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CASHBACK
(Review)
At the 2005 Oscars, when Martin McDonagh‘s “Six Shooter“ won the Award for Best Short Film, there were a couple of other interesting nominees, but the one that really stayed with me though, was Sean Ellis’ “Cashback,” about an employee at an all-night grocery, whose coping mechanism for the boredom of his job is to imagine he can stop time, and walk about, unseen, in a freeze-frame world.
Well, Ellis has since turned that impressive short film into an equally impressive feature.
Ben Willis (Sean Biggerstaff, perhaps most widely seen in the first two Harry Potter films, where he played Oliver Wood) is on his final year at art school, and he’s just broken up with his girlfriend, Suzy (Michelle Ryan, about to be seen as Jamie Sommers in the new Bionic Woman TV series). Even as he suffers the acute pangs of separation, he suddenly finds that he has become “immune to sleep.” Now finding sleep apparently unnecessary, Ben gets a third of his life back. Of course, at this juncture in his life, that just means more seconds and minutes and hours wallowing in the Suzy-shaped hole in his life.
So he takes a night shift job at Sainsbury’s, an all-night grocery, where he meets a crew of colourful characters, who each have their own particular methods of dealing with the deadening job hours. As in the original short—which is actually contained in Cashback, some 15 minutes into the feature’s running time—Ben finds that his way is, paradoxically, by stopping time.
Ellis treats this fantastic conceit wonderfully, telling a tale of the beauty that can be found hidden in the most mundane of moments, of the importance of each instant in our lives, and of the possibility of miracles secreted in between the ticks of a clock’s second hand.
Ben, of course, is our anchor to the narrative. We are privy to his life and those pivotal and formative moments that inform all of our youths—that first, almost-kiss; our first sight of a naked body—through a series of flashbacks, where Ben is played by newcomer Frank Hesketh. It is through these flashbacks (and Ben’s narration, which carries us through the entire film) that we understand why Ben is the way he is, and perhaps most importantly, gain insight into the manner in which he sees beauty.
So, while Ben is our solid footing in reality, giving us a mirror in which to see ourselves as witnesses of our world, he is also our gateway into the fantastic, as he shares his ability with us.
It is a testament to Ellis and cinematographer Angus Hudson, that a technique that is fairly common in music videos (of that lone figure and the camera moving in a reality on pause) can still have the potency that it does here.
Ben moves through the fluorescent-drenched aisles of Sainsbury’s, sketching the female customers, admiring beauty, perfecting his art. Rarely has the supermarket been a setting for such transcendence. (There is a scene in Go! that captures that same sense of beauty in the utterly mundane.)
And while this is the heart that beats within the film, the visible layer of Cashback—its celluloid skin, if you will—is that of a love story, of the period of healing after being crushed by the wheels of heartbreak, and of the miraculous rediscovery of love, hiding in plain sight.
It’s also about the reality that we are all selling off our time, the seconds and minutes of our lives, and how we need to ensure that we don’t end up on the losing end in the daily shuffle to keep money in our bank accounts.
It’s about the indelibility of every single moment, of the quirks of serendipity, and the delicate, fragile, and ultimately volatile nature of human relationships, of how seeing “the wrong second of a two second story” can have damning consequences.
For all its wonder though, Cashback is not perfect.
There are, perhaps, one too many colourful characters in Ben’s life, most of whom are little more than comedy relief, and the film does fall into cliché once or twice. (It’s been awhile since I’ve been amused by a musical montage of characters preparing for a night out.)
Also, though I love that one horror movie moment of the entire film, that scene opens up a subplot that I feel could have used a little more exploration, so that its use in Cashback’s climax would have been a tad more well-earned.
Still, what works in this film far outweighs what doesn’t.
And some of what does work, are the performances of the principals, Biggerstaff, and Emilia Fox, who plays Ben’s co-worker, Sharon Pintey.
In Biggerstaff, we find that part of all of us who silently yearns for another, who admires from afar, but is initially unable to articulate that desire verbally. For some, it will be through song, for others, poetry. In Ben’s case, it is his art.
There is a genuine sense of heartfelt longing in Biggerstaff’s performance; for his ex-girlfriend, for his dream, and it is that air of honesty that makes us accept him as a character, and makes us receptive to his tale.
Fox meanwhile, convinces, particularly in the manner in which for most of the time Sharon is at Sainsbury’s (at the cash register or walking the aisles), she trudges, zombie-like, beneath the harsh fluorescents. The only time she actually comes alive, and we see the true vibrancy of the person, is when we see her outside the grocery’s confines, having a meal with Ben, cheering the lads at a football match.
It’s a little something that Cashback says, but it’s nonetheless something important: even that bored check-out girl who recites her litany of automatic pleasantries (if she’s even pleasant at all), is a person too.
It’s also interesting to note that Ben’s ability can be interpreted as simply the way in which he views the world around him. Yes, there are instances where we see the effects of his stopping and re-starting time in objective reality, but these can still be argued as being part and parcel of his worldview.
Even with that interpretation though, the message the film wishes to impart, of the importance of time and what can be found in its midst, is still the same.
Ultimately, it all comes back to the importance of each second of our lives. How we need to acknowledge time’s passage, so we can live accordingly, and not lose sight of ourselves, and the beauty that surrounds us every single moment of every single day.
Parting shot: Sean Ellis’ upcoming film is The Broken, which kicks off when, on a busy London street, Gina McVey (played by 300’s Lena Headey) thinks she sees herself drive past in her own car.
