Rating of
3.5/4
An inquiry of tenderness.
memento_mori - wrote on 01/17/14
If there is a singular word to define this movie and all it has to offer, then it's 'natural'.
I love it when I struggle to begin a review, looking for the right words and struggling to process an interlude to a lot of praise aimed at a particular film. Because it reminds me of the warm state this extraordinary film left me in.
Pitching one of the greatest screenplays I have seen in years, Short Term 12 warmed my heart to the highest degree, and involved me in its story as a viewer like no other film of last year has.
The acting is superb, shouting authenticity and cleverly jointed one-liners and irony around every corner. The ways these actors worked off each other makes it hard to believe that anything in this movie was even scripted.
The direction blends the perfect amount of skill and emphasis needed to drive the story forward. No over-done atmosphere or lighting, just natural settings and visual delicacy throughout.
I mean what I said before about the screenplay, I truly think this film deserved an Oscar nomination in that category.
It's thought-provoking as it is open-minded and clever, it shows us embodiments of people most likely all of us have met before. It explores entire areas of our intellectual thinking. It shows us how people who are privileged and underprivileged and everything in-between feel, how at the bottom of it all, we do all feel the same sometimes.
It's incredibly honest and offers so much interpretation. And it's simply correct. Some people don't get better when you console them, some people do relapse and shatter their conscience and sanity every day. All of these themes are implicitly taken at heart in this movie and I absolutely adored that.
This is a film that had me lost in the limbo of its heartbreaking and heart-warming little spectrum. I loved every single frame of it, because it is the exact result of how to properly use the medium of film to your advantage, and bring across a point. And that point was expressed so well, I just want to give the director a hug.
