Short Film Corner: Safdie Bros.’ John’s Gone

Speaking of their new short film John’s Gone, the Safdie Brothers said on their site that ‘To us, the film’s a feature, “short” is just one way to describe the film’s length. It’s a full film.’ Though the comment is a little flippant, it holds true; this twenty-two minute short has the depth, the expansiveness, what even feels like the time spent with its main character John (played by younger brother Benny Safdie), that it does feel like a feature, or ‘full-length’. The film opened at Venice last year in October and has since played at numerous festivals in the US, starting with South by Southwest and prepping for a Rooftop Films showing on June 17th.

The intimacy of our relationship to John and his sorrow, suffocating but elusive from the first scene which finds him begrudgingly paying for someone else’s Chinese takeout, lies in the fact that we know that John is not there, but we don’t know why. Why does he pay for someone else’s food? Why does he feel it’s his responsibility? The entire point is to not ask that question. Whether it’s clinical depression, the loss of a relative or relationship or another reason entirely, the omission of back-story renders his story communal, his suffering universal. John’s gone, that’s it. What the Safdies do give us are moments of quiet desperation, ones that show how hard it is for some people to be alive.

Early in the film we’re introduced to John’s maybe girlfriend Rose (Safdie’s regular Dakota Goldhor). There seems to be real feeling between them but when probed by her in any way, he retreats and impatiently pleads with her to ‘please please please just get on the train’. Every moment is an affront, and John can only respond with exasperation and his back, walking away.

The other star of the film is New York City, a New York devoid of pretense or posturing. Like in Daddy Longlegs, it’s a timeless New York, frozen somewhere in the late seventies, though small hints pop up that suggest the nineties, and then other things (spinning rims?) that place it more firmly in the present. That is what’s so rich about the New York the Safdies create; it’s an elegiac present that keeps all the best parts of the past, but in a loving, unpretentious way. When Owen the Junk Diver (Owen Kline) arrives to buy cheap speakers and brings with him a friend with a monkey in his back pack (!), the moment is odd, but as the Safdies said actually happened, within a couple minutes, it becomes almost natural, another thing blending in with New York street life—people walking down the street in Queens and thinking, ‘Right, a monkey tied up to that pole right there. Right.’

And that’s what’s great about John’s Gone, as well as their other work, these details make it so clear they love everything in their movies so much—the dropped hot dogs, the kinda sweet creeps, the sorta small and really big failures and how they’re really the same—that the audience can’t help but love them too. John is smart, savvy, but he’s soft in the middle. His neighbor convinces him to do something that is clearly not in his best interest, spray the apartment hallway with roach poison, but he does it anyway and then suffers for it. Why do it in the first place? Because he’s an open person, because it’s his neighbor. That’s why he pays for the Chinese takeout.

After a near mugging over an old computer—John makes his living selling used stuff—John, Rose and his friend Vito sit down to watch a boxing match. John and Vito make a small bet while Rose is more concerned with why Vito has a gun, that being the catalyst that ended the mugging scene. Soon, the announcer’s voice fills the room as they sit watching the fight but before they have a chance to settle in, one fighter is knocked to the mat. He’s stunned, half conscious and what is so striking, and tragic, is he thinks the fight is still going on, that he’s still standing, and so he’s looking up at the ceiling, moving his head slightly, throwing punches.

John starts to cry, to weep. Rose, who it seems has not known John for long, does not know what is wrong with him. There is something sad about that grown man, huge man, lying on the ground looking up oblivious to where he is, punching at nothing. It’s not explicit, the act itself is not sad, but through John’s perspective, it’s heartbreaking. Vito informs Rose, and us, that John’s mother died recently. Here, for the first time, the camera is right up against John, his face crowding the frame. Now he is really seen, he can no longer push everyone away, we’re all right there in it with him.

It’s out of nowhere and retroactively explains everything that came before it. Placing that information at the story’s beginning would have been too easy, would have been besides the point because it would have explained too much. But finding this out now, Rose knows why John is the way John is. After this scene there is little left. John is adrift in his own misery. Here, a song begins to play, Abner Jay’s ‘I’m So Depressed’. Jay’s voice breathes into the film; it jolts you and separates you from John, whether or not he hears this song too. He stands on the street alone, seen from afar, his neighbors still looking at him with disdain. John looks down at a set of spinning rims; they soon create a cloud of smoke that enshrouds him. The song plays on over the credits.

The Safdies omission of John’s crisis creates our identification with him. Then the reveal brings it all home. John’s Gone feels full-length because John’s struggle is fully realized. And though we don’t know if and when there will be any reprieve, and despite the fact that it’s really hard, we’re glad to be there with him.