1. Explain the title: The Invention of Love

2. What does the music transmit to you personally?

3. What is the theme of the short film? Explain.

4. What is the subject-matter of the film?

5. What characters are there? Portray them (typology, round/flat, static/dynamic, positive/negative, complex etc)

6. What are the expectations of the characters? Are they similar or different? Explain. What impact does this have on their re-lationship/ the story?

7. What happens to the woman in the end? Why?

8. What is the man guilty of? To what extent?

9. How is it constructed in terms of imagery, sound, color, plot? Is it effective?

10. What is the main message? Could you phrase it in one sen-tence?

The woman does not necessarily die…it is her hope, her dreams, her true nature that die.

It is an absurd title. Love cannot be invented, it happens. Just like lightning forks, from heaven to earth. For everything else, there is a choice. But not for love.

The music speaks of broken wings, of loss and despair. It speaks of how easily people can lose themselves, how easy it is to fail to see what life truly means. The music is premonitive right from the start. It foreshadows something dark, although there is an element of romanti-cism in it, spelling love. Then it changes, it becomes more triumphant, as the film progresses and everything is shown to be mechanized. Then it grows heavy. After that, in their house, it is light and playful. In the end, sadness returns with the music, which once more speaks of loss. There is a music-less fragment, which enables us to get an insight into the silence that has started to rip the woman’s soul apart. Her breath is the only thing we hear. The music forms a circle that cannot be broken.

The theme is life and the importance of little things that we usually fail to see.

The subject-matter: an inventor is trying to make a woman fall in love with him. He succeeds and the two get married. He shows her the wonders of the modern world as it evolves into a technologized society where everything is mechanied, but all she really wants is simple, un-tainted love. She gradually gets horrified by the changes around her and by the lack of natu-ralness and fades away. The movie ends with the man building a mechanized version of the woman he has lost.

There are several characters making themselves felt throughout the film.

The man, representing new age, the woman, representing the quest for innocence and purity, the flower, symbol of love, the dog, symbol of everything getting perverted -of change in its most cruel sense.

The conflict and tragic ending arise from the clashing expectations of the characters. While she seeks simplicity and love for love's sake, he wishes to offer her the best but does that in a way that destroys her. She fails to understand the new world, and that spells her end. Lack of adaptability is what she is guilty of, while he makes himself guilty of pride- the pride of being in the limelight, of becoming famous, sacrificing everything and everyone around.

The way in which the woman lies down and dies represents refusal to fight any longer. She feels that she does not belong in this world anymore- a world that is so painfully and utterly different from her expectations. Thus, she vanishes like smoke ( which, after all, is presented several times in the movie)

The man is guilty of pride and blindness. He is also guilty of weakness.

The story has an immensely powerful moral message, one that never ceases to be actual: bid yourself time. Love the ones around. Look for the simple things. Be generous in giving your time to the ones around you. Forget about mod cons and materialism. They will not make you as happy as you think. Beware, for when you lose someone, they are lost forever. There is no going back. You cannot invent love, just reinvent it. Machines are cold, people are warm. And we need warmth, just like we need air.