A Whole New World on Shortfundly - A reminder of the line between fiction and reality where loneliness exists

Every individual you meet now has a pandemic story to tell. Some stories are of grief, some of happiness, some of learning, a lot of loss, and the struggles that many of us went through. But one thing is common: the lockdown was not just physical but metaphorical for some of us, altering our lives in ways we are still discovering. So, when a filmmaker sets out to tell a story of a person doomed by loneliness and an artist who stands on the boundary between fiction and reality, forgetting they are not the same, he is about to take you to places where you might not relate visually, but the idea is something you have lived at least a couple of times in the past four or so years. 

A Whole New World Plot:

When the pandemic subsides a little, and the world is just open enough to venture out for important things, a lonely man tries to find a companion on the internet. Alongside him is a literary genius who has defined a niche in writing where people are obsessed with his work and try to interpret it in their style. When the surroundings get intense and the work gains recognition, the actor, who is also the lonely man, tries to find the dark side in everything the genius ever wrote because that sells. A Whole New World looks at the world post-pandemic and how it appears.

A Whole New World Analysis:

All of us saw the world post-pandemic through a different lens. Of course, there was an insecurity that served as the recurring theme of everything we did after that. Fear walked hand in hand, and the loneliness that many of us had made peace with was quite evident, more than ever. A Whole New World, a Japanese language short film released in 2021, over a year after the pandemic entered our lives, explored what it seemed like for a man who spent most of it alone. He set out to find a companion on dating apps and spoke to them to meet on dates. The monotony of this process is captured so well that even you as an audience feel it. The brilliance is in the fact that the women he meets are also equally interesting because some come with a job to get something, and some have a motive to meet a famous person the boy knows.

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So, even when the idea is to meet someone and bond, the subconscious mind thinks of gaining as much as possible from a person. The short film which spans some odd 30 minutes plays out like a man who hit his head hard on some surface, and this is what he is seeing after a concussion. Some parts of it are smooth, the editing is seamless and fun, and some parts of it are purposely abrupt, almost like someone trying to pull their hair out. The frustration is conveyed so well through the jump cuts and edits.

There is also an interesting tone to how the pain of a literary genius is captured when he sees the world only resorting to dark themes and never finding the ray of hope in stories and arts. "It is a medium that was made to give hope," he says in one scene, but the actor instantly cuts him off, saying, "This is what the audience wants and demands." The world presented in The Whole New World seems obnoxious because the rich are planning to launch private rockets and doing test runs after test runs, the middle class is talking of their savings with pride, and the have-nots are not even in the picture. What feels bizarre is the reality of our times. The constant death count read out in the news felt like a daily routine post-pandemic.

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So when a news anchor thanks COVID-19 for saving people from influenza while it continues to kill many, you cannot help but be alarmed by the absurdity. The co-anchor says, "We should have realized how risky it is to touch people," and you are instantly reminded of the shortcomings of the system and how the media saved them by sabotaging the dystopia as a bright future. The backdrop layer of this short film can be called the documentation of the failure of the system that was busy serving the elite and forgetting the have-nots across the world, while some people dealt with personal problems to be careless about the bigger picture.

In the end, A Whole New World leaves you confused about whether this was real or reel, and you are supposed to be the judge. Go be one. You can watch the short film on Shortfundly, available with your OTTplay Premium subscription. Stay tuned to OTTplay for more information on this and everything else from the world of streaming and films.

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