(Cashback OS and images courtesy of worstpreviews.com; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)
(Review)
At the 2005 Oscars, when Martin McDonagh‘s “Six Shooter“ won the Award for Best Short Film, there were a couple of other interesting nominees, but the one that really stayed with me though, was Sean Ellis’ “Cashback,” about an employee at an all-night grocery, whose coping mechanism for the boredom of his job is to imagine he can stop time, and walk about, unseen, in a freeze-frame world.
Well, Ellis has since turned that impressive short film into an equally impressive feature.
Ben Willis (Sean Biggerstaff, perhaps most widely seen in the first two Harry Potter films, where he played Oliver Wood) is on his final year at art school, and he’s just broken up with his girlfriend, Suzy (Michelle Ryan, about to be seen as Jamie Sommers in the new Bionic Woman TV series). Even as he suffers the acute pangs of separation, he suddenly finds that he has become “immune to sleep.” Now finding sleep apparently unnecessary, Ben gets a third of his life back. Of course, at this juncture in his life, that just means more seconds and minutes and hours wallowing in the Suzy-shaped hole in his life.
So he takes a night shift job at Sainsbury’s, an all-night grocery, where he meets a crew of colourful characters, who each have their own particular methods of dealing with the deadening job hours. As in the original short—which is actually contained in Cashback, some 15 minutes into the feature’s running time—Ben finds that his way is, paradoxically, by stopping time.
Ellis treats this fantastic conceit wonderfully, telling a tale of the beauty that can be found hidden in the most mundane of moments, of the importance of each instant in our lives, and of the possibility of miracles secreted in between the ticks of a clock’s second hand.
Ben, of course, is our anchor to the narrative. We are privy to his life and those pivotal and formative moments that inform all of our youths—that first, almost-kiss; our first sight of a naked body—through a series of flashbacks, where Ben is played by newcomer Frank Hesketh. It is through these flashbacks (and Ben’s narration, which carries us through the entire film) that we understand why Ben is the way he is, and perhaps most importantly, gain insight into the manner in which he sees beauty.
So, while Ben is our solid footing in reality, giving us a mirror in which to see ourselves as witnesses of our world, he is also our gateway into the fantastic, as he shares his ability with us.
It is a testament to Ellis and cinematographer Angus Hudson, that a technique that is fairly common in music videos (of that lone figure and the camera moving in a reality on pause) can still have the potency that it does here.
Ben moves through the fluorescent-drenched aisles of Sainsbury’s, sketching the female customers, admiring beauty, perfecting his art. Rarely has the supermarket been a setting for such transcendence. (There is a scene in Go! that captures that same sense of beauty in the utterly mundane.)
And while this is the heart that beats within the film, the visible layer of Cashback—its celluloid skin, if you will—is that of a love story, of the period of healing after being crushed by the wheels of heartbreak, and of the miraculous rediscovery of love, hiding in plain sight.
It’s also about the reality that we are all selling off our time, the seconds and minutes of our lives, and how we need to ensure that we don’t end up on the losing end in the daily shuffle to keep money in our bank accounts.
It’s about the indelibility of every single moment, of the quirks of serendipity, and the delicate, fragile, and ultimately volatile nature of human relationships, of how seeing “the wrong second of a two second story” can have damning consequences.
For all its wonder though, Cashback is not perfect.
There are, perhaps, one too many colourful characters in Ben’s life, most of whom are little more than comedy relief, and the film does fall into cliché once or twice. (It’s been awhile since I’ve been amused by a musical montage of characters preparing for a night out.)
Also, though I love that one horror movie moment of the entire film, that scene opens up a subplot that I feel could have used a little more exploration, so that its use in Cashback’s climax would have been a tad more well-earned.
Still, what works in this film far outweighs what doesn’t.
And some of what does work, are the performances of the principals, Biggerstaff, and Emilia Fox, who plays Ben’s co-worker, Sharon Pintey.
In Biggerstaff, we find that part of all of us who silently yearns for another, who admires from afar, but is initially unable to articulate that desire verbally. For some, it will be through song, for others, poetry. In Ben’s case, it is his art.
There is a genuine sense of heartfelt longing in Biggerstaff’s performance; for his ex-girlfriend, for his dream, and it is that air of honesty that makes us accept him as a character, and makes us receptive to his tale.
Fox meanwhile, convinces, particularly in the manner in which for most of the time Sharon is at Sainsbury’s (at the cash register or walking the aisles), she trudges, zombie-like, beneath the harsh fluorescents. The only time she actually comes alive, and we see the true vibrancy of the person, is when we see her outside the grocery’s confines, having a meal with Ben, cheering the lads at a football match.
It’s a little something that Cashback says, but it’s nonetheless something important: even that bored check-out girl who recites her litany of automatic pleasantries (if she’s even pleasant at all), is a person too.
It’s also interesting to note that Ben’s ability can be interpreted as simply the way in which he views the world around him. Yes, there are instances where we see the effects of his stopping and re-starting time in objective reality, but these can still be argued as being part and parcel of his worldview.
Even with that interpretation though, the message the film wishes to impart, of the importance of time and what can be found in its midst, is still the same.
Ultimately, it all comes back to the importance of each second of our lives. How we need to acknowledge time’s passage, so we can live accordingly, and not lose sight of ourselves, and the beauty that surrounds us every single moment of every single day.
Parting shot: Sean Ellis’ upcoming film is The Broken, which kicks off when, on a busy London street, Gina McVey (played by 300’s Lena Headey) thinks she sees herself drive past in her own car.
(Cashback OS and images courtesy of worstpreviews.com; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)
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