Marcelo Machado’s short, The Decision is a straightforward and simple film about a subject that is anything but simple or straightforward. Here we follow a young man and a young woman as they debate, over text message, one of the most important decisions a couple can face. She is pregnant and they haven’t made a decision about what to do. The film follows the ups and downs of their conversation as they try to find some common ground and some way forward. She trembles like a leaf, presumably from nervousness while we never get a good look at his face in the main scene, hidden as it is by a baseball cap and his downward look.
The setting is grim. Both characters sit against a backdrop of gloomy industrial concrete. This seems to underscore the bleakness of the choice before them. The young woman sits in front of a concrete wall that is highly suggestive of her situation: she’s up against the wall. The young man sits on a cold concrete stairway. We do not see the top or the bottom, suggesting perhaps that there is no obvious way out. They are not in the same place, both literally and figuratively. She won’t even pick up the phone to speak and so they have to resort to text message. After being as close as two people can be, they now communicate in the most distant way possible. The theme of communication, or poor communication also comes up when, the careful observer will notice, a moment where one of the characters may not have seen an important text from the other. There is a subtle hint here that the real problem with these two is one of communication.
The music, Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor, is the perfect backdrop to the film: a simple and powerful piece for a simple yet moving film. This is a powerful piece that has been used in films such as The Pianist and several other movies. It also has an important connection to several incidents in the Second World War. Machado’s film is just about exactly the length of the piece and this seems to have been an intentional choice. The piece is sometimes known as, lento con gran espressione, which, in Italian means ‘slow with great emotion’, which could well be a description of the conversation we’re witnessing.
At the heart of the film is a debate about responsibility. The young woman says that it is her body and her decision. He, for his part, claims that this isn’t entirely true, since if she has the baby, it will most certainly be his responsibility as well. She seems to have made up her mind and he wants to dissuade her. The film, however, seems to take a morally neutral position on this very difficult issue. This is not a piece of activism or an argument for one side or the other. It is a portrayal, a portrait even, of a not so uncommon situation that can have life changing consequences for all involved. What is conveyed mostly is not a set of moral arguments, but the feeling of being trapped in a very difficult situation. Watching the couple, we are, I think, forced to imagine how close these two must have been at one point and just how different their situation is now than it was not so long ago. Towards the end we get a brief glimpse at the young man smiling in the sun in what must have been a much happier moment for the couple. Not only does the present evoke the past, but we are also brought to wonder about the future: the decision these two face could mean that they never see each other again or that they will be closely connected one way or another, potentially for the rest of their lives.
Interestingly, we know almost nothing about these two. Have they been dating for five years? Was it a one night stand? It could easily be either from what we see here. But in the end this film is not about conveying information about the characters, but letting us know only what we need to know in order to feel what the filmmaker wants us to feel: claustrophobic and heart broken.
by: Darida Rose
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.