Thunder Road
2016 · 13m · USA
Directed by Jim Cummings
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic
A police officer delivers his mother's eulogy by attempting to sing and dance to Bruce Springsteen's 'Thunder Road,' collapsing in real time through grief, rage, and embarrassment in one unbroken take.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
One take, one man, one Bruce Springsteen song, total emotional annihilation — the most structurally audacious grief film in recent short cinema history.
A 13-minute unbroken take of Jim Cummings publicly disintegrating through his mother's eulogy to Springsteen is one of the great solo-performance pieces in recent short film — Cassavetes-adjacent vulnerability that earned its SXSW Grand Jury and the feature that followed.
Thirteen minutes, one unbroken take, one man falling apart in real time at his mother's funeral — Cummings won SXSW with this and built a feature off it for a reason. The constraint isn't a gimmick; it's the entire emotional argument.
Reviews
funny, inventive, and thought-provoking
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2016, Short Film Grand Jury Prize
- South by Southwest 2016, Jury Prize for Acting
- LA Film Festival 2016, Jury Recognition for Outstanding Performance
- Palm Springs Shorts Fest 2016, Jury Prize for Acting
- Atlanta Film Festival 2016, Best Narrative Short