Short Film Analysis - Gasman

Gasman, directed (and written) by Lynne Ramsay in 1997, is a film set in the 1970's about a man who has four children, two from one family and two from another. The children, and the audience, are unaware of this until the end of the second act. This means that the narrative of the film is restricted, as we know as much as the children, more specifically the little girl, and we find out at the same time as her.

Most, if not all, of the shots in this film were steady, and clearly shot on a tripod. This can take away from the realism from the film and make it feel more 'set-up' as opposed to a film that has more handheld shots. There also weren't any POV shots. Many of the shots were also very cinematic and clearly planned out, this led to a beautifully shot film, but, combined with the other things I have just mentioned, a film that lacked realism and made it so that I couldn't really get involved in the film as much as I would have liked to. If you take a film like Wasp, directed by Andrea Arnold, for example, you can see a wide variety of shots which feel like they have been rushed and not planned out. This was done on purpose and adds to the realism of the story and allows the viewer to feel more involved.

The pace of this film felt incredibly slow, and boring at times. The shots lingered for too long and some unnecessary content was included for, from what I can see, no reason. I feel that the film would have been much more effective if it was cut even shorter, or maybe if the narrative was changed slightly.

I lacked empathy for the little girl because of the lack of character setup in the first act of the film. Maybe if the film spent more time on the characters I would have felt sorrier for her. The same goes for the father, if we had had more of an introduction to his character, we may have been able to see his story from both sides, but, instead, we only see it from the negative point of view. The fact that there wasn't much character setup might have just been Ramsay's way of telling the story. The fact that we don't know much about these characters means that we have to make assumptions about them. We assume that the Father is irresponsible and uncaring, but we don't know this. This could be a clever way of showing how society makes snap judgements without knowing the full story, and how this is wrong to do.

In terms of character arcs, only one character actually changed throughout the course of the movie, and that's the little girl. At the beginning of the film she is a sweet and innocent character, but at the end of the film, after she has found out about her Father, she isn't as innocent, and seems to consider throwing a rock at his head. The actual Father character didn't have any noticeable development, and the same goes for the other children. The mother of two of the children seems to be more interested in the children at the beginning or end, but still lacks a proper character arc.

The Father doesn't seem to have any redeeming features. He is portrayed as not caring for his children, and neglecting them whilst he drinks with his friends. He also doesn't seemed too bothered when the girl finds out the truth. His attitude makes it seem like he thinks that the children will resolve it on their own and don't need his help. He only gets involved when they start physically fighting each other. You could look at this as his one redeeming feature, that he does actually care about the children, but I personally don't think it is, as if he cared about them that much, he should have comforted the girl who just found out that she has two new siblings.