Haven is a short film about a young girl who finds comfort in her mother’s legs, and forum to speak.
I was planning on beginning this post with the usual introduction, something about the themes or narrative devices some director or filmmaker used to tell their story and then break down the movie’s characters and plot, offering come constructive takes on the overall experience. However, even now, some thirty minutes after watching Kelly Fyffe-Marshall‘s monumentally powerful short film Haven, I still seem to be unsettled.
I must tread carefully. It would be a crime to make even the slightest suggestion about what happens in this very short story, a movie that even with opening and closing credits runs just past three and half minutes. What we witness in that short time is remarkable and its final thirty seconds almost indescribable. This is a gut punch with very few equals.
There are only two characters on screen. One is a grown woman played by Tika Simone, a mother sitting on the sofa chatting on the phone while using her laptop. In the room just down the hall, we see her young daughter Jada, played by D’evina Chatrie. She is playing with her dolls. The two soon come together so mom can do her baby’s hair, the daughter taking a usual position in front of the coach between her mother’s outstretched legs. In the background is light acoustic music, which we soon learn is coming from a radio. A DJ comes on and informs that they will be back after a short commercial break. What follows changes everything.
I’m desperately suppressing a passion to write about the impact of this story, simply for those that come here not having seen the film and are wondering what it’s about. I will say that what Fyffe-Marshall does to subvert expectation is nothing short of miraculous. Mom sits in a room that is clearly lived in, a home of warm comforts and built by a couple who have worked hard to provide. Behind her on the wall is a large painting of Jada as an infant in the arms of her father, he gently kissing her forehead. It’s a peaceful and pastoral setting that feels utterly complete. Yet this is a snare. Indeed, there have been few moments more powerful on film this year when the camera cuts close to Jada and she looks back at us.
The short film is traditionally about a pivotal moment, a glimpse into routine that becomes unconventionally shattered, this a running theme in the genre. One of my favorite things about the form is its necessity to be immediate, to be direct and avoid the buffers of support feature films rely on to tell a full story. Audiences are almost always left with important questions, and what’s so impressive about Haven is that it accomplishes this and more in such purposeful brevity. Find this film. Seek it out. Let it change you.
Haven recently screened at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival.