Madama Butterfly

I really liked the beginning of this video. The combination of the opera playing in the background paired well with the happy, light feeling that the first part of this short was trying to express. At this point the music and singing going with the visual was happy and uplifting during the part where the butterfly finds this young woman, and the young woman falls in love with the captain. It was a "pretty" setting, and I found it interesting the way they used doll-like figures as the characters. While the two were making love the music was soft, slow yet powerul which was a perfect soundtrack to what was going on in the video. I couldn't really figure out what the meaning of the butterfly was, until she became pregnant I thought "oh, maybe the baby will connect to the butterfly in the way that it emerges from something and is beautiful". However, then the baby was represented like a fish in a bowl, which was a little bit bizzare, which then turned into a young girl still atached to her mother by the ambilical chord, which was also quite bizzare and a little gross.

I like that the entire time, the opera music is coming from an old music player, it makes it sound authentic and more personal as Madama carries it around with her. When the "barbie's" came back to take away the young girl I anticipated a dramatic change in the music correlating to Madama's feelings about being torn away from her child, but the music instead was sad and soft rather than angry. My favorite part of this short video is when Madama begins to dismemer herself. As the music builds we see this young woman tear away her outer shell and severs her insides.I think its a cool way of showing that this inanimate characters no longer wants to live. However, the end confuses me. I'm not sure whether Madama was the butterfly the whole time, dies and becomes the butterfly, or comes back to life with the butterfly's help. It was an interesting movie, but im not sure I got the message clearly...possibly that no matter what happens in life we all have the potential to find peace in ourselves, and even be our own butterfly, or perhaps the writer is trying to express their belief in reincarnation. Either message seems like an important one to express.