Tune for Two
2011 · 3m · Sweden
Directed by Gunnar Järvstad
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
An assassin drags his victim into the snowy woods, digs a pit, and prepares to finish the job — but the condemned man wants to go out singing. What follows is a 2-minute-41-second dark-comic mechanism built around a single reversal set to Piero Umiliani's 'Mah Nà Mah Nà'.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Three million views on a two-minute film about an execution. The whole thing is a delivery system for one idea and it works like a watch. Primodrom Produktion AB made something that proves short films should sometimes just be jokes with existential setup — and this is a very good joke.
Two minutes forty-one seconds, one execution, one twist — pure mechanism, no fat. 3.3 million views earned by formal economy alone, and the recontextualization actually works.
Two minutes forty-one seconds, no fat, hinging on a single reversal of an execution premise — and 3.2 million views are testifying that the mechanism still works. Pure clockwork.
Reviews
Well shot, brilliantly acted and totally unexpected — almost feels like a perfect short.
A dark comedy with an unexpected twist you may not see coming, but you will find it quite amusing.