NETFLIX VOIR VIDEO ESSAY BEAUTIFUL LOVE LETTER TO JAWS
Voir, a new Netflix series that are visual essays about the love of cinema, featured Jaws in its opening episode.
It's a film that for many entwines both love and cinema and its power only grows stronger with each passing year. Chewing the fat about the first summer blockbuster was Sasha Stone in her beatiful essay, entitled Summer of the Shark.
Sasha says: "On June 20th one movie opened that changed everything, not just the future of Hollywood, but the lives of an entire generation. I know, because I was there.
"It was not just a movie. It was THE movie... The Year was 1975, and that movie was Jaws."
She narrates a joyous video essay, which features a combination of scenes from the film such as Chrissie's attack, complete with cutaways to people covering their faces with their hands, Ben Gardner's head, and the estuary victim scene.
And we get some wonderful recreations of the then 10-year-old Sasha taking in the Steven Spielberg classic for the first time.
It's like The Wonder Years meets Cinema Paradiso, with some spot on homages to the classic 1975 shark film, weaved into the narrative, that just make you beam with delight.
And it sucks you in, because although this is about Sasha in Topanga, this isn't just her story about Jaws, it also very much feels like our story of discovering Jaws and - like Quint at the end of the film - it never letting us go.
We discover how Sasha and her sister were dropped off for first show, and their mom wouldn't have to pick them up until after the last showing, Sasha and her sister wound up seeing Jaws at least 40 times that summer.
That's how you do Jaws. You can't help but smile at those 1970s theater recreations as they watch key scenes in the film unfold.
We also discover that the movie was an escape from the violence they encountered at home from their mom's partner.
Amity Island became their island, them jumping at the chance to recreate Chrissie's death anytime they were near the water and a treehouse on their backyard becoming the Orca. And The Jaws Log by Carl Gottlieb was their Bible.
They became shark experts and got their hands on Super 8 cameras so they could make their own movies.
Sasha said: "After that nothing would ever be the same, not summers, not movies, not beaches, and not me."
And so say all of us.
Jaws fans and film fans should check out this heartfelt video essay, which encapsulates so much about growing up in 1975, so much about being a Jaws fan, so much that we can all relate to. And it does it all with great aplomb in just over 17 minutes. Sasha's essay is simply stunning.
She said: "As much as I loved Jaws then, I was not capable of fully understanding the complexities of the characters, or the mastery of the film making at 10-years-old, maybe not even at 20.
"But if yow watch a movie enough times, you start to notice things. The more times I watched it, the closer I looked. The closer I looked the more I saw, things I didn't catch the first 30 times.
"With each new discovery, it was like a whole new movie appeared. It was the ridiculous and the sublime, the exhilaration.
"Steven Spielberg serving up unflinching terror and child-like wonder in one perfectly composed shot after another. His whole creative team firing on all cylinders.
"Jaws comes alive in all the senses. You smell it, you hear it, you taste it, you live it. And the second it was over, I want to get right back in line for more."
Sound familiar to anyone who is a Jaws fan? Sasha's dive beneath the surface of the impact of Jaws on her and her life reveals that for many of us Jaws has been a constant companion in our lives and helped get us through good times and bad. It's a familiar friend, and as we change our perception of it changes after we've let it breathe for a little while.
After all, Amity, as we know, means friendship.
Discover Sasha's video essay on Jaws and its lasting impact in Voir, now showing on Netflix.
Words by Dean Newman
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