Review of the Short Film

‘The Waxwing Slain’ - Spacy, Microcosmic, and Avian

By Oliver-Wain

After only a day in cinema’s Spielberg’s new-age nostalgia epic Ready Player One has already turned over $25 million dollar worldwide in ticket sales. Tomb Raider has also made the big-box rounds with $215 million worldwide after only 14 days in circulation. As long as anyone can remember, Hollywood titans have dominated the industry. So, during a time of big releases, eclipses occur. Smaller Hollywood mid-budget films get stepped on. Indie films are trampled. Short films? Well, they might as well not even exist.

Which is why there’s a funny kind of melancholic irony to The Waxwing Slain. The small indie-drama is a film by hidden filmmakers, about a small, vulnerable person ceasing to exist. I thought it fitting that it slipped in between such massive releases.

Focusing on an inner-city Leicester student, the short captures a glimpse of how easy it is too loose small people in such a massive world. Seb (though the name is never mentioned in the short) is depicted to embark on one final quest of reason; one final case to be made for him to stay before running away. He doesn’t find it. Josh, his contrastingly content friend, offers nothing in terms of a lifeline to Seb. What I expected to be a short film about understanding your peers became one about how easily they are reduced, about the collective, agreed-upon emotional mask that repulses working-class boys when taken off. It’s the same kind of exposure akin to Billy Elliot: lads shuffling appropriate terms, avoiding the vulnerable vocabulary and ignoring emotional pain – even when it blinds both them and the audience.

“We were never really concerned about profit,” filmmaker Morgan Glover spoke of his own production. Filmed on a small budget, captured in the heart of Leicester city, he spoke of the importance of the minuscule. “In today’s politics, we trade big ideas over even bigger issues. People often get lost in the mix.” Unsurprisingly, his film focuses on one person getting lost.

“The film drew a lot from Pale Fire. Nabokov’s work is so great, because you can draw something different out of every line. I think it’s written that way.” Referencing the epic poem, Glover linked the first line, ‘I am the shadow of the waxwing slain’, to imagery peppered throughout the short: “We linked a lot of avian imagery to Seb’s struggle. It’s not even as though he’s consciously looking for freedom. All he’s trying to do is manoeuvre himself into a place where he can at least glimpse it.”

Really, the short packs quite a punch, and delivers some brilliantly subtle usage of two atmospheric, trance-wave electronic artists; Buddy Ross and Boards of Canada. “Once we got the rights I knew we had to use them,” sound designer Jake Foulkes said, “they fit perfectly, and give a real dream-like look and feel to some of the shots, I think.”

It’s more-is-less approach resonates throughout. “We wanted a short you could revisit, almost like a puzzle,” Glover said. “Puzzle’s take time to de-code. I think our short has a lot behind a few lines of dialogue.”

This short puzzle only lasts five-minutes. A minuscule piece of art in a wave of business and profit. How long out of one day, is five minutes? How long out of a year? Tiny amounts. Everything about how small The Waxwing Slain is lends beautifully to its themes of hope and communication. In the end, Seb decides to run away. No lifeline has been given to him, no reason. Better to fly in pursuit of freedom than stay in endless apathy. I got that from all of ten minutes watching the film twice.

So, it’s spacy, microcosmic, and avian. A good roundup, I think.