MISSION | Omeleto
MISSION | Omeleto
Omeleto
3.81M subscribers
Jan 6, 2025
An astronaut struggles with failure. MISSION is used with permission from Mark Buchanan. Learn more at https://xfilm.co. Michael is an astronaut in training to make the first manned mission to Mars. But he doesn't make the cut, sending him into an emotional tailspin.
His son James watches his father flail in life, struggling to connect with him. When his dad grapples with overwhelming feelings of failure and increasingly loses touch with reality, James is left behind emotionally -- and must struggle on his own as best as he can.
Directed by Mark Buchanan from a script co-written with Gregor Barclay, this short drama has both a scope as wide as the mission of its title and an intimacy in its thorny emotional terrain, as a father and son struggle to connect in the face of shame, failure and shattered
dreams. Michael's struggles with his dreams and vocations are the engine of the conflict that emotionally divides him from his son, but the narrative gives weight to James's perspective, drawing powerful parallels between the generations that give resonance to their struggles. Opening with a rich sequence that finds both Michael and James dealing with rejection and failure, the film then details the
emotional aftermath and how it affects their relationship. Father and son are both frustrated and isolated, but dealing with their struggles alone. Shot with a faded but moody naturalism and sparse dialogue, each scene compounds Michael's emotional abandonment of James, both in form and content. Often separate yet parallel within the same frame as his son, Michael is too wrapped up in his
drinking to give James much attention or care. As Michael slowly unravels psychologically, James watches on helplessly. As Michael, actor Emun Elliott portrays a deeply disappointed man losing his tether to reality and falling into alcoholism, while young performer Peter Strathern offers a gentle yet restrained performance as James, quietly fending for himself and bewildered by his father, though he feels
compelled to protect his dad and hide what is going on at home. He's touchingly intrepid and stoic in the way children can be, but also conveys the vulnerability of a sensitive boy increasingly troubled by his father's behavior. Soon that behavior has consequences that don't escape notice from the larger world, which brings Michael and James crashing back to reality. The restrained yet precise writing
slowly shifts to James's point of view, and as it builds to a crisis point, MISSION achieves an otherworldliness and softness in its evocation of a child's world, one sadly full of emotional emptiness and isolation amid his parent's decline. James's father has a mind in the stars, but that means he's also not on earth with his son, who is left alone in the dark, facing an unknown future.
We're left with a poignant pang for an emotionally stranded young boy, left behind as a casualty of his parent's mental decline.