Director Monica Stromdal provides “Fliphouse Americana” poverty documents in America. Cheap pottery, ongoing motives where many people are forced to live when they cannot withstand the costs of better housing. For the first time in the documentary, STRUNDAHL spent many years on the tour of such places in America and taking pictures of its residents. Then she met Michal, who tells her story at “Flophose America”, and decided that the shots were not enough. Since he was below the legal age while filming the shots, movie makers have waited to become adult to obtain his approval to share his story.
The director’s insistence on digital photography adds to the splendor of the images, which makes it deeply real. With the opening of the film, the non -emotional voice is actually participating statistics about children with poverty and abuse of parents and alcohol addiction in the United States, where the numbers are flashing in a simple white text on a black screen. Then a young man appears in front of the microphone, saying: “I am one of them.”
He was photographed over a period of three years when he was 11 years old, and Michal appears while living in one room with his parents and a cat. They sleep on the bed, while taking the sofa, separated with a flimsy curtain. The bathroom doubles as a kitchen, and a pelvis is full of dirty dishes. The Strädahl camera captures the suffocating proximity in which this family lives, and the frame is always near the faces of the three heroes and the walls of the small space. Even the fur that was watered by the cat seems to occupy a lot of space.
The film creates drama from informal events. Early, a lot of noise is provided about the possibility of purchasing new shoes for Michal. His mother, Tonya, continues to talk about a trip to the mall. Michal promised that he would happen as soon as his father, Jason, returned from work. Michal only responds mono, which is his lack of interest. It is not surprising, that Jason appears late, after spending the day of drinking in a bar. The camera remains on Michal, where it takes his disappointment, with an abundance of the same position that happened before and will continue to repeat himself.
When Tonia and Jason begins a loud battle, and they throw each other in front of Michal, we feel the unable of fear phobia and Michal to escape. These arguments are fixed in the movie. Michal, Tonia and Jason evil, screaming and tearing sordid facts on each other. Michal fails in school. Tonya drinks too much and is packed most of the time. Jason goes to work and is exhausted to join Benajin Tunia. Cigarette smoke fills the small space. None of them can take any step without realizing the other two, adding to stress.
In the middle of the film, Michal’s relationship with his mother is there, while Jason is a more peripheral figure, and he is an ineffective judgment between two warring parties, who managed to negotiate only on temporary pieces. When Michal pleaded his parents to stop drinking because he may lose his mind, the lens picks up his pain. He expresses his frustration very clearly to his parents, as he found words that exceed the years of his youth.
STRUNDAHL has a smart framing, using natural light (coming from fluorescent light lights) and long -fixed shots that allow the work to be revealed without interruption. When the tragedy strikes remain – and how you cannot – the director remains a honest and honored at a distance. While showing the pain, the camera felt the investigation and intervention. When showing sadness and loss, it opens a small area of suffocation.
Although we never hear or see Strämdahl, it is one at one time and is everywhere. Some scenes are very raw, difficult to imagine a camera, not to mention another person. A few conversations seem turbulent or wrong, including those in which adults try to protect how they failed to accomplish the American dream.
Although “Flophouse America” may be a difficult sale outside the cinematic embrace environments, it deserves a much wider audience. It is a sharp, unrealistic and realistic image of a topic that sees the masses, especially in the United States, many. This is a film that shows what poverty can bring and that it lives close to many while most of them remains unaware of it.