"Porcelain Unicorn" is a short film that introduces us to an elderly gentleman who flashes back to a time during World War II in war-torn Germany. The flash back begins with him and his friends breaking into an abandoned building. While there, he discovers a young Jewish girl who has hidden herself from the German Nazi's. The boy's reaction during this brief encounter could be considered paradoxical to the common belief system that was taught during that period of time. In this paper, I will discuss the perspective of the elderly gentleman and the correlating relationships of values that support that perspective.
The film begins with an elderly man, dressed in a suit, walking down the sidewalk of a quaint neighborhood. Tucked away in his right arm is a box. The camera zooms in on the box and the tight embrace of the man suggests that this box holds some significance and that he values its contents. In his left hand is a piece of paper with an address on it. As he is walking, he glances up at the numbers on the different houses. He is searching for one particular house. He soon discovers its whereabouts and he slowly walks up the stairs to the front door. He pauses. Once again the camera zooms in on the small box, suggesting its importance. The man's ambivalent facial expression leads one to believe that he is uncertain in his actions. He hesitates to ring the doorbell. Perhaps he knows that once he does he will be vulnerable. This leads me to believe that he values impunity. He is wary of the negative .
consequences that ringing the doorbell might entail.
The elderly man looks at the front window. He begins to have a flash back to a time when he was a young boy. The setting is Germany in 1943. The scene takes place during the time that the Holocaust was taking place. The Holocaust was the mass murder or genocide of approximately six million Jews. The boys are wearing uniforms suggesting they are part of a German military school.