The Most Beautiful Man in the World

I saw this short in a DVD collection of Award winning shorts but in my opinion this one stands out by far. I have never seen a story of this kind. It left me stunned, almost with my mouth open. Watching this short film made me change the way I think about children and to realize that kids feelings and experiences can be more complex than we care to think, or that movies generally depict.

The photography is beautiful, very poetic, you can see that a lot of care was taken into the cinematography, in fact there's very little dialog; almost everything is conveyed through image and action. It's not my intention to give too much away, I hope you can experience "The most beautiful man in the world" by yourself.

The reason I turned to IMDb was to see if Alicia Duffy (the Writer-Director) had made a full feature film that I could look for. It seems she hasn't made one yet, but I definitely think she should.

I'll make it short: This film gets taught at the MFA Film program at Columbia University in NYC, which alone might already mean a lot. I just hope the filmmakers know about the impact of their little film and that it is used as reference on teaching the art of short films.

When we discussed it in class we had mixed reactions. Some loved it and some hated it. For me it's probably the only perfect short film I've ever seen. Inspiring and unique. A film against prejudices, beautifully shot and edited. A must see that will probably be shown to film students even in the next few decades. There is a bad quality version on Youtube. Please don't watch this one and try to find a good copy on some DVD collection. You won't regret it.

A young girl lies on the living room floor . Feeling completely bored she leaves he house and goes in to the fields near by where she sees a man

And that is more or less the entire hub of the story . You do worry that this young child might be bumping in to a jogger with golden tracksuit white hair smoking a cigar and making yodelling sounds saying " Now then now then lucky lady , how's about that then ? " but it's not that type of short . There's no real ambiguity featuring any sort of danger . I notice the synopsis that comes with the short draws attention to the poetic nature of it and it's very fair to say Alicia Duffy has obviously been influenced by the Terence Malik school of film making featuring the beauty of nature . It contains a very beautiful scene here the camera is underwater but for those of us who enjoy narrative in film it is slightly disappointing and a bit empty as a story