Cutting Happiness

Cut was the first short that I saw from Three Extremes. I guess that’s because when I saw the preview for this, I wanted to know why there was a woman strung up with wire. Even with my curiosity, I still managed to fall asleep during this section. This short story is about a director who gets kidnapped by one of the extras from his movie. When he wakes up he finds himself tied up, his wife gagged and strung up to a piano and next to him on a couch is a little girl. Turns out the extra wants him to do something bad otherwise he’ll cut off one of his wife’s fingers every five minutes. Sure, it sounds a little stupid but there is something at work here… it tapes into the question of why there are good people and why are there bad people?

This extra has a very interesting reason to be pissed at the director. From what he tells us, his father was alcoholic, abusive, unloving and his mother wouldn’t do anything about it. He grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and when he became a father he would drink, abuse his son and smack his wife. The director on the other hand grew up in a rich family that loved him, he worked hard to get to where he was, even if a crew member messed a shot up he would still smile it off, he has a wife whom he loves and it seems like he is content with his life. What would drive somebody to attack a person this nice and force them to do something as bad as killing a kid?

I think this movie taps into a part of us that we like to hide when we are angry or jealous. Have you ever been jealous of somebody or just angered because they seem to have everything they want and you don’t have anything? I know I have, it’s human instinct. How many people are out there that were born into abusive families, that deserve to have some shred of happiness but never gets it? I think Cut address the idea of being jealous of someone who has happiness. Its also rather sad because it’s about somebody who has been depressed, beaten and scarred and will never know what happiness is because of his upbringing. I guess knowing that will drive anybody insane.