The Lost Thing

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Review and Response by Natalie Jakacic

One "ordinary" day, a young boy named Shaun finds a bizarre looking "thing" on the beach while he's collecting bottle tops (like you do). He soon realiases that the "thing" is lost, and abandons his daily activies to go find the place where it belongs. However, Shaun and the "thing" are met with indifference, the people of his city barely even realiasing that the "thing" is there. For reasons he does not explain, the boy feels sorry for the creature, and sets out to find a "place" for the "thing", because everyone and everything must belong somewhere, right?

Synopsis

What I thought about this short film....

This short film really makes you think about things you haven't thought about before. Will the world really be like that in the future? Will everyone be so caught up in their work that they won't notice the most obvious thing right in front of their eyes? Will everything be grey? Well, we can only hope for a rainbow, and in this case, it's Shaun. The world is certainly headed in this direction, but we can surely stop it. I think this short film symbolises that all we need is one person to find the door to that other world where everything is bright and happy and everything and everyone has a place and belongs. At the end of this short film, Shaun says "I still think about that lost thing from time to time. Especially when I see something out of the corner of my eye that doesn't quite fit. You know. Something with a weird, sad, lost sort of look. I see that kind of thing less and less these days. Maybe there aren't many lost things anymore. Or maybe... Maybe I've just stopped noticing them. Too busy doing other stuff, I guess." Different people would interpret that different ways, but I take it to mean that Shaun has been surrounded by people who don't look at the world with wonder and awe for so long, that he's started to become one of them. Which is quite sad, really. I hope this never happens...

Fun Facts!~ "The Lost Thing" was directed by Andrew Ruhemann and the author himself, Shaun Tan.~ The short film came out on June 3, 2010.~The film goes for 15 minutes.

"The Lost Thing" is a 15-minute short film based on the well-acclaimed picture book by Australian author Shaun Tan. It was released on the 3rd of June, 2010. It marks the directorial debut of both Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan. The film took over 3 and a half years to make, and features over 74 indiviual characters and 22 computer generated sets.

Introduction