Mommy Reflection

After watching Mommy, directed by Xavier Dolan, I realized how much the film overwhelmed me with its countless novelties. Like the movie Tangerine that experimented with shooting on iPhone 5S cameras, Mommy too is an experimental film which took unique screen ratio of 1:1. It's true, that you often do not get to see films in such ratio.

Although Mommy boldly sketches the world in squared frame, the film did not make me uncomfortable watching it not a bit, or even not at all. 1:1 ratio, in fact, allowed much more saturated focus on the characters on single-individual-basis. In fact, the director Dolan said that because he was shooting the film in 1:1 ratio, it was hard for him to have more than one characters present on the screen at the same time. Accordingly, In Mommy, the characters are mainly in focus than the background, places and things.

Dolan also stated how important the music was in Mommy. Dolan used many hits, like Dido's Whiteflag, Oasis' Wonderwall, and Counting Crows' Colorblind, to intend the film's atmosphere to be more universal and ultimately create sense of connection between the characters and the audience.

In addition, Dolan made the characters to come out naturally throughout the film, showing how they imperfect they are, and how they manage to transform such imperfections to form of love. Dolan's characters, then are attractive enough to captivate the audience by portraying the theme of love and friendship.

Dolan does change the screen ratio during the film for a little bit. Dolan plays with the ratio in the following scene to exaggerate the metaphorical transition of Steve being locked up to becoming free. The dynamic ratio transformation of the scene was so amazing that it me appreciate Mommy's unique screen ratio of 1:1.