Leftovers

A father and son are forced to reevaluate their relationship after old means of communication breakdown.

SYNOPSIS
Leftovers takes place in an old man’s home as his son helps him move back in after a hospital visit that impacted his ability to speak. The son’s first inclination is to avoid dealing with the radically changed dynamics of his relationship with his father, but confrontation is inevitable. All of his attempts to help his father seem oriented toward returning to a life of superficial harmony, based less on the characters’ shared human connection than their reliance on familial and social norms. They soon realize that it will be necessary to abandon their communication habits of the past and instead find new ways to exist together in a deeper understanding of each other.

FILMMAKERS' STATEMENT:
This film is an attempt to deconstruct the relationships that we take for granted. Our hope is that when something as fundamental as speech is taken from a relationship, old habits and social constructions that dictate familial roles become visible. Errol’s struggle to live his life on his own terms happens alongside Earl’s struggle to find his role in his father’s home. Earl has to conceive of his father as a human being now that the power dynamics have shifted and Errol has moved on from his archetypal role as patriarch.
Some of the creative and theoretical questions we sought to answer with our film were: How does a family act in times of deviation from the norm, or a previous structure? How does honesty play into this as a factor in balancing positivity with an effort to return to a status quo? How do these characters act when they realize this return is probably unlikely? How are neurological disorders dealt with in American families, and how does masculinity exacerbate these dynamics and manifest in a hegemonic father-son circumstance? With this film, we are trying to communicate the feeling of discomfort experienced by those that don’t know how to communicate yet know each other intimately. We lastly hope that the audience can compare Errol and Earl’s relationship to their own relationships and question the validity of American familial norms on their own terms.