My Reelity

Is this the reel life or is this just fantasy?

4 Show

Posted by Ruok On December - 20 - 2005

So many women, so little time...
“so many women, so little time…”

‘4444’ is now available for viewing here.

For spoilers to the short film, especially if you have watched it and are puzzled as to what it all means, please continue reading below :

4444 Spoiler

‘4444’ is actually a story about a man who got knocked down by a car on the day he discovered that he just won the lottery. The man is your average man on the street, who dreams, like many others, of striking it rich to leave his drab existence of his life behind. One can see this through his countless 4D slips in the beginning of the show and his bored-going-through-motions day at work.

So fatal was this accident, he ended up being in a coma and has been in a coma for the past 4 years. Or has he? You see, in his comatose state, he relives the events that leads up to the most happiest moment of his life; striking the lottery and to his unfortunate accident as well. And he has been reliving this sequence for the past 4 years.

This is why the film opens up with his eyes wide opened (the last thing he remembered was seeing the oncoming car) and then cueing to the “4444” sign. This is a clue right from the start to cue the viewers that all is not what it seems. We will see the number 4 repeated throughout the scenes after this, from the clock-face, the number of stationary, the people around him and even right down to the number of times the accident sequence is repeated (go count’em, its 4 ;)).

The final clue is the hospital scene, where you see his family celebrating his birthday and the doctor informing the wife that he has been in the hospital for 4 years. The doctor’s dialogue gives us the most important clue; that his brain is fine and that he always had that weird smile on his face, as if he has been living in his own world on this while. The doctor is kinda right, coz the man has been reliving the events for the past four years.

And he continues to relive this sequence, which is why the final scene, the number changes to ‘5555″ when he once again begins reliving the sequence again. It is now his fifth year (he just celebrated his birthday) and so everything now changes from ‘4’ to ‘5’. (So we all know what the sequel is gonna be called now eh? :P)

By this, we also know that the doctor is right that his brain is fine; in fact his brain is trying to hint strongly to him that look, you’ve been doing this for years! And its the fifth year already! One can speculate why the man refuses to “wake up”. One reason is because he doesn’t want to go back to reality and instead prefers to live forever in that moment of jubilation. There could be other reasons, and the film leaves room for other reasons which the audience may want to infer.

My take on this? I say he just wanna squeeze with as many ladies in the train as possible, that horny bastard. Hehehehe.

12 Responses to “4 Show”

  1. […] The short film ‘4444′ which stars barfly Ruok, is now available for viewing. For explanations (warning: spoiler alert) you can check out this page. […]

  2. Kenny says:

    After that explanation. I finally understand…

  3. 9 says:

    strange me and jo couldn’t play the video…only sound…some quicktime plugins were missing and isnt available on the quicktime server. Cant watch.
    :(

  4. Ruok says:

    9> U need to install Quicktime 7.

  5. TheLibrarian says:

    Good job posting it up on the net. Its a pity no site exists to archive these Singaporean works.

    Regardless of whether they won anything or even make it to finalist status, I think every short film that are submitted for competitions like DV Fest and Sg Film Fest deserve being immortalised on the net.

    Sad to know that with each passing year at least 20 short films consisting of much Singaporean money and time are lost, never to be mentioned again. Lost are gems like “Strings” (DV Fest ’04 media student winner), “4444” and even “Moomeow the Catcow”.

  6. […] You’ll really not get anything at first, till you read about it here. And now it starts to get deep. […]

  7. Ruok says:

    thanks for watching guys 😀

  8. ask you a question, in the end, did the guy wake up?

  9. Ruok says:

    cockroach > its open ended, up to you to decide. It ends with him dreaming for the 5th year though.

  10. […] Winner of the 3rd S’pore Short Film Festival Special Mention Prize.For Spoilers please see here. […]

  11. […] For spoilers, please go here. […]

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