HOLY REAL INDIE MOVIE. I actually really liked it, even tho i feel like too much was going on to catch everything that was happening. But i honestly didn’t mind, i’m a man with deep love for concept of chaos and confusion.
What they wanted to do with this movie in my opinion was: interrogating disability representation and perception of beauty in cinema.
And i think the name “chained for life” precisely portrays what the movie is about. A person is “chained” to its appearance, but one’s appearance isn’t always a cage - social labels are. Social labels are jail in its nature and art either breaks it or plays as a gaoler.
Also that film-within-a-film notion? I ate that shit up. It absolutely did make the movie way more interesting and raw.
But what really caught my attention was last two scenes: Mabel in a taxi and Rosenthal in a film crew bus. Scene in a taxi was exposition of her lack of empathy and performative act of understanding. Her privilege in a way chained her too, to an inauthentic performance in and out of a film. Even tho filming with Rosenthal forced her to think and see outside the box, her perception leads her vision, and her perception is led by her mentality and experiences. Not that easy to change, is it?
And the last scene, film crew in the bus, honestly felt like really normal scene. Filming ended and people went with their lives, performance is done, and every single person in the bus is just another human being. Our differences are real but the separation is artificial, it’s created by society.
“heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter”
