Plastic Bag (2009)

short film by Ramin Bahrani

Plastic bag film posterThe Maker is a Lady, a beautiful young shopper who is a responsible and even persistent re-cycler of one ratty grocery bag. In this short film the Maker gives the protagonist his first breath, and the Plastic Bag never forgets. The filmmaker, Ramin Bahrani, seduces the viewer to accept the self-conscious bag using the voice of Werner Herzog. Bahrani captures beautiful moments of floating, flying, and swirling landscapes that reveal the plastic bag’s worldview, a life both lonely and disturbing.

You can almost forgive the absurd romanticism in the story since the filmmaker compensates with moody visual delights, setting you free to enjoy this angst-ridden journey, a futuristic tale of one grateful, moving, translucent plastic bag that glistens in the sky and muses upon itself, after seeing his shadow on the earth.

The film reveals little of the real horrors of the oceanic plastic vortex, but may spur  people towards one obvious solution for stemming the growth of the floating Pacific Garbage Patch.  Myself, for the record, I want to know more about the Bag Lady, the Maker, who looks more like me.

FUTURESTATES is a series of groundbreaking digital shorts. Each episode presents a different filmmaker’s vision of American society in the not-too-distant future, fusing an exploration of social issues with elements of speculative and science fiction.