But would you make all these inferences if the ad were not Russian?
I could see the same kind of brutal “care for your kids, dammit” movie made by several different nationalities, in much the same way. This actually reminds me of “A Christmas Carol” in that a supernatural character is acting as a guide to remind someone, in a harsh way, about what really matters in life.
‘Charming’ must mean something very different where you’re from?
Sure, this would make a great movie. But does this scream “our bank cares, give us your money” to you?
It tells the oligarchs that if they just allowed the bank to take care of their fortunes and paid more attention to their kids that they won’t have to be held by a crazed former senior KGB official with delusions of being santa risking possible death in the frozen wilds.
It’s a lesson all the 0.0000001% could stand to learn.
Perhaps. But it’s no different than appreciating a Coca-Cola or Chevy commercial; the corporation that sponsored the ad can tack their name on at the end, but that doesn’t mean the gist of the film is “our bank cares, give us your money.”
I wonder how English subtitles would change my perception of this video.
Daddy’s gone due to terminal cirrhosis. That’s last year’s commercial.
Santa doesn’t exist, only the spirit thereof, which is rekindled in the lady who finds her daughter’s drawing of her Christmas wish, and even though it is the hardest thing she’s ever put herself through, she goes on a journey of self discovery to find the place where she can reconnect with her child, fulfilling that wish.
But yeah, Santa is real and abducts a powerful woman, subjugating her until she falls in line with his paternalistic philosophy, and having so internalised the object of her oppression dies in the cold thinking at last of the daughter she always loved even though she never showed it.
Srsly.
until all the publishers meddled with the texts as they wanted nice happy stories for nice happy children. a typical German book of fairytales has (nearly) only happy endings, one has to painstakingly look for the Real Thing in print
Most of them, at least. The surveillance part of the video was heavy-handed. The woman screaming while being driven away in a locked car, then dragged along to an unknown location while tied up and generally abused was also part of the video. The content outside of culture specific references was heavy on surveillance, abduction, and torture. As for sexism, we’d probably be focusing on that a lot more if it weren’t Russian.
The fish, though, probably not.
“We all know it’s so important to care for your kids. Our pitch is a short film in which a woman’s kidnapped, dragged screaming away from her kids, and then physically and psychologically abused to show just how important that is…”
Yes, well, I did find one. In a bookshop in Hanau, close to the Bruder Grimm Denkmal.
edit - not suitable to bring home for the children.
Rob’s headlines are often sarcastic. I’m not sure he’s ever deployed charming or gentleman literally.
You must think in Russian. Think in Russian!
Latvia is not an international flashpoint yet, you need to wait until after the Trump inauguration for that.
The surveillance part of the video was just a modern update of “he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake”-- the Santa myth has always been about him watching you all the time (I’ll admit it creeped me out as a kid-- “he sees me in the bathroom too?!”) True there was abduction, but I didn’t see any torture (he had to endure the exact same long march as her, in fact it gave him a heart attack.)
Oy vey. Look, it’s basically all a dream-- the little girl asks Grampa Frost to “bring back my mother to me”, and he does it in a very surreal and harsh way-- compare that to the darkness of “A Christmas Carol” where Scrooge witnesses his own death and is horrified at how people rejoice.
I’m not defending the sick reality of surveillance, abduction and torture in our world, but you seem to be saying we can’t have those things in our fiction lest it glorify them.
As I see it, the weirdest thing about the ad is that a bank is making a criticism of this woman’s wealth and success, and asking us to remember “the things that really matter.”
No, really all I’m saying is if you moved the setting to London, NY, or Toronto there’d still be a whole lot of WTF in this video.
Fair enough, some of us like “WTF”, it’s that extra jalapeno in the sandwich, it’s why Black Sabbath is cooler than The Beatles, and why the director’s cut of “Brazil” is the best.
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