No offense to my colleagues at the Reader, but I think the happiest I’ve ever been at a job was when I worked as a direct-care provider at a day center for developmentally disabled adults. In fact, few episodes of my life have been as gratifying as teaching socialization skills to an autistic man with the intellectual capacity of a five-year-old or helping some of the charges with Down syndrome recognize new printed words. In these experiences, I felt I was making a demonstrable positive impact on other people’s lives and that I was becoming more compassionate in the process. Most days I’d come home from work exhausted—the emotional strain of the job was so great that I felt as if I’d just run a marathon—yet there were times when I liked even this. I took satisfaction in knowing I’d pushed myself to the limit of my sympathy.
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But I’ll be forever grateful for the time I spent at that facility, if nothing else for its extraordinary atmosphere. The place was a constant storm of activity—rarely could you assist one person without having to keep an eye on several others, for you never knew who would wet her pants or try to run away. Everyone on staff tried to be as helpful as he or she could given the circumstances—and the circumstances could change drastically from one moment to the next. On good days I found this challenge exhilarating like nothing else I’ve known.
Short Term 12, an independent drama opening Friday, is so successful in its depiction of a social service agency that I can easily accept its shortcomings. Writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton (who expanded upon his 2008 short of the same name) once worked in a foster-care facility like the one in the film, and you can feel the influence of firsthand experience in the immediacy of the drama and specificity of detail. These qualities are evident from the very first sequence, in which a staffer, Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), gets interrupted in a story he’s telling a new hire (Rami Malek) when an emotionally disturbed young resident tries to run away from the facility. Since workers aren’t allowed to touch the foster kids once they’re off-site, they need to chase him down and tackle him before he can escape. However serious the situation, it looks like a game of capture the flag. Once Mason gets the boy to the ground and says he needs to “de-escalate” his feelings, the kid (who can’t be more than ten) shouts out the non sequitur “De-escalate my asshole, you deaf fucker!”
I suspect some viewers will balk at the sunniness of Grace’s rehabilitation, which includes romantic fulfillment as well as psychological recovery. Mason and Grace have been a couple for three years when the movie starts; but though Mason seems to be a perfect boyfriend, Grace still refuses to share her innermost feelings with him. Some of their scenes together illustrate real love almost as effectively as the facility scenes dramatize social work. Their bond is not merely romantic—they seem to value each other’s companionship and enjoy doing ordinary things together. In another twist, about two-thirds into Short Term 12, we learn that Mason was a foster kid too. (It’s one of Cretton’s more successful pieces of screenwriting shorthand, revealing volumes about his and Grace’s relationship that would have taken up whole scenes’ worth of dialogue.) The revelation comes when he takes Grace to the 30th-anniversary party of his foster parents, who have taken in dozens of kids over the years. The toast that Mason raises for his mom and dad is one of the movie’s finest moments, articulating the hard-won compassion that social work nurtures in some of its charges and perpetuates through its greatest practitioners.
Directed and written by Destin Daniel Cretton
