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A Tidal Wave x Third Part of the Night Commentary
🕑 Added 2023-03-15 15:29:09 +0000 UTCThe Third Part of the Night is part two in my trilogy by Polish director Andreij Zulawski on doppelgangers. While last month's clip was set in London, this film is set during the second World War in Nazi occupied Poland. The protagonist is forced by the Nazi's to feed lice for Typhus research after he watches his family murdered by soldiers. In this clip we see him metaphorically traverse his subconscious into the depth of his mind in his descent through the hospital.
Entering, he takes a short glimpse back at the guards at the front gate, representing the threshold of his consciousness. He then descends down a flight of stairs past injured and disfigured people. These are likely meant to represent the trauma and loss he's experienced as a result of the occupation. Entering the room of his bedridden friend, who appears beaten and drugged, the protagonist confronts the symbolic threat in his subconscious. The tone of the scene instantly changes and he is attacked by the disfigured men in the adjoining room and flees down an elevator shaft, deeper into his subconscious. Further down, he enters a room where, under a sheet, he finds his own dead body laying blankly.
Staring in horror, the guards finally catch up to him and shoot him from behind. He falls further down a flight of stairs and sees a woman with spots of blood on her skin and clothing. As she reaches to him with a mixture of apology and shock he flees down a hallway lined with cells. In each, he sees dead bodies stripped naked sitting upright in chairs. Finally, he enters the room he sought all along- the room with his dead family under sheets and a ghostly doppelganger of his wife.
A challenge I've found in some of these films is that I generally want to keep dialogue in English. That will change with next month's video, but I'll save the surprise! For this video, I took spoken word samples from a movie called Ghost Dance which explores French philosopher Jacques Derrida's concept that ghosts are a memory of something that has never been present. That felt fitting with the doppelganger concept and the descent into the subconscious. Further, I did some choral type vocals at the end to give the hallway an extra eerie touch. I wanted to somehow match the intensity of the bass on the stair scene from last month and vocals felt like a fitting sequel.
