Zuheir Kredich | See You Tomorrow / 2019

the canvas of a london sky

by Douglas Messerli

 

Zuheir Kredich (screenwriter and director) See You Tomorrow / 2019 [16 minutes]

 

This rather simple film deals once more with gay death, not apparently AIDS, but cancer or something like it. In a bar on a London street Steve (John Skerrit) encounters his old friend, Alex (Richie Bratby) passing by and calls out to him. For a moment Alex doesn’t even recognize him, which Steve explains is probably the KiMo therapy; he has only a few months left before he’s going to die, he confesses.

     After talking briefly about Steve’s upcoming birthday and his birth sign, a Libra, Alex suddenly gives his old friend a deep kiss and apparently a short relationship between the two arises.

     We have no way of knowing how long this relationship lasted or what it truly consisted of. As we get glimpses of it through this short film by British student filmmaker Zuheir Kredich we see the two primarily in argument, at one time Steve being angry that Alex won’t join him for dinner, and at another point while Alex is cooking dinner for Steve, the latter suddenly determines to go out to buy a book and comes back an hour later without any book in his hand. The issue between them appears to be Alex’s inability to face up to the fact of death, particularly Steve’s death, and his selfishness about giving himself over to the other who has so little time left.

     One might even argue that Alex is the kind of lover who spends much of each day off from the other planning for the next day, a man unable to experience the joys and pleasures of the moment.

     But this is pure conjecture since we have no other evidence, and the very next scene after their having kisses is Alex calling Steve to report “It’s been ages,” only to find Steve’s father (Mark Johnson) at the other end of the line able to report only that his son is a hospice. He hangs up before even telling Alex which hospice Steve is in.

      Whatever their relationship, it is clear that Alex cares enough for his friend that he calls around to all the hospices until he finds Steve’s location. And he visits him, bringing flowers and candies and talking to him in a cheerful manner, although the patient is nearly comatose. Steve’s father leaves the room to let the two be together. When Steve finally awake enough to even perceive that Alex is there he attempts to say something that either Alex refuses to hear and simply can’t make out, but which, if we carefully attend, is somewhat negative, hinting that he is trying to tell Alex that he shouldn’t have come.

       Soon after he tells the now sleeping patient that he has to go, but will be there tomorrow, that he should hold on until tomorrow.

       During the next visit he is also quite chipper and caring, somewhat witty in his observations which he attributes to comments he’s learned from Steve. But his friend is hardly awake during any of the visit. Nonetheless, Alex hugs him close and holds his hand for quite a while before once more simply reporting that he has to go but will see him tomorrow, insisting that he hold for next day.

       On the third visit it’s clear that Steve has only a few hours left, so his father reports, Alex insisting that “we don’t have to say that,” and turning to Steve, completely comatose, to tell him not to worry that he’ll be fine. The clues we’ve had about Alex seem to be in evidence. He cannot accept the truth about death, which makes him rush always toward a future which he will never reach, missing the present in his rush forward.

       Steve’s father, for the first time, asks Alex how long he’s known his son, Alex responding simply, “not long,” again suggesting the brevity of even those moments we’ve glimpsed, surely the way his life must appear to him. Without living in the present there is never anything but a few remembered moments; life is not fully lived.

      The father describes how very close his son had been to his mother, and the shocking piece of information that his son left home when his mother died, although he was only 16. Now it becomes clear that at least one time in his life Steve himself could not deal with death, could not allow himself to be reminded of the place in which his beloved mother no longer existed.

      The two men take a break in their short deathwatch, standing outside the hospice. Steve looks up to the sky, hearing some birds singing, and comments that he had never much noticed nature, but Steve “painted me this beautiful canvas of the London sky,” which changed him, so he reminisces forever. Perhaps he has now begun to learn how to stay for short periods in once place, to enjoy the reality of life.

       The movie ends there, with that simple statement and its possible revelation. Evidently Kredich, a student at Central Film School at the University of Gloucestershire, based this film on his own life since the film is dedicated to “Steve.” And obviously he has now attended to a past in honor of a present in which he could not.

 

Los Angeles, September 2, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).