Human Beings Helping Other Human Beings Is The Crux Of The Beautiful Short Term 12

I tend to think of myself as a Timely Timothy, but man, I can also be such a procrastinator if I don't keep my innately lazy tendencies in check. Delaying stuff I need to get done has come back to bite me plenty of times, but man, I feel like a real loser for managing to put off watching the 2013 indie drama Short Term 12 for so long. Once I missed this one's theatrical release, it somehow slipped off my radar over the past few years despite constantly hearing quite positive things about it. Well, I managed to rent it from the library a while back and finally finally finally watched it and oh my God, I am filled with an incredible amount of regret in regards to not watching this movie much sooner than I did.

The majority of Short Term 12 takes place at a group home that serves as a domicile for a large number of troubled or struggling adolescents in their teens. Among the employees running this location are romantically entangled couple Grace Howard (Brie Larson) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr.). The two have a knack for communicating and interacting with the various perturbed individuals they interact with on a daily basis, with Grace's understanding nature and Mason's easygoing personality managing to be just the thing these kids need in order to get through their individual personal struggles.

The script penned by Destin Daniel Cretton (who also directs) unfolds in a naturalistic manner that lets the various predicaments of some of the kids Grace, Mason and the other adults take care of, namely socially isolated new girl Jayden Cole (Kaitlyn Dever) and the trouble soon to be 18 year old Marcus (Keith Stanfield). That's part of the more realistic angle that Short Term 12 takes in telling the struggles both the kids and adults go through in their own lives. People like Jayden or Marcus don't feel like squeaky clean caricatures of what people in their specific situations go through, they're instead raw depictions of young human beings coping with larger circumstances far beyond their own control.

In depicting these characters, Cretton's scripts has this subdued quality to it that eschews large-in-scale monologues or sweeping sequences for more intimate dialogue exchanges that reveals the vulnerabilities of all the players involved in this plot. Just look at the scene where Grace is comforting Jayden in an isolated room after she's had a breakdown. The camera keeps itself close to the characters, the score takes a back seat so it doesn't distract from the dialogue while the actions of Grace here are about her revealing to both Jayden and the audience her own personal trauma that involved cutting herself when she was younger in order to cope with her own problems with her dad, similar to how Jayden is also cutting herself in response to the actions of her own father.

Grace can't offer a magical fix-it-all solution for the problems Jayden is dealing with because that's now how the real world works. But she can offer Jayden some reassurance that she's not alone in the horrors she's experiencing. That's maybe the most touching thing about Short Term 12, it creates these fully formed characters who do get into plenty of conflict with other players in the story, but when all is said and done, it's mainly a tale of damaged human beings coming to terms with the individual issues that plague their lives as well as the fact that they may not have to go through this ordeal alone.

The subdued depiction of human beings helping other people is such a beautiful aspect of Short Term 12 while the plenty of instances that we get glimpses into the psyches of the kids staying here is similarly both unflashy and incredibly powerful, especially one sequence where Marcus harmonizes about what it's like to live in his own world where he's never known "what a normal life's like". As the camera lingers on a close-up of Keith Stanfield's performance, all done in one take, you can feel your breath being taken away by the sight of this previously withdrawn character opening himself up and revealing the battered soul underneath his tortured exterior. The power of this performance leaves
Mason speechless and I'd be totally lying if this scene didn't have a similar effect on me.

Keith Stanfield (who just had a memorable turn in Get Out earlier this year) is just one of the numerous members of this ensemble cast that gets the chance to shine. John Gallagher Jr. is incredibly likable and charming in his performance while Kaitlyn Dever exudes all sorts of authentic pain in the role Jayden. And then, of course, there's Brie Larson, in her first lead role and one that shows, between this and Room, she probably is one of the most talented younger actors out there right now, she's so so good in whatever this movie calls her to do. When she's interacting with Jayden in her most downtrodden moments, you totally get how much Graces cares for these kids while trying to grapple with her multitude of personal problems allows Larson to explore a more wounded side of the character in an engrossing manner. It's an incredible performance in a tender sweet movie and here's to hoping others do the opposite of me and seek out Short Term 12 as soon as humanely possible. It's a beautiful tale of the very real pain internal turmoil brings while also reminding us of the very real human beings that can help us cope with that exact same pain.