Virgil Vernier - Thermidor (2009)

A fairly religious man wishes to be part of the past, free of the high-rise apartment blocks that invade the skyline and return to a more chivalrous nature (in both senses of the word). He goes to mass, he holds discussions among friends. He occasionally plays the keyboard with the default setting on harpsichord to belay the idea further. It's a measure of his disdain for the modern world that when 2 hookers look to mess around with him in order to lure him into a back alley that he loses his patience while they decide to play with his hat and kick it down the street when they don't get what they want.

Much of this short film is a rather joyless affair. There is brief bouts of anger, resignation and an empty void running on screen. Indeed the harpsichord setting on the keyboard is key to the film in some respects. It is a synthetic ode to the past that will never be. Trying to incorporate elements of the past that are long gone, that possibly never were apart from mythical tales of folklore. It never goes quite so far as "when men were men" but it's not far from it really. The ending looks to those merry band of outsiders who want the past - an idealised one at that too - because the pain of modern living is too much. Politically, this film insidiously speaks of the complete breakdown of what successive governments have inflicted on its citizens. We are soulless, hollow shells of people looking for something to fill our lives with. The problem the film has is that it lacks any sense of conviction and perhaps that too is a disease of our times as well.