The short film – You or Me represents a story of a man with dissociative identity disorder (DID) or previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD). He has multiple identities, but always one is dominated by the behavior and emotions like there are no “others”. One of his personalities is full of rage and wants him to do the atrocious things, to hurt himself and to hurt others, commit sexually abusive acts and never seek for help of others or the doctors. Convincing him that the help is in vain that the bad personality will win and completely take over. Other personality is trying to stay what we presume normal or moral. That personality is screaming for help deep inside and is trying to stay in the light. He seeks help in medications and alcohol. When everything finally seems normal, and the dark personality is gone, a third mysterious personality unveils. We can only guess what does that personality represents.
After the whole film is consumed by the watcher it leaves the question, what caused this state of mind? Why are two other personalities there?
By what is depicted while the main character has a flash of images in his head, the cause of his illness is not completely clear, but it could be guessed. Was he a victim of sexual abuse when he was younger? Was that the reason that led to the need to separate the fear and the pain that he was feeling? That could be the case, so he created a defensive mechanism in his mind that lead to creating different personalities with different aspects than the first personality. By doing so each of the personalities are expressing some of the emotions: rage, sexuality, peace. All of the emotions that the first personality could not have possible express.
Director (Yana Zinov) made a huge success in presenting this type of mental illness, the script (Drew Schrum) was a step forward for making this short film great and actor (Drew Schrum) delivered it to the public impressively. Paranoia, anti-sociality, anxiety, denial of reality, sometimes even schizophrenic attacks and obsessive-compulsive disorder are present during the whole movie. With every passing second, it is possible to feel the current emotions of the character and the struggle or the pressure that is going on in his head. Massive explosions and reactions that are storming in the mind of the character are depicted beautifully. In some way the film is strongly transferring the emotions to the public which makes it completely scary and wonderful at the same time.
One thing about one of the messages that this short film is delivering should make the watcher even more scared. Any of us who had a huge emotional stress in the past can be suffering from the same illness the fictional character if suffering from. No-body can know that they are suffering from dissociative identity disorder because the consciousness is separated which means that if we have multiple personalities we ourselves cannot be aware of that.