Hey Mike, this short film might have an implicit, underlying meaning:
The explosion which gave birth to the mystical woman, who then gave the man the potion might be a symbol of… the internet?? HAHA. I don’t know.
He then lived through periods of time, continually growing old, and continually drinking the potion… maintaining his youth, but in a unnatural way.
He sees many things, and accumulates knowledge. A result of him hoarding the potion to himself, is utter loneliness.
He eventually returns to the place where he started. Having lived for all that time, having travelled throughout time itself, having defeated the deity of time, it was all to come back to where he was before. And as a result, it is as if no time has passed at all.
At the end, he comes to the fountain of knowledge itself, where he finds massive amounts of people all around it, swimming in it, drinking from it.
He goes to fill up the glass bottle, trying to take the fountain’s water for himself, and it explodes. The potion then is given to everyone, making everyone younger.
But the old man does not care to hoard his potion for any longer. He’s already seen it all. Plus, I bet he’s pretty sick and tired of living by now.
This film could be an allegory for knowledge, and how we pine for it. And how the “digital” allows us to slip in and out of time space, so to speak. Time passes by the hours, for we also stop time in a way, in that no time passes at all. We spend our lives in front of the screen, a screen that presents to us all these ever growing, ever advancing technologies, new found knowledge, new found facts, new found realities. But at the end of the day, does time really pass us by? Or are we inevitably stagnant as we grow, get younger (in that we our subject to new knowledge, and subsequently are reborn), grow, get younger, etc?
Godbey, Cory. “Le Cadeau du Temps.” Vimeo. N.p., May 2011. Web. 10 May 2017. <https://vimeo.com/4621529>
to be continued.