The Land Beyond The Sunset (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #43 extract: The Land Beyond The Sunset (1912)

As direct and simplistic as this is, The Land Beyond The Sunset is a powerful film. With an impressive punch of character, this short contrasts a poor boy's reality with luck and a dream; his reality, selling newspapers on the street, his luck, going on a picnic, and his dream, being able to forever escape his dismal reality. With our final image being a journey towards the horizon, the land beyond the sunset is one of two places. In reality, the end of the day means the end of the child's luck; he is to go back home. There is the dream, however, that one day the child may be able to completely escape impoverishment now that he has glimpsed a better life. And so the powerful melancholy of this film resides within the polar possibilities of what lies beyond the sunset. Where will life see this boy go?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hr0u6KKL_c