Whole is a minute long animation which manages to say what it needs to within a restricted runtime. The beauty and simplicity of Whole is it’s greatest strength, as sometimes we don’t need dialogue or narration to explain a film’s purpose as the image is more than enough.
Using just a few colours (white, black, peach, yellow, pink and light blue), the animation is bold and attention grabbing. The film starts off with a fish swimming around, seemingly happy and at peace. Until, it is swallowed whole by another, much larger fish. Then that fish is swallowed by a human.
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Within a few seconds, director Suchana Saha has managed to portray the circle of life. There’s always something bigger out there to swallow us whole.
The film continues with two flamingos swallowing up another fish and then a shot of tall trees, before we cut back to the human who appears larger now and is eating fast food. He casually tosses away his plastic bag only for it to fall into the ocean where a fish swallows it whole.
It’s such a powerful image of the fish that reminds us all of the need to protect the world that surrounds us. As the film carries on, things only get worse and we end on another powerful image that will hopefully resonate with all of us. A great and effective little animated film which is worth devoting a minute of your life to watch.
