How does one’s past connect with another’s present? And how does this connection make space for growth? These are two of the underlying questions for Grace, the main character of Destin Daniel Cretton’s sophomore film, Short Term 12. Cretton has been garnering praise, especially the indie variety, since his second short (on which his current feature is based) was nominated for a 2009 Student Academy Award.
Short Term 12 takes place in a group home facility for at risk youth and revolves around the lead supervisor for the line staff (the above mentioned Grace), her live in boyfriend and coworker Mason, and two of the youth in their care, almost 18 year-old Marcus and new comer Jayden.
Over the course of a few days Grace’s interactions with Jayden, Mason and Marcus bring up baggage from her past that she has as of yet chosen not to deal with. Throughout this story, Grace is offered the chance to grow into whole person she was created to be or to remain bound as a victim of her past.
Short Term 12 is a simple and yet beautiful movie. In fact it is its simplicity that makes it so powerful. As we journey with Grace, we viscerally experience her struggle to process her buried past as it rapidly resurrects.
Short Term 12 doesn’t over dramatize or too quickly resolve its characters’ struggles. The movie allows us to sit with Grace in the messiness of it all. Cretton neither glorifies the messiness nor minimizes it, rather he invites us to be there as an unseen friend who is offered the privilege of journeying with Grace.
She is offered choices. Each hurdle or challenge is a chance to engage with a fear birthed in her past and to move with boldness into a different way of being. Grace is given the chance to transform the coping patterns that are no longer working for her into a new life.
Isn’t this what we as humans are each offered? The chance, to shed our protective walls when we get to a place where we no longer need that protection?
Too often we choose to keep living behind these cloaks and shields that kept us safe even when we move into new relationships and new life experiences that no longer require these tools. In teose moments, the tools of our past become the inhibitors of our future.
If we are not aware of the need for this change, then we will find ourselves destroying what we most wanted purely because we failed to see that our coping strategies were no longer of service. As Grace works through this very challenging aspect of becoming a whole person and stepping into her adulthood, we just might see our own proclivity to self-destruction and seek a way to step into our own hopeful future.
The future both for Grace and us will not be without further difficulties and challenges, but it does offer the promise of growth that will better serve us to engage with whatever happens next. This is how one moves toward wholeness and true maturity.