Don’t Come Too Early: Review

I once took a screenwriting class in which the instructor told us that a truly great screenplay should be able to tell a story without any dialogue, as if it were a silent film. After all, Charlie Chaplin made some of the greatest films in history without any spoken words. The short, Don’t Come too Early follows this principle in exemplary fashion. There are no words spoken in the film. There is a song that accompanies the film, making it look something like a music video. But the song itself is not doing any of the heavy story-telling work here. This is a striking example of visual storytelling. It is told simply and with several layers in less than three and a half minutes. This is no mean feat on the part of director and writer, Dorota Fórmanowska.

The story, which, according to a title card at the beginning, is based on true events, follows two men from very different backgrounds as they each learn something about the meaning of life. In a nutshell, a rich man, distraught by the death of his wife, has decided to end his life. He throws the keys to his Porsche in the trash and seeks out a homeless man to help him. He offers the man money. But then they agree. They take a rowboat out onto the sea and the homeless man helps to tie the rich man up and throws him overboard.

Initially, the homeless man refuses to take the money and appears to want nothing to do with the plot to end the rich man’s life. On reflection, though, he changes his mind and agrees to help. In one of the most powerful shots, the homeless man looks into the eyes of the rich man. We notice that, apart from personal hygiene and fashion sense, these two don’t really look that different. But we see in the look between them a profound understanding. The homeless man does not agree to help because of the roll of bills the rich man offered him. He agrees to help because on some level, he understands the rich man’s pain. There’s a connection here and they see themselves in the other.

Out at sea, the poor man carries out his task and we see the rich man, bound in ropes, sink beneath the waves. But at the last minute, the poor man decides to save him. The last shots show the two men happy and plying a yacht across the sea. They’ve saved each other and, as the song says as we fade out, “it’s not time to take the sail down yet.” Both literally and figuratively, the rich man is pulled back to the surface and into the light.

This is a powerful short with many meanings and resonances woven into it. To go back to Charlie Chaplin, we could even see a bit of a parallel here with City Lights, in which the tramp befriends an alcoholic millionaire. We see through the film that we can never really know what’s going on in another person’s life, despite their outward appearance or supposed material condition. True riches, we see, are found in other people and we all have a shared humanity. If we can find it, it might just be the key to saving another. What each man really needed was the other to understand his pain. After this recognition, they each found a reason to live.

The song that plays throughout the film is by rapper Wes Restless. The song seems to have been written for the film, but again, does not tell the story itself. It does, though, share similar themes: finding oneself on the bottom and having to fight back to the surface. The title, Don’t Come too Early, seems to be about not dying too early. But the song, like the film, is open to interpretation, as are all great works of art.

This is a stylishly shot film that looks like it was shot on a budget that would make many rappers blush. This is all the more impressive because Don’t Come too Early is Fórmanowska’s directorial debut. She is best known as an actress in Poland, having worked in several Polish TV series, beginning in 2008. With her obvious ability in both writing and directing, we hope to see much more of her work in the future.