In the spirit of trying new things, we review the short film, Goldfish.
We open inside a colorful fish bowl with a
single lonely inhabitant swimming about. It’s a striking visage evoking
tranquility, serenity. A goldfish never has much to worry about. Our main
character in the film tells us of the speculation that goldfish have only a
three-second short term memory. Do they remember where they are from one second
to the next? Is there even a possibility of making connections with such a
short memory? Connections like companionship? Friendship? Love? It’s a dreary
thought you’ll carry with you the next time you walk by those glass tanks at
Petsmart after seeing writer-director Dale Driver’s short film.
Goldfish builds a very complex moral dilemma
over a short runtime, cornering Anna (Lindsay Bennett) into the medical proxy
equivalent of a Mexican standoff. She sits across from the faceless Stephen
Fawkes, discussing their options for dealing with little Rosie’s (Aimee
Branson) condition. As a father to a baby boy, the idea of sitting in that
bleak, sterile room with someone’s necktie staring back at me while discussing
the future of my son’s health is enough to send chills down my spine.
Cleverly constructed on a low budget, Dale
Driver’s little film leaves you with plenty to think on afterward. You don’t
need big budgets for big ideas, and Driver has quite a few. In the process, he
shows tremendous aptitude as a visual storyteller. Many key points and backstory
are briskly filled in with well-placed cutaways and close-ups. The
cinematography by Richard Davis isn’t amazing, but it serves the story well,
and doesn’t distract us even when the telltale signs of shooting on a Canon
DSLR rear their ugly head (there is significant moire and aliasing, even on
faces; this could be due to the filmmaker’s choice of internet codec, as this
short was viewed on Vimeo in HD).
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| "No. We can't afford another fish. I'll buy you a box of crackers." |
Goldfish isn’t a film that explains
everything, and that’s both a strength and a weakness. While the core story is
enough to merit a feature film, there are times when Driver’s ambition gets
ahead of his material. One particular moment jumps the shark by shoehorning a
futuristic sci-fi element into a story where it’s completely unnecessary, and —
quite oddly — the scenes that should resonate the most are the weakest moments
technically. The mother and daughter together on the playground vista is
visually arresting, but the cutesy stuff shot around their house just looks
like video someone would shoot at home. There are also some stylistic choices
to do with the presentation of the Doctor (Fawkes) that were abandoned. While I
understand the motivation to inject some humanity, the faceless voice approach
works so well in the opening scenes that the reveal of Stephen Fawkes’ face
robs the latter half of much intrigue.
By the time the credits rolled, I found
myself asking what I would do. When trapped between a rock and a bubbling air
filter standing in as a hard place, fueled by fear and love, people are capable
of making decisions that sway far askew from our usual path. One of the
strengths of Driver’s script is that he doesn’t provide us with any real coda,
but instead asks us — and Anna — to think about the consequences of making
those calls for the people we love. We would like to hope that we wouldn’t make
them selfishly.
Score
-Blake O. Kleiner
