Boo Junfeng puts new steps into old tunes with Flight. One who has watched his films will find familiar the army boy polishing his boots (a troubled one at that), the fatherly figure with a strange affinity for the defence forces, people all around whose rigid ways mimick the rules-obssessed system and that final plane flight at the end that seemed uncannily similar to the award-winning Keluar Baris by Boo. Even the dilemma of duty and personal calling rings a familiar echo.
Flight is another short film made under the CREATE Film Festival, again bound by the agenda of Create Tomorrow SG, which is of course to make engineering cool or at least allow everyone to uncover the engineer in them. Jeremy grew up with stories told by his dad about how planes fly, without knowing that his dad harboured hopes of him riding the plane one day. During the his military coming-of-age, Boo borrows the familiar situation of the army aptitude test to depict Jeremy's inner conflicts. By subverting the typical expectations around the aptitude test and how most are likely to want this 'key-to-a-high-paying-career-as-a-pilot' opening, Boo gives a new spin on an old issue and he does it with narrative economy and subtlety.
While Boo achieves credible little moments throughout the film, the film really 'took flight' with the final scene in which a plane roared across the sky over the two characters separated by ideals that fail to meet. The duality of the engine's blast, in the way it represented 2 different aspirations, brought the film to a ponderous end, which, thankfully does not place a judgement on who or rather which aspiration is right.
Written by Jeremy Sing