in its not that good, but not that bad either. Moreover, the non-diegetic music is rather upbeat and positive, yet when the mysterious lady appears in the scene it imeediately stops, which could mean all positive things in his life may come to an abrupt end. Furthermore, the mise-en-scene of the two characters are completely different, this is shown in medium close ups. She is dressed in all black, and he is dressed in light colours, showing the immediate contrast in personalities. 

 

The diegetic speech between the two colours also show the difference in

personas as he rarely swears and speaks quite softly, whereas she

talks rather violently and swears a lot. As the short film goes on,

his mise-en-scene starts to change. His clothes get darker

throughout as she changes his persona more and more. Not only that but

his speech gets a lot more violent and harsh as she manages to make him

accept the 'real' him. The positioning of the two characters also changes

throughout the duration of the film, they get closer together

the more he changes. 

 

The editing becomes faster in the scene where he plans to attempt to kill his friend, yet once Ben himself gets beaten up, it slows down again as if hes been brought back down to reality and has realised that this new relationship/him is not working. Moreover, once the relationship between him and his new 'Id' ended, he got back together with his ex Joy; which could be a metaphor for his life, that hes decided to put a stop to the hatred that was controlling his life, and gone back to 'joy' and happiness.