'Patriot': Analyse af kortfilm om racisme og social arv

The short film starts with a little girl called Hannah singing in a back garden and a bunch of people listening to her. There are England flags everywhere and even on the people’s shirts. After the song. Hannah’s dad and some other men go into a room to talk about the demonstration they are doing later in London. Hannah is kicked out of the room, which irritates her, and she rides off on her bike. She ends up in a trailer park where she meets a boy. Their first encounter ends up in Hannah being mean towards him. But the boy is persistent and chooses to follow Hannah, where he finds a common interest in boxing between them. They were having a good time until Jack, one of the patriots from earlier sees them together and tells Hannah to get back home. Right after Jack had spotted the two together the boy runs back to his trailer while Hannah runs after him and ends up knocking him out with a metal pipe. Hannah gets scared and confused and runs back home and reunites with her dad and the others.

C2: Analytical essay

The movie’s setting is set in a classic neighbourhood in England, which fits well with the characters opinions and views, since they are patriots. There is also a trailer park outside the town where the boy lives as seen when Hannah runs of. The movie’s focus or main themes are racism, social heritage, and patriotism. These themes are showed multiple times throughout the movie. For example patriotism, which is a feeling of national pride, love and a sense of attachment to your homeland is already shown in the very first scene of the movie, with a close-up shot of Hannah where she is singing a song about ‘England’s green and pleasant lands’ with the England national flag being shown everywhere in the background (00:19). One of the other concurring focuses is racism, which also easily can be associated with patriotism. An example of this could be Hannah and Jack’s relationship with the boy from the trailer park. The boy is multiple times told that he should go back to his own country and called the condescending word ‘gypsy’ by both Jack and Hannah (04:33) and (08:46). The reason why the word ‘gypsy’ is considered racist is because it is used to describe Romani people with the implication that they are dishonest and thieves. The last focus the movie has is social heritage, which is very clearly shown through Hannah. This is most clear to see when the boy and Hannah are playing in the field and the boy is sitting on top of Hannah (08:21). In this scene the framing is set to a close-up of both Hannah and the boy, where you can see how happy they both are, even though they are supposed to be enemies. Shortly after Jack shows up in his car where the social heritage really comes in the spotlight. Hannah jumps up and looks down in the ground like she has done something wrong, with the boy standing in the background looking confused to her sudden change (08:51). This scene shows perfectly how her upbringing have had a huge impact on how she looks at other people, since she changed into the person she was brought up to be, in the exact moment Jack showed up instead of breaking the pattern of social heritage and standing by who she truly is. The conflict of the story is Hannah’s entire encounter with the boy. From Hannah meeting him for the first time to the point where she hits him in the head with the pipe. This entire encounter helps Hannah get a better understanding of the people she has been brought up to hate and reconsider her opinion about them. This is shown well in the ending scene of the movie, where Hannah is sitting in the bus with the other patriots who are singing the England song from the very first scene. In this scene you can see that Hannah is not singing along with the others while also looking quite sad. (12:46 - 13:44).