Driftwood Review

Ralph Martin Fleischer’s short, Driftwood is a thoughtful and thought provoking meditation on a phenomenon that affects a large number of younger people today. In previous decades, it was not that uncommon for a young person to graduate from high school – or not – and get a decent job, get married and buy a house by their mid-20s. this scenario, though, is increasingly rare. Is this situation the result of generational laziness, or economic and historical factors we have no control over? Should we blame our parents? Ourselves? Or is simply understanding the new dynamic enough? Driftwood is an attempt to wrestle with these issues.

The film is immediately striking in terms of both visuals and music. We begin with beautiful shots of London and a great soundtrack from Anthony Berlin. But after the hustle and bustle of the big city, we meet the brooding and listless Barry. His anger is apparent from the first time we see him, but mostly he seems to spend his time lounging in his house and sleeping for too long. He’s dissatisfied with his lot in life and believes he should be doing more and living in better circumstances at the age of 30. He is, as the title hints, driftwood; a piece of wood that’s broken free from its trunk and floats aimlessly, pushed by wind and currents with no direction of its own. Barry’s not up to much and has no clear direction. In this he resembles many young people today, for whom 30 is the new 20. He’s angry and dissatisfied with himself. His mother, though, shows no signs of being  disappointed in her son. From her perspective he seems to be doing much better than he let on in previous conversations with her. She doesn’t think, for example, that his place is nearly as dingy as he said it was. From this small detail Fleischer shows us that Barry’s anger is irrational: his situation is not at all bad. He’s living in a nice house in a London and seems to have enough leisure to fiddle with his guitar and lol about in bed for far too long. We get the sense that if Barry would stop feeling sorry for himself, or listen to his wise roommate, he could do anything he wanted. But instead, Barry spends his energy getting angry at things that have nothing to do with him.

After listening to a radio broadcast debating the rights of trans people, Barry becomes so enraged that he destroys the radio in a childish fit. Barry isn’t trans, and it’s not clear why this broadcast affects him so much. We eventually see that Barry dislikes the idea of minorities complaining about rights, but he himself suffers from a serious case of entitlement. Unfortunately, the radio he’s destroyed doesn’t belong to him, but to his truth telling roommate. Ian, the roommate, studies psychology and thinks that Barry is probably spoiled and arrogant. Barry disagrees, and believes his father is to blame for his plight. His father should have taken better care of his and, Barry seems to think, his life would have been in much better shape.

We latter learn that Barry’s father had a truly horrible childhood. The question of the film is whether Barry will be able to arrive at some understanding of his situation or whether he’ll be consumed with rage.

The writing and cinematography in Driftwood are very impressive. The dynamic between the three characters is well thought-out and believable. Fleischer never lets the eye get bored with static shots and he manages to make a very simple location constantly interesting. The film has a point of view, but, as any true work of art, it never foists its opinion on the audience. Instead, we’re left to ponder Barry’s situation for ourselves. Luke Stevenson is also impeccable as Barry. He’s so convincing it’s hard not to believe he is just as angry and hot-headed as the character he’s playing.

Fleischer is clearly a filmmaker with a bright future ahead of him as both a writer and a director. This is, according to IMDb, the second short he’s written and the first he’s directed. In both writing and directing, he shows himself to be a sensitive and subtle artist.