Everybody takes break-ups differently. Some people get a dog, others will join the gym, and a few people fall into complete melancholy. The short film A New Man is a study of the third result. Based on the story “Healthy Start” by Etgar Keret, director Hughes William Thompson shows us what happens when the loneliest of people, shut down by a significant other leaving them, try to rejoin the world they feel separated from.
In what seems like a logical first step on the road to finding happiness, Charles (Russel Saylor) starts simple and tries to get into a healthy routine. First on the list, breakfast at the local coffee shop. An awkward entrance, a reminder that he’s single, and he’s off to a great start already. Poor Charles. Just then, a man walks in. Picking Charles out of the small crowd, the man waves as if he expected to find him sitting there. Little did he know that by returning the wave and inviting the man to his table, his routine would take on a life of its own.
You can see that he starts feeling better almost immediately. He almost develops a glow about him. It takes Charles a minute to acclimate to the situation, but he instinctively hooks on to what this man is saying to him. When the subject of business is brought up and he’s given a price and a quantity, he immediately starts to haggle. When this stranger says he’s asking for too high a price, Charles reacts like a cold, calculating deal broker saying, “Don’t worry, for every three people eating out of a dumpster, someone’s driving a Mercedes.”
What’s beautiful about the characters or roles Charles takes on is that he’s able to convince people he’s something he’s not while allowing his personal thoughts to bleed through. “I’m just like you, trying to keep body and soul together,” he says, reassuring his new friend that he’s just an average guy trying to make it by in life when times get tough. Yet he’s still participating under the premise of moving 1,000 units of merchandise for a sum total of $480,000. It’s like he’s using his pain to relate to or challenge those that he meets and to sow a seed of truth into his egregious lying.
I have to doubt the availability of so many customers looking for someone they don’t know well enough to identify, but it becomes a routine to wave or smile and let these people believe that he is the one person they’re looking for. You can see the rush he gets from the unpredictable conversations and the menagerie of new acquaintances. Saylor certainly plays Charles with a subtle sense of contentment, the slightest smile in his look so the viewer knows just how much he’s loving his new hobby.
This is an impressive short film in that it manages to use a series of random conversations to show this mans journey back to self-acceptance. Not only is he able to break out of the slump he’s in, he finds meaning and some joy in interacting with all these people under such novel pretense. When we leave Charles, nose bloodied, on his back staring up at the ceiling, he echoes his feelings from each interaction with a simple sign-off, “It was ten times better than staying at home.” Catharsis in a coffee shop.
This easily gets a 8/10 for me. Not only did this short story provide a great example of the beauty of conversation in film, it also mixed humor with sadness and found happiness in pain. For another short film that is conversation-centric with an…interesting premise, check out our review of Time Travel Lover.
Here’s a curve-ball question for our readers: Do you foresee a time when film becomes like most of our other media? With 9-second vines and 140 character tweets, do you think there will be a shift towards shorter films that are more quickly and readily consumable? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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