Refused Reflection
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Refused Reflection.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
A man stands at a tarnished mirror. His face and the face in the glass are already out of agreement: his mouth is closed, the glass mouth is slightly open. He waits to see if the glass will close. It does not. He raises a hand. A tall mirror on an iron stand nearby is clean, and in that one the raised hand does not rise. The reflection keeps both hands down. The clean glass is more exact than the tarnished one and still refuses the gesture. He lowers his hand. The tarnished mouth stays slightly open. The clean reflection's hands stay down. Neither glass apologizes by catching up.
He goes to a basin where the water is still enough to be a mirror and presses his hands to it. The reflection breaks into rings and does not gather back into a face. The rings reach the porcelain and die. The water goes still again and shows the ceiling, not his mouth. He returns to the tall glass. A steaming handprint is already on the dark surface. His own hand is still an inch away, still reaching, and then he lets it drop. The print does not fade at the speed of ordinary steam. It holds. His dropped hand does not match it. The print is a left where his reach was a right, or simply a hand that is not currently his.
Farther down the room, a line of hooded figures stands before one large mirror. Their reflections are coats only, with no faces attempted. Hoods in the glass are empty dark. The figures do not push the hoods back to force a face. Beside the man's stand, stacked papers and a radio sit in the dry room. The radio is silent. Snow shows in his glass, falling through a place the room does not have. The snow does not pile on the iron stand. It exists only in the reflection.
His hands stay at his sides. The reflection's hands stay in its pockets. Snow continues in the mirror, and none of it lands on the papers. The papers stay dry. The radio stays silent. The steaming print on the tall glass slowly loses its edge and does not disappear before he looks away from it and back. The tarnished mouth stays open a fraction. The basin, still again, keeps the ceiling. The hooded line keeps its coat-only reflections. He does not raise a hand a second time to see if any glass has changed its mind.
The room stays dry where he stands and wintry only in the glass. No flake crosses onto the stacked papers. No face fills a hooded reflection. The refused gestures remain refused: mouth, hands, and a print that arrived before the hand. He remains with his hands at his sides, and the mirrors continue to keep a version of the room the room itself will not perform.