Movie Review: Extinguished

Extinguished is a 4-minute, romantic, short animation. It was released on July 23, 2017, and was directed by Ringling College of Art and Design's students, Ashley Anderson and Jacob Mann. Many people showed it a lot of love, and rightfully so, it's well made. In this world, love is symbolized by a literal flame in one's chest. It tells the tale of a heartbroken man, scared to fall for someone else again.  He does, however, and realizes it just as she's leaving. He then uses his literal burning love for her to lift up a makeshift hot-air balloon and follow her. She sees him, her chest finally ignites, and it's a happy ending.
My only issue was that the first implication is that the flame represents that your heart belongs to someone--that you're in love. However, his flame immediately reignites after just seeing this girl. She knocks on his door accidentally, he watches her for barely sixty seconds, and his flame of "love" goes haywire. Are we supposed to believe he's fallen in love with a person whose name he doesn't even know? Wasn't he just mourning his last heartbreak a moment ago? This feels more like a representation of attraction here. But the Grandma came out with her heart already taken, and when she expresses that the guy next door is attractive, nothing happens to her flame. Also, a flame of attraction would be problematic. Imagine being in a committed relationship and having to watch your partner's flame light up whenever they see someone attractive. I know you're meant to trust them, but that sounds like a recipe for pain.
So I got to thinking, and I got hit with an idea. What if the flame isn't a sign of "this is the one?" But rather, it's a sign of what you think of a person. The guy is clearly the romantic type and seems like the kind to fall really hard, really fast. The girl, on the other hand, needs more of an incentive to think of someone in that light. Both of their flames light up when the possibility of a relationship with this person is enticing to them.
Another thing I noticed is that most of the people with flames can handle them relatively well. The couples shown at the start and the grandma all have really stable flames. Even the girl could carry hers with no problem even though she only really had it for ten seconds. I expected the short to throw one last gag at us in the final scene by having the girl's flame burn the flower, just like the guy did on many occasions. But no, they don't. They keep this ability strictly his throughout, which was the first thing that led me to this conclusion. The title "extinguished" could be taking on a triple meaning.
1) His last flame was recently extinguished from rejection.
2) He constantly tries to extinguish his new flame.
3) He needs to extinguish his old relationship pain to establish a new one.
I noticed the first two immediately. The last took some more thinking. His flame being so aggressive and burning things could be a literal representation of his doubt and desire fighting each other and tearing him apart. We see him clearly haunted by his pain at the start and that pain is most definitely following him throughout. Take away the flame concept and we see a guy who desperately wants to confess his feelings but has trapped himself by his fear of double rejection. It winds up in bits of it stumbling out to a girl who isn't stupid--she just wants proper effort to be shown. Finally, he trusts himself. The very thing he's been trying to destroy, he accepts it and lets it lead him. Notice how his flame stabilizes after his makeshift balloon starts to stay up? He follows his flame and confesses. The girl sees the effort and is happy to return his feelings. The calmness of the flame is acceptance.
It's brilliant.

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Link to Extinguished  
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