Behind the simplicity of the story of a little boy making a snowman lurks a delightfully mischievous film: director Cecilia Marreiros plays with space and time in her tale by splitting the screen to show several frames. She uses humour to prod young viewers to think about the experience of loss.
While watching this film your child will be encouraged, when the screen is black, to try to guess where the next colourful frame is going to appear, how big it will be and which element it will represent. The use of a split screen in the film is more than just a game, as the drawn frames play with space, time and relationships of scale – and also with feelings. The film begins with a square frame that, in close-up, shows a small boy running. That is followed by a rectangular frame that, by altering the scale, reveals the snowbound natural surrounds. Other clever shifts of perception include the bit where the snowman’s head falls off in a frame on the left of the screen and lands in a frame on the right. And subtle changes of form within the frames have the effect of signalling the passage of time, night following day and day following night, and, similarly, the weather also changes. All throughout the film images are constantly changing, increasing or overlapping, creating a kind of cinematic jigsaw.
If you look at the images closely, you can make out several figures: thus the little boy is a kind of double for the snowman – but that’s not all: the crescent moon may look a bit like a person, as may one of the clouds drifting by in the sky. So, in addition to the frame game, young viewers can have fun spotting the characters hidden in the frames.
The playful side of the film means viewers can share the emotions of the boy in the snow. As the frames multiply, move and grow bigger and smaller, they reflect the energy the boy expends while trying to protect his snowman from the vagaries of the weather. The arrow he shoots from his bow to burst the sun is a good example: when it falls to the ground it is multiplied forever - thus representing the boy’s disappointment at not being able to save his snowman from melting.
If you fancy some fun that also makes you reflect, Fellowsis a film for you!
