2013’s Short Term 12,
written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton.
Starring Brie Larson, Kaitlyn Dever, LaKeith Stanfield, Rami
Malek, John Gallagher Jr, Stephanie Beatriz, and Melora Walters.
What is it about?
Short Term 12 is a
film about a group of dedicated group home staff, working at a secured
residential care facility, and the at-risk teenagers living there through
placement by child protection social workers. Team Leader Grace (Brie Larson)
leads the squad, with her staff team of Mason (John Gallagher Jr), Jessica
(Stephanie Beatriz), and newcomer Nate (Rami Malek). They have their hands full
with their clients, some about to “age out” like Marcus (LaKeith Stanfield),
and spunky new intake, Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever). While their work provides its
challenges, Grace and Mason are going through a tumultuous time in their
personal lives as a couple, moving past their respective pasts as adults who
themselves were abused as children. Will the centre hold?
Why is it worth seeing?
Group Care is a tranche of the Social Work/Care industry
that involves temporarily taking in children from their home environment, and
placing them in a facility with paid staff. It’s an intense field, with
tremendous amounts of employer need (lots of staff needed for facilities that
operate 24 hours a day), and even more heart required, to serve clients who are
going through all sorts of trauma, while still having to go through the already
fraught life of being a teenager. In other words, it’s not easy. The only thing
almost as challenging as the work, is explaining it to somebody who’s never
done it before. In terms of showing the prickly and warm world of residential
care, the cinematic world is essentially a desert, a completely parched
environment awash in ignorance as to how it works. I still remember the
hilariously misguided dismissal group care received in 1993’s Benny and June, where a character’s
living situation was discussed in horror, at the prospect of them living in a
group home. Short Term 12, one of
those films where I’m upset it took me so long to get to, explains better than
anything I’ve seen, what the job, not necessarily looks like- but feels like. The
camaraderie, the unexpected joy, the adrenaline, the buzz of doing one’s life’s
work.
Just what sorts of characters does the job attract? Short supposes it’s those with the most to give- not literally of course, as that would logically be people who didn’t start off with a bum hand in the poker game of life, those children who weren’t abused and grew up into adulthood as adjusted as can be. Instead, it’s the lot of us whom have something inside of us, a never ending toxin, that rarely seems able to be poured out of our bodies unless it’s in the process of helping those that we recognize as having that same poison. Why else work bizarre, unpredictable, and inconsistent hours in order to help those in crisis? Why else come to work every day prepared to take verbal and physical abuse, to watch children hurt each other and themselves? It requires a soul grafted of steel. It’s the perfect milieu for actors giving it their all- naturalistic, histrionic, calm, hysterical. The work of Larson, of Stanfield, and Dever, deliver memorable and biting scenes that are difficult to detach from the hippocampus. You try to, as a character questions if childhood injuries are visible in their freshly shaved head… Same with the monologue about 2 aquatic friends that is one of the saddest things one can ever hear.
Of course, one of the potential challenges with people who have so much incentive to do good, to help others in peril, is a lack of boundaries. We see it in Grace and Mason’s relationship, in which they bubble through teens’ drama, wobbling between professional and adult friend, and then go home to work through their own dramas. It can be a strength of course, making for an excellent way to build relationships with clients- until it’s not. Cretton’s script, regarding some of the decisions that the staff members make in response to their client’s crises, might make for drama, but if doctors can’t make house calls probably group home staff shouldn’t either? Things start to take a rather bizarre turn when a character breaks into one of their client’s parent’s houses. It’s the sort of thing that might connect with clients- but also can get you arrested in real life. That, and other story apexes here run like clockwork- 45 minutes in, everything in crisis, and all ready to be tidied up at the 90th minute. It’s a fault that takes away from the film’s overall aspects, but rarely takes away from the emotion of these chaotically enmeshed people so expertly portrayed. While the film making gears are painfully obvious, when they whir together they make beautiful music.
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