30 for 30 — 2013: "Short Term 12"
"You're not their therapist, you're not their parent. You're here to create a safe environment for them and that's it."
What’s this all about? I turned 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m watching one movie a day for 30 days and spending 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2013. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012
Not a lot of people know this, but I was a social work minor in college. My 20-year-old college student logic for this was airtight: Most of the classes were project-based and relatively easy, which meant they would be a boon to my struggling GPA and help fulfill my graduation requirements. I figured learning about social services in the community would also help me in my eventual journalism career. And I was often the only guy in most of my classes, which was a no-brainer, especially at a university that at the time was hovering around the 3:1 female to male student ratio.
So, I walked into my sophomore year classes ready to ace some tests and score some dates, and left with a larger appreciation for social workers and a greater knowledge of just how far we’ve come, and how far we have yet to go (especially in Fort Worth) in regards to social equity and equality. And, thanks to a two-semester cluster of classes the students dubbed “Womb to Tomb,” I also learned a lot about the full spectrum of the human experience.
That class was where I read “Man’s Search For Meaning” for the first time, a text I go back to a lot, and the lessons I learned from that field of study still stick with me today. The most important lesson is the simplest one: Whether you’re a kid or an adult, everyone just wants to be understood.
“Short Term 12” is a life-affirming, gut punch of a movie primarily about that kind of understanding. It takes place in a fictional short-term group home for at-risk youth, where Grace (Brie Larson), a young supervisor, is still trying to figure out her own life as she helps out wayward teens.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton wrote and adapted the film from his own short film of the same name, based on his time working at youth shelters. Filming took less than a month from September-October 2012 in California with a mostly then-unknown cast that has now become a who’s who of talent: Larson, John Gallagher, Jr., LaKeith Stanfield, Kaitlyn Dever, Rami Malek, Stephanie Beatriz. The cast now includes two Oscar winners (Larson, for “Room,” and Malek, for “Bohemian Rhapsody”) and another nominee (Stanfield, for last year’s “Judas and the Black Messiah”), and the film served as a launching pad for everyone else.
But at the time of its release, “Short Term 12” was another indie film about a very emotional subject. Grace lives with her boyfriend Mason (Gallagher, Jr.), also a social worker at the shelter. Their days are spent watching over the “family” of kids at Short Term 12 — making sure none of them run off, try to harm themselves or get into any kind of trouble. Grace is pregnant, but Mason doesn’t know. It isn’t until Jayden (Dever) arrives at the shelter that Grace starts to deal with her own relationship with her own parents (her mom is dead and her father sexually abused her and is about to be released from prison) and come to grips with whether she is ready to be a parent at all.
Despite its often bleak subject matter, “Short Term 12” is an ultimately happy movie with a happy ending, saying that it is possible to take joy in life despite your surroundings and despite your circumstances. That doesn’t negate the harsh reality of what these kids (and adults) go through on a daily basis, but it makes the happy moments all the happier.
Its camerawork contributes to the subject matter. Most of “Short Term 12” is shot with a handheld camera, and cinematographer Brett Pawlak utilizes close-ups to great effect. Cretton could have gone much darker with the story and could have been much more cloying with the emotions and subject matter of this film, but it ultimately results in a hopeful, life-affirming ending that mirrors how it began.
I was scared this one wouldn’t hold up upon a rewatch, but I was surprised at how much I still deeply felt everything happening on screen, even though my own experience is nothing like what I saw on screen. Movies, man. Empathy. Empathy and understanding.
Up next: We’re talking all about time and growing up with 2014’s “Boyhood.”
Letter of Recommendation
Much of Cretton’s filmography deals with the theme of family, most recently the excellent “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” Check it out when it comes to Disney+ on November 12.
That’s all, folks. If you liked what you saw here, click that subscribe button (promise I won’t send any annoying emails) and tell all your friends!
This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer, yadda yadda yadda.
If there’s anything you want to see covered in a future newsletter, let me know!
You can find me in other corners of the internet as well, if you so choose. There’s my personal website (which focuses on pop culture, faith and my journalism clips), a Twitter account and a Letterboxd account. Subscribe away.