George Velez, Jr | The Goodbye / 2018

the happiest moment of his life

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Velez, Jr. (screenwriter and director) The Goodbye / 2018 [12 minutes]

 

How do you forgive when you’ve just suddenly discovered that as a young gay man you are about to die in six months. How do you forgive your former lover Shane (Mark Teale) who returns repentant but who treated you badly, hurting you terribly? Or a father (Mike Kelson) who walked out on you and your mother (Lisa Leilani) 3 days after you told him you were gay, even if the father explains that the problems between him and your mother had long been an issue before that day? The father now has a new family and a new son, who Joe (Shaun Mendum) suggests will probably grow up straight and play football, everything his father desires from a son.

     How do you deal with a meaningless job as a coffee counter clerk where everyone demands their precise combination of “a skinny” at just at just the right temperature with no chocolate on top or scream at you when the coffee, fresh from spigot, is declared ice cold? In that case, like Joe, you simply walk off the job.

     But everything else facing him appears to involve people trying to reenter his life to be able to grant themselves solace after adding pain to his own now short life. His father’s request to be allowed back into his life is countered by Joe’s comment: “Well, there’s not much of a life left.” He is already coughing up blood, the fact of which he hides from his mother and even from his best friend Kelly (Emi Maj), the only one who doesn’t seem to be asking for forgiveness, instead giving of her love as a friend.

      Joe is not very good at forgiving, particularly given his death sentence by the doctor. But in his hatred he also left terribly alone. His mother, however, keeps attempting to move him back into life and possible reconciliation, planning a day at the beach—strange since he lives and grew up near the beach—with herself, his estranged father, and his friend Kelly, which in a narrational aside Joe describes as the moment of his greatest happiness.

      This unsentimental short film by British director George Velez, Jr. does not have anything terribly profound to offer, but serves rather as a simple testament to the hundreds of lives of young men and women who have not yet had the opportunity to make all their mistakes or find their loves, or discover new worlds, and yet experience intense moments of joy in their short lives. Defying the challenge of Dylan Thomas, this film attempts to go gentle into the dark night.

 

Los Angeles, September 14, 2022 | Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).