A Prayer in January

It is a correct short film. You admire the delicacy and the pieces defining it as poem, you do not ignore the symbols and the story out of the minimalism of film. But, you expect more. You deserve more. The result is reasonable and its sweet bitterness remains, for a time after final credits in memory but something seems missing and the potential of story is real larger.

After reading the write up on the site I'd found this on and seeing that it had been seen by a couple of million people who raved about it, I was expecting far too much.

I don't know if the subtitles were duff, but "one last time" implies a break up to me, not a happy relationship. The synopsis on IMDB and elsewhere implies that there's some sort of existential struggle of a religious lad to transgress the Sabbath. I didn't get a sense of this at all. OK, he took his yarmulke off. But he was the one making all the running. To me this was a separation that needed a last event to be embedded in the memory. That feeling for me was reinforced when he turned round for a last glimpse of the farm.

This was a very odd ten minutes and I can't really recommend this short.