Synopsis
A plastic bag, thrown out in the trash, attempts to find his way back to his owner and along the way discovers the world.
Plastic Bag
2009 Directed by Ramin Bahrani
Director
Producers
Writers
Editor
Cinematography
Executive Producers
Production Design
Art Direction
Composer
Studios
Country
Language
Alternative Titles
Punga de plastic, 塑料袋
Genre
Releases by Date
Premiere
-
Italy
Releases by Country
Italy
07 Sep 2009
- Premiere
Popular reviews
More-
"Did my maker exist or have I created her in my mind? Why was my moment of joy so brief? And yet, like a fool, I still have hope I will meet her again. If I do I will tell her just one thing: 'I wish you had created me so that I could die.'"
Absurdist surrealist eco-satire, by way of the POV of one of mankind's worst creations, that is profoundly sad and much more effective than it should be. God bless Herzog, The Great Bavarian, and his accent as his narration makes this an almost entrancing ASMR experience unto itself.
-
Werner Herzog voices the inner monologue of a paper bag. What else do I need to say?
Obviously, this is the highlight. His self-aware, heightened narration is just delightful - as he refers to dogs as beasts and horses as bigger beasts. However, this is also just a beautiful little film about the impact of our everyday wasteful actions.
This film follows a paper bag, we hear its thoughts, as it ends up being used by a person before being thrown away. This is framed like a lost, and no longer requited, love - with a well written narration that sells the narrative and the metaphor.
The bag goes to landfill and then flies around through various locales. Its persistent…
-
this is all of my despair about parting with inanimate objects
and desperation to let them know i love them
and appreciate them
that they did a good job
that we'll see each other again when the stars fall from the sky and the moon turns red over one tree hill
also all that for people too
-
Bonus feature on the My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done disc:
Well, I never expected to find such a beautiful, poetic short from the POV of a plastic bag.
Rating: 7.5/10
-
Werner Herzog can even make an environmental disaster like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch seem like it's the logical by-product of an indifferent, uncaring universe.
-
Werner Herzog's Bavarian accent makes every film a better one, so it's no wonder Plastic Bag posses a kind of magic and spell over its viewers. Following the complicated life of the titular object, this strangely beautiful and eerie film is at once humorous and dramatic, weird and realistic. In it, director Ramin Bahrani adds a layer of humanity and existentialism to the film's core environmental message. While doing it, the sharp editing and the forgettable score play discreetly alongside, but fail to create a more idiosyncratic atmosphere (or if that wasn't the goal, then a more dramatic one). It's a competently made feature without much rewatch value, but the unique narration and the important subject matter make it a little gem.
-
It’s like a Shel Silverstein book narrated by Werner Herzog. A beautiful film about one of man’s ugliest of creations.
“For once I myself saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her ‘Sibyl, what do you want?; she replied, ‘I want to die.’” — The epigraph to T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” taken from the Satyricon of Petronius
-
-
omg this is what katy perry meant when she sang "do you ever feel just like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again".
-
Takes the plastic bag scene from “American Beauty” and runs with it to make a live-action Pixar short film that can be described as an absurdist art film satire with a sincere eco message. I love how the short film finds the right balance between being amusing and tongue-in-cheek and genuinely artistic and affecting. Werner Herzog is one of cinema´s greatest narrators and a world treasure (his humor and self-awareness concerning his persona really shines through here). I guess I have to check out more of Ramin Bahrani´s work.
-
Werner Herzog in his most daring role to date as a plastic bag
Genuinely hilarious, strangely beautiful and surprisingly thought provoking. This is a short that WAY more people should know about and I recommend it to everyone. Love love love love it.
-
I've long held that there's not a thing in this world the dulcet Bavarian tones and sombre philosophising words of Werner Herzog can't make seem extraordinarily beautiful. Ramin Bahrani—an allegedly excellent filmmaker whose features I shall now do my all to seek out—puts that thesis to the test in having Herzog voice a lost plastic bag, flapping through the wind in search of its apathetic owner. It should be silly. It should be surreal. In a sense, it is. What it also is, however, is deeply and profoundly moving, the gradual way Bahrani weighs the tragedy of this bag—I cannot believe I just wrote that—making it a more engaging character, and its journey a more emotionally absorbing one, than most movies ever manage to muster. How extraordinary.
You can, and should, watch the (18 minute) film here.