BEING KEEGAN | Omeleto

A tormented naval officer returns home after 25 years -- to confront his childhood trauma.
BEING KEEGAN is used with permission from Stephanie Zari. Learn more at https://stephaniezari.com.
In 1970s Liverpool, during their football club's heyday, 10-year-old Jay and his best friend Sean spend their days playing football in the backstreets. Footballer Kevin Keegan is their hero, the player whose name is on the news and in conversations all around the working-class city, and they spent hours watching him in his matches and trying to play like him.

But their joy and innocence are lost when tragedy strikes, leaving Jay to disintegrate psychologically during his teenage and young adult years. Twenty-five years later, Jay returns to Liverpool and contemplates his past, trying to reckon with the trauma that has shaped the rest of his life -- and perhaps dictate his future.

Directed by Stephanie Zari from a script written by Jilly Gardiner, this powerful dramatic short sprawls between a man's jovial, nostalgic 1970s childhood of freedom, play and friendship and a more pensive, melancholy present-tense, as he visits the places that held so much meaning and memory for him with an almost crushing sense of loss and regret. Toggling with the past and present, as well as interior memory