Jonah (2013) Analysis

Jonah the whale (2013) is a social realistic film and the themes that run throughout this film are regret, friendship, greed, poverty and mistrust. This film was directed by Kibwe Taveres, written by Jack Thorne and starred Daniel Kaluuya, Malchi Kirby and Louis Mahooney and is a short film; the duration of this film is 17mins long. The production companies that distributed this film was the BFI Film Fund and Factory Fifteen and this film was located in Zanzibar, Tanzania.

Mbwana and Juma are best friends that live in a rural village and it this scene the audience disovers the theme of friendship, brotherhood and love. The audience also discovers that they both have big ambitions and dreams. Their dreams hit reality when they capture a picture of huge fish, which gets advertised all over their village, making it a hotspot for tourist attractions. The themes that run throughout this scene are success, popularity and fame. However,  after getting everything he wanted, his dreams aren’t what he dreamed for anymore and when he meets the fish again, it wasn’t a pleasant experience, the whale ate him. The themes that throughout this scenes are regret, death and unhappiness.

The scene where Juma leaves Mbwana, the close up shot of his face, zooming into the eye indicates a flash forward within his eye. This was an indication that time was moving forwards into the future. The camera shot zooms back out the eye and shows Mbwana much older, again this shot was excellent as it gave a clear indication to the audience was time zone they are in.  Furthermore, his older appearance connotes that he is closer to death.  Also, the scene after shows a longshot of what their village looks like; vibrant, full of colours and connoted happiness and enjoyment and then a scene of a panoramic display of what the buildings now look like. The buildings are old, chipped and have half ripped posters; showing the audience a contrast of what the village looks like then and now. This highlights how Mbwana selfish fame has ruined his village.

Furthermore, the scene at the bus stop where everyone went on and left him behind suggests his neglect and how he isn’t importance anymore. This highlights to the audience where fame is short term happiness and doesn’t last forever and now Mbwana is suffering on his own. The next scene is view of how the beach and sea are polluted, which suggests how Mbwana has caused this and his greed has made his village result to this. The use of the cinematography in this film was a major feature to this film as it captures the audience’s attention throughout the film with its flashy images. And the use of diagetic and non-diegetic sound was used throughout the film building up suspense when they captured the picture of the fish and when Mbwana was in the sea catching the fish, highlighting that they’re importance key scenes to this film.