Misan Harriman and David Oyelowo’s The After is no easy watch. It tears a life down without remorse, only to reconstruct it with grace and humility as its building blocks. The film won the coveted Best Live Action Short award at the HollyShorts Film Festival, earning it eligibility for an Academy Award nomination.
A brutal tragedy involving his wife (Jessica Plummer) and daughter (Amelie Dokubo) sends Dayo (David Oyelowo) into a grieving spiral. Left behind to endure the fallout, he does his best to adjust to the circumstances while shutting out everyone around him. With newfound work as a taxi driver in the heart of London, he remains withdrawn yet finds solace in the interactions he has with his passengers. Healing doesn’t come easy, but each conversation seems to open a new door inside him that was previously locked.
The opening segment of the film is its most striking, and the 18-minute short feels at its most complete. The screenplay by John Julius Schwabach and Harriman is particularly strong in this sequence, before it teeters off into some rather melodramatic territory later on. Certain scenes involving other passengers in Dayo’s cab just feel a tad too over the top, with the cast (spearheaded by Oyelowo) doing their best to salvage it. In the grand scheme of things, these instances are few and far between, not detracting from an otherwise compelling journey.
Photographer-turned-filmmaker Misan Harriman’s understanding of natural lighting and camerawork frames each scene with extraordinary nuance. It’s mise-en-scéne of the highest order thanks to his and cinematographer Si Bell’s strong visual language, able to filter even the most mundane-looking everyday sights through an artistic lens. And though the road to recovery that Dayo is set on is anything but original, there’s something irresistibly touching about it. Oyelowo is front and center, adding yet another enthralling performance to his already impressive resume. There’s no wasted movement, with the actor in total control of his character’s complex emotional state. It’s often his silence that proves most arresting, not just his outbursts.
The After might be predictable and inconsistent at times, but there’s no denying its artistry and its message of new beginnings. A promising debut for its director and a showcase for its lead star, Oyelowo, this touching portrait of grief tries its hardest to salvage hope from life’s darkest chapters.
