Not quite sure how we missed this one, but in an episode of Future States one Werner Herzog is this voice of a plastic bag. The short is by director Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo) and actually is an official selection at this year’s SXSW Festival. As an added bonus, the film features an original score from Kjartan Sveinsson of Sigur Rós. Nice.
Struggling with its immortality, a discarded plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) ventures on an epic journey through the environmentally barren remains of America where it encounters strange creatures, brief love in the sky, a colony of prophetic torn bags on a fence and more as it searches for its maker.
It’s strange how just a little voice work by a legend and a gust of wind at the right moment is able to put touching life into something as mundane as a plastic bag. To feel manipulated, as a viewer, into feeling emotionally attached to an inanimate object is actually kind of thrilling in a surreal way. Luckily for us, this beautiful hidden gem is on the UTube…
Whoa.
A wise person once said, “Everything in life would be better if it were voice-over’d by Werner Herzog!”
I dig the inanimate object vibe, reminds me of the Spike Jonze Ikea Lamp Commercial, or Wilson the Vollyball in Castaway. But now that it think about it, this particular short is a much better ‘remake’ of Spielberg’s A.I. (Seriously.)
In the closing credits, “No Animals were harmed, or digital effects used in the making of this film” (which for me is inherently funny to group them into the same sentence!)