A THOUSAND WORDS
This short 2008 film directed by Ted Chung is about what the supporting text to the video describes as one of “so many opportunities to connect.” Essentially, it depicts – in black and white, not color – a few shared minutes of a young man and young woman, travelling (separately) on a Metro train in Los Angeles; he with his bicycle parked alongside his seat while she has a large cardboard box placed on the seat next to her. They make eye contact – which though brief seems to suggest mutual interest. The young woman is busy with her compact camera, apparently reviewing pictures previously taken. Then she gathers up her possessions including the cardboard box1, and gets off the train at her station.
As the train leaves that station, he rather wistfully watches her walk away, then notices and picks up her camera which she’s left behind on the train seat. Later that day, in his home, which looks like a very basic bedsit with a mattress on the floor and his bike alongside, he looks through her photographs on the camera and can see that she’s just left her previous job and is relocating to Boston. Another photo shows a cake with her first name (Nasim) on it.
He then sees – with surprise but also pleasure – that she’s taken several photographs of him on that train. The audience is made aware of his shock, surprise and pleasure at seeing the pictures Nasim has taken of him, by the sudden but synchronized accompaniment of a musical background track at that moment, and by him rising from his bed to a sitting position as he sees the first photo of himself. Clearly, he sees that she was interested in him – as he was in her, also.
He obviously decides then to see if he can track her down to return her camera, but also to renew their acquaintance, and well – who knows what might develop from there??
In one of the photos on her camera, she appears to be in an apartment building. In the next scene, having decided to try to find Nasim, he sets off on his bike from the station where she left the train, looking for the apartment building where her photo was taken, presumably in the hope that she will be at home. From the station he can already see the tall building that was in the background. As he gets closer to it, he zooms in on the photo to confirm the name “Desmond’s” on the tall building. Then he cycles around to find the spot where the photo was taken, ending up in the entrance of a building and finding her full name “Nasim Pedrad” on the bell push for apartment #102. Success!! But then, finding the main door open, our young man enters apartment 102 to find it already empty and being re-decorated – a dead end!
Next we see him photographing himself with Nasim’s camera, while holding up a card with his telephone number written across it. Then he packs the camera (without any added note or message from himself) in a package with Nasim’s name and her (old) L.A. address, plus a note “Please Forward”. Then – in the final few moments of the film – we see him looking reflectively into space, presumably wondering if he is destined to see Nasim again.
I found this a cute little film, with a touch of romance. In the main it was skillfully done, portraying two likeable principal characters, yet without dialogue. Although they were on a Metro train during the early part of the film, other passengers were there but not obviously so, making the journey seem a more intimate experience shared by the two main characters. By filming it in black and white (not color), it avoids the distraction of color and focuses instead on the rather dreamy and mostly imagined relationship between Nasim and her admirer.
I have to conclude that the film’s title was a shortened version of the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words”, referring to the lack of dialogue. The expression has been widely used in advertising and the newspaper industry, although its origin is obscure.
Box Pictures
Box 1 – 29 Seconds
Box 2 – 34 Seconds
Box 3 – 45 Seconds
