The theme of my final project is the loneliness, despair, and indignity of homelessness, particularly homeless individuals with mental health conditions.
My final project is about a homeless man named Alfred Flannigan. Most of the story is told in montage. We see Alfred panhandle, spend the money on liquor, rummage through the garbage for food. We see him sleep on benches, in ditches, and get viciously assaulted by psychotic young punks. We humanized Alfred by exploring his previous, normal, life via flashbacks. Alfred led a very normal life until the age of 32 when adult onset schizophrenia struck him. His congenitally rooted mental imbalance cost him everything, including his wife and daughter. Now Alfred wanders the street, begging for money to purchase alcohol. Alfred is tormented by his only fully lucid thoughts, memories of his wife and daughter. The film is set contemporarily in Memphis. The tone of the film is one of somber tragedy and quiet desperation. At the end Alfred begins a suicide attempt by climbing on the railing of an overpass but a locket containing a picture of his beloved daughter falls out and causes him to reconsider for the moment.
I want to humanize the homeless, embodied in the character of Alfred Flannigan, and to demonstrate they are real people. We pass the homeless and indigent everyday and rarely give thought that they are real people with pasts, loves, and (broken) dreams. This movie is about the subtle dehumanization of an underclass.
No comments:
Post a Comment