Sparklehorse

With “Sparklehorse”, Gariné Torossian returns to the collage style of filmmaking explored in her earlier films, “Visions,” “Girl From Moush,” and “Drowning In Flames.” “Sparklehorse” subtly conveys, with characteristic poetry, the ways in which people communicate with and value each other in a world of spiralling meditation. The film is divided into three distinct sections: “Happy Man,” “Good Morning Spider” and “Hundreds of Sparrows.” “Happy Man” suggests a friendship conducted always at a distance – all of the images are presented using formal distancing techniques such as colour, collage and printing. At the same time the soundtrack combines a “repressed” musical track with the poignant sound of telephone messages: “Call me back when you want your VCR.” The brief second section, “Good Morning Spider,” acts as an interlude, providing variations on a primitive scratched image of a spider with a quiet eerie musical accompaniment. The final section, “Hundreds of Sparrows,” returns to the theme of a (romantic?) relationship. Its image of birds echo the words of the poem/song that is spoken/sung on the soundtrack: “You are worth hundreds of sparrows.”