The Boy with White Skin
Rating: 4/5
By: Nathaniel Simpson
In his short film, The Boy with White Skin, writer and director Simon Panay does a fantastic job of capturing this horror story of what a young, albino boy goes through unwillingly. Being sent down into the gold mines to help these miners fulfill a prophecy, the boy is terrified about what is taking place and what he is being forced to do. With the viewer being put into the mindset of the child, Panay crafts this haunting picture that works so well due to the breathtaking performance from Aboubacar Dembele. However, while it is crafted very well, I think the movie could have benefit quite a bit from going into more of the lore around this prophecy and what it means for the child.
The movie opens with the young albino boy being transported under a tarp in the back of a truck to the dig site, where they forcefully lower him down underneath. The poor child is screaming and crying due to how scared he was, and Panay puts us right into the driver's seat. The emotions the child feels is translated through the screen, allowing the viewer to emphasize with him. There is no doubt that the filmmakers here were able to manipulate the viewer's emotions to make them feel like they are trapped in this tiny cave with the young boy. I feel like there is this sense of claustrophobia and genuine, child-like fear that the film is exuding, which is a major compliment to Panay and his group of filmmakers for crafting this film in that way.
At the same time, Dembele's performance does a great job of complementing the footage they were able to shoot. While Panay focuses on making the audience feel this sort of way when watching the picture, Dembele's job is to just sell whatever is going on to him. He does a fantastic job, and it is wildly impressive due to how young the actor is. Especially when we get to the climax of the film, where Dembele sings to the miners down below to fulfill the prophecy that they were hoping he would be fit for, it's incredibly uncomfortable and awkward in what was going on, and Dembele's performance heightens that just a little bit more.
But, here's the problem with this movie for me - I simply needed more from the plot. Consider some of the other short films I have reviewed recently; they may focus on one scene throughout the entirety of the short film, but they revolve around aspects like a school shooting or a group of patrons singing in a bar. I don't know much about the gold mining taking place in West Africa. While I can sort of piece some of the plot together to understand more about why the boy was important, I simply can't know the full reasoning. I think Panay would have benefit from really crafting more of a concrete plot and reasoning for what is going on in the movie, rather than assume the audience knows exactly what is going on here. School shootings and the power of music are a universal theme and plot device, but gold mining in this specific time period in Africa is a little more tricky.
However, as a whole, Panay does a great job of capturing this haunting moment of time for this child, and he does a great job of placing those child's fears and thoughts into the viewer. This is not only an incredibly hard watch, but really makes the viewer stop and think about what is going on and how children probably go through scenarios like this quite a bit. While the miners may worship and rejoice in finding the child that fulfills the prophecy, Panay presents how the child feels and what he is going through, ending the film on the needed disheartening note.
Comments
Post a Comment