Short Film Review - Shine

    Shine is a short, barely over four minutes, animated film. Released back in 2016 and as of November 12, 2020, has a 6.3/10 IMDb rating. It was uploaded to Filmalademie Baden-Württemberg's YouTube Channel. From the looks of things, the studio is fairly busy. See here. The film officially falls under the "short/animation" category, though I personally would also categorize it under romance as well. It was directed by Alexander Dietrich and Johannes Flick and produced by Mareike Keller. Here is all of Dietrich's previous work. 

   This video itself was very well-made if you asked me. However, I'm not a professional and simply just admired the aesthetics. Especially when "Shine" was drawn on the screen, it just gave me massive New Orleans late-night golden jazz vibes. Then when the unnamed creatures were shown harnessing light in the latern-lit sky my eyes just never wanted to leave the screen. Everything about it was just so pretty. It had me hooked. Then came time for the plot.

    If we're being honest here, it was a bit basic and kind of barebone. It was your typical guy wants girl but feels intimidated by a subjectively better guy. Their ability to harness light is really only used as a non-verbal way to show the competition between the two, essentially like peacocks. I was a bit disappointed seeing that was all they did with it, felt too much like wasted potential. But then again, it was a 4-minute video and the last full minute was dedicated to credits.

    There really isn't much to say here. They relied on stereotypes for any type of personality--attractive girl who wants what she wants, insecure guy who reaches, and overconfident macho--and the light competition and the cuddling at the end were the only relationships we saw. Which, by the way, they don't make it clear if macho man died or not. I was expected to see him burnt and barely alive somewhere in the credits, but we didn't. We just see him flying off and now there's this special light dust above the other two. I'm not saying they are, but you cannot deny that they could very easily be cuddling in this man's ashes right now.

    This is the description provided:
    "Two male, glowing creatures start a fight over trying to impress a female. Each one of them wants to win her over by giving a better light show than his competitor. 'Shine" is a visual love story showing the importance of healthy competition. The film shows that it is not always the strongest, fastest or most attractive that wins as sometimes it is the inner light that shines the brightest. The film brings a fresh perspective to the age-old story of men vying for the love of a beautiful woman, however in this instance, the men are two furry creatures who battle with the power of self-illumination. The battle to glow brightest is intense and the combat fierce. They are on fire... until one gets burned!"

    So it's canon that he was burned....

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