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by Paul Horn and Harald Hund
grade: 7.5
In Dropping Furniture, the ‘past’ comes to the movie screen in a totally ‘unconventional’ way. The objects, dropped by the two directors from a height of seven metres, shatter into a thousand pieces upon hitting the ground. The end result is almost a kind of choreography with a visually mesmerising effect, at the end of which the two initially empty rooms appear wonderfully colourful.
It’s raining!
Breaking free from an uncomfortable past, yet also losing the meaning of one’s existence forever. Liberating acts which, at the same time, do not allow us to truly break free from what has been. In the fascinating experimental short film Dropping Furniture, directed by Paul Horn and Harald Hund in 2008, we encounter these powerful contradictions through a staging that surprises us, that at times even unsettles us, but also entertains us and, at the same time, conveys a valuable cathartic effect. But let’s look specifically at what we’re talking about.
Dropping Furniture, therefore, opens with a static shot of a completely empty room. At first, silence reigns supreme. Then, little by little, we begin to hear muffled, indistinct sounds in the background. Suddenly, the room is shown to us from another angle, still with a fixed camera, from which we can also see a second, adjacent room through the door. And then, after a few seconds, something unexpected happens: in slow motion, chandeliers, armchairs with soft toys on them, sofas and numerous other pieces of furniture begin to fall from the ceiling, suggesting a bourgeois living room with a rather old-fashioned style.
From a purely visual and auditory perspective, Dropping Furniture is, therefore, a particularly sophisticated short film, with great attention paid to every detail. The slow motion makes it all even more spectacular, whilst, at the same time, careful sound design (by Andreas Hamza) featuring muffled sounds, dogs barking in the distance and even a ringing telephone helps to heighten that sense of alienation we feel from the very first seconds.
What strikes us most when watching Dropping Furniture, however, is how the ‘past’ appears on the movie screen in a completely ‘unconventional’ way. The objects, dropped by the two directors from a height of seven metres, shatter into a thousand pieces upon hitting the ground. The end result is almost a kind of visually mesmerising choreography, at the end of which the two initially empty rooms appear wonderfully colourful to us, albeit with great disorder within them. The past can finally be let go. But could we ever truly break free from it, or will its traces continue to occupy our living space for a very, very long time yet?
Given this, the conclusion of this little and interesting Dropping Furniture inevitably gives rise to further reflections. For if our past does indeed represent our background, our origins, might we, by ‘freeing’ ourselves from it, lose our sense of our own existence or, worse still, our identity? Paul Horn and Harald Hund do not want to give us definitive answers on the matter, but, whilst astonishing us with what they have staged, they wish above all to provide us (with a certain welcome humour) with interesting food for thought, whilst at the same time leaving us great freedom of interpretation.
Original title: Dropping Furniture
Directed by: Paul Horn, Harald Hund
Country/year: Austria / 2008
Running time: 5’
Genre: experimental
Screenplay: Paul Horn, Harald Hund
Cinematography: Oliver Schneider, Ludwig Löckinger
Produced by: Hund & Horn