Multiple award winning Stanley Pickle stole the show on the opening night at the ECU. A student production, Vicky Mather impresses with her precocious ability to blend funny, touching and disturbing elements into a highly accomplished 11 minute piece.
UPDATE 2011: Stanley Pickle WINS Best Student Film at the 2011 ECU Film Festival!
The film centres upon the bizarre, colourful and mechanical world of Stanley Pickle and his family, almost suggestive of a living toy box. They live a sheltered domestic life whose routines are determined by the wind-up mechanism upon their back, as they repeat the same gestures, the same expressions and the same existences, which seems to represent the small-mindedness of conservative family life.
Their rigidity is contrasted with the graceful glide of the girl who saunters outside – in touch with nature, free and alone. She is positioned as the ideal, a life that Stanley fears for its chaos and cannot accommodate into his own. This contrast between structure and chaos is at the heart of the film, and is masterfully suggested by the editing itself, which respectively chops up and blends.
In Stanley Pickle, then, we have an original and complete piece of film-making which, if the applause is anything to go by, should be a strong contender in the awards ceremony on Sunday night. TNC will be running an interview with the director later in the festival.
By Joshua Feldman
