SHIVA BABY

A Film Deep Dive

Emma Seligman takes her seven-and-a-half-minute senior film with the same name and dives deeper when creating her first feature film Shiva Baby. Bringing us as an audience into many different worlds she has either passed by or walked through. Treating us to an interpersonal perspective when watching or maybe even enduring this one-of-a-kind comedy. 

“So you just study and don't eat and go out with your beautiful friends, is that it? Is that your life?” (Seligman 2020)

Shiva Baby highlights so many underlying meanings and concepts of life; as good film does. While also being funny, Sorta bar joke one said. 

Erie Strings play through the opening credits as the sounds of an overharped woman’s moan is heard when we open to an out-of-focus view; meeting two of our characters before they meet us. Girl meets boy perhaps? Eh, Maybe not. I could touch on this obvious & awkward power dynamic felt between the two in this scene but I'll digress and continue for now. After leaving a seemingly dry arrangement with a slightly older man. Dani, who's finishing up her degree in college, walks to meet up with her mom and dad. As instrumentals play at the mood, noticing a shift in our character, her hair natural and tied back as opposed to being straightened from earlier. The music makes a sharp cut as we turn to see a man and a van; Danielle’s dad waves from across the street. Preparing themselves, Her mom asks how she looks several times as Dani wonders what to say regarding her next steps after college. “Just the ketchup and cheese” so to speak.

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