Humanities House Film Series: “Shirkers”
On April 4th, Humanities House watched the last movie of the semester: Shirkers. A documentary film about a woman named Sandi Tan who produces a movie in 1992 Singapore with her friends Jasmine, Sophia, and help from a mysterious stranger named Georges. At first, Georges is quite helpful; providing tips and tricks to the naïve trio and getting some great shots for some scenes as well. However, as the movie is further developed, things seem off about the man.
The suspicion starts when Georges states grim news: the budget has run out of money and the group needs about ten thousand dollars to continue shooting or they will be forced to stop production for the movie. This leads to Sandi, Jasmine and Sophia running to every ATM and withdrawing all their savings. Fortunately, after enough running around and understandable panicking, they obtain the required amount and continue the filming of the movie. Later, when a music artist is hired to write the score for their movie, Georges takes the only copy of the music track and fires the artist; leaving the film with no soundtrack. None of this is spoken to the rest of the crew either since the documentary shows the interview with the music artist telling Sandi, who is interviewing them, that he thought Georges was going to give the track to everyone to hear later that night.
On the other hand, the rest of the shooting goes great. Their film draws inspiration from many films in America at the time and even borrows some camera shots such as two people copying each other’s walk from across the street from another! Unfortunately, the fun times do not last long. When the movie is finally completed, Georges takes the raw footage to be edited with permission from everyone and is never seen again. For years he torments Sandi, Jasmine and Sophia with his disappearance, leaving them all wondering why. Why would he do that to them, especially when Georges was intimately involved in the production? Doesn’t he want to see the movie completed like they do? Well, as the documentary continues, we learn that the trio are not the only people who have been wronged by Georges.
After Sandi learns about Georges’ death via email from his now widow, Sandi is told by Georges wife that she too has been tricked by him. Her story is that she was convinced to write a book about a topic that Georges wanted, rather than one that she would like to write. That email also included the location of the lost film: in the attic of the widow’s house! The only weird thing is the film was perfectly preserved; contained away in a plastic container in a cool environment. As Sandi interviews the widow, she mentions that Georges made sure to keep the film reels in an air conditioned, dry environment. She even said he went as far as to rent private rooms for the reels so water and heat could not damage them.
After the interview, the widow gave the film back to Sandi and now she had the movie, twenty years later. Though the unfortunate thing is that when the widow gave back the film, she didn’t have the audio. Georges didn’t keep that part, so it meant that their movie was permanently mute. The trio, especially Sandi, had been searching for the movie for a long time after they learned about Georges’ disappearance and now after such a long time, they could put their searching to rest. The only question they couldn’t answer was why Georges did this to them in the first place.
I enjoyed watching this movie, it was such a confusing situation that Sandi, Jasmine and Sophia found themselves in by meeting Georges. I do really wonder why he took and hid the film from everyone when he put so much work into helping the trio make it. I also wonder why he would keep the reels in such perfect condition for that long of a time if he was never going to do anything with it. Why put so much effort into hiding the film away? It is a shame that Georges died before Sandi could ask him her questions, but I suppose if he didn’t then this documentary wouldn’t have been made in the first place. What a mystery this movie is.
When listening to the music, I found that it had somewhat of a chill vibe. Though in my opinion the vibe leaned more to the creepy side than relaxing if you’re paying attention to the story being told when the music is playing. There were some parts of the music that reinforced the creepy-ness as well. In some scenes, especially in the one that shows three girls dancing around bushes in the grass wearing ballerina outfits, you could hear a woman singing “Ahh-ah… ahh-ah...” and it gave me such a paranoid feeling; it’s as if you know something is wrong, but there is no visual evidence proving otherwise. Perhaps that scene was trying to make the audience feel what it was like for the trio while they were waiting for Georges to return them the edited movie.
As for the technical aspects of the documentary, I found it very creative. The beginning showed scenes from the original Shirkers movie, but in reverse. Many sounds and scenes were distorted too; one view showing us a car ride through a tunnel in negative colors and the picture displayed upside-down, another showed a swan swimming in a lake in reverse, and one more reversed a scene where a gardener was cutting pink flowers attached to a pillar in the city. I also like how the documentary used footage from the original movie. Seeing people from scenes be removed suddenly gives me a sense of what it felt like to the trio when Georges stole the movie from them. It is nice to know that after all the trio have been through, at least some parts of Shirkers became a real movie in the end.
