Home

This is still the best short film I have ever seen - imaginative, mournful, and deeply moving. The surprise relevation in the closing scenes is not dulled by repeat viewing, and the performances are, without exception, wonderful.

A perfectly realised piece of drama, beautifully shot, and with wonderful control by the director. I can't imagine a better short film.

Despite the title, the hero of 'Home' is a wanderer, home-less in the sense that he visits other people's homes, but has none of his own. He is a Council inspector, checking up on a series of tenants who, of course, are a bit weird. First up are a pair of twins, a cross between Tweedledum and Tweedledee and 'Village of the Damned', with their strange, glazed-over eyes. We don't know why he's there (the other two are reported by nosey neighbours), but the boys' (unwittingly?) malevolent hospitality persuades him to give them a lease.

The second complaint is actually dead. The third seems like a frightening, Scottish, anarcho-syndacilist type who blusteringly threatens the council man, but is actually hiding an aging donkey, hopefully, but doubtfully, for reasons of animal welfare.

This award-winning film is open to interpretation, depending on how kind you're feeling. There is no doubt that the inspector is one of us, a Gulliver from the land of recognisable norms lost in a disorienting fantasy-land of freaks and strange animals. You could argue that this is another example of mocking the working classes as idle, shiftless and degenerate. Or that an underclass has been so long ignored and left fester by the ruling classes, that they have turned in on themselves, a kind of socio-economic incest bodying forth a lost, deformed, soul-destroyed peoples. It is the Inspector's normality, or the normality that gives him his authority that is to blame, only taking an interest in his subjects when they are complained about, exercising the power to simply walk in and out of their lives.

The world of the film is seriously unhinged - is the Inspector infected by it? It is when the film leaves off its Lynchian narrative, and concentrates on achieving unsettling visual effects that it really becomes magical. I never thought I'd see a cramped, rubbish-strewn council flat living-room look like a haunting, wind-swept Gothic castle. When the camera slows down (representing the Inspector's subjectivity?), suspending the image and its movement, as when a flock of birds suddenly, slowly rise, or when the stillness is filled with the gloriously unEnglish, keening czardas, you can see why people have been getting very excited.

A young male council worker goes through his daily grind of following up complaints and problems. On his way he finds some weird cases that start with blind twins who need to sort out their tenancy with the council following the death of their mother. At the end of his day he investigates a smell and encounters a violently angry man who is not all that he seems.

On the surface this is a film about a council worker's adventures, and on that level alone I enjoyed it quite a bit having spent 2 years with a department of EHO's (environmental health officers) in a local council. The things they get called out are just as weird as the events here! However beyond this is another level that is quite touching. As the title suggests this is about home – the homes that the EHO goes into. We never see him in his own home and he seems to be take into each home he goes to and, even when he is assaulted or threatened, he seems to learn something or bond with the residents in some way.

I'm sure there is a deeper meaning to the film that I missed but the final (and majority of the film) segment seems to be about looking past people's surface behaviour and seeing the motives behind their actions. The action in the final section is unpredictable and surprisingly moving. It is well brought out by both actors.

The direction is good and the mix of shots is interesting, even the shots inside the council houses are good – making a hole of a home look interesting (albeit for gothic sort of reasons!) Overall this was a good short and I was left with a feeling that I hadn't got a grip on everything it was trying to say so I shall be going back to watch it again, and you should too.