Free Action (1996)

States of Dependence: Free Action

Free Action, an MTV-Europe station identification spot from 1996 and part of the States of Dependence series of social awareness public service announcements based around the network’s trademark “Free Your Mind” advertising slogan, neatly captures the most characteristic elements of the Pärn œuvre in under a minute. It displays Pärn’s graphically simplistic, even primitive, trademark visual style, and his inventive and interesting use of colour, form and line. There are the random, surreal, and often wildly hilarious acts of violence in the situational comedy of the narrative, and there is a distinctive twisted humour and dream-like logic to the protagonist’s circumstances familiar from numerous other Pärn films. Perhaps most importantly, there is the vague sense that, in each of the films, even if it remains elusive, there is an underlying social or political message of some significance; Free Action in particular seems to explore highly politicized themes. Beaten repeatedly on the side of the head by a menacing black object that looks and acts like a malevolent pendulum, Pärn’s clueless punk vents his frustration at the lumpy patch of welts on his face by repeatedly slamming his head against the object once it has come to a stop. While the segment appears to champion the idea of retaliating against oppression and brutality, the ostensible hero’s ineffectual attempts at revenge tend to undermine the popular idea that there is an implicit heroism in the individual’s struggle against the forces of tyranny. In essence Pärn has shown a typically confused, emotional, inglorious, and very human reaction which provokes a giggle and even, perhaps, a shudder of recognition. Free Action documents the overpowering urge to strike out physically at the source of an injustice, no matter how imprudent such an impulse may be. Pärn’s is a world in which the righteous may also be fools, something that makes his condemnation of repression strangely, though somehow appropriately, ambiguous.

Nicholls, C. (2005). (Very) Short films by Pärn. States of Dependence: Free Action (2005). Metro Cinema Publications Number Two, March, lk 23.