Strange Short Film

Short films are straight forward and to the point, but this short film fails to understand.  "Isabella & The Pot of Basil" interprets the original poem with fair accuracy.  Many scenes of the original poem were reenacted to the pristine merits of John Keats' work. 

An odd beginning in the film with multiple references to Elvis' death set a murky tone to the rest of the film.  Elvis does not relate to John Keats or Isabella one bit, but the film makers find it important to include the reference through out the entire production. 

As the film continues, confusion flourishes as each minute passes.  An attempt of adding modern twists to the film just makes it confusing and hard to understand.  "Isabella & The Pot of Basil" does not do justice for the masterpiece written by John Keats.

In the poem, the setting takes place in Italy, by the beach. Sweet Isabella lives in a glorious mansion with her two older brothers.  However the movie interprets the setting with a different vision.  Isabella comes from a family of wealth, but in the movie she is seen cooking eggs in a small kitchen. 

Her house in the film resembles a house from the fifties not one of a wealthy Italian.  The poem describes her house as a giant mansion with servants and maids everywhere.  If Isabella has maids and servants, then she should not have to cook her own eggs. 

The most confusion came from the fact that the brothers lived in a closet.  There was never any mention of that in the poem and no factual reason for them to be placed there during the film.  Another puzzling film scene was whenever Isabella fed her brothers fried eggs. 

Some of the additional scenes added to the film makes absolutely no sense and has no connection to the poem.  The brothers' gas masks just call for even more thoughts and questions of why someone would ever watch the film.  One of the brothers had creepy black nails that would frighten anyone.  Black nails and creepy gas masks combined together with some evil laughs were never mentioned in Keats' poem.  Keats intended for dark tale of love, but he never would have pictured the film featured above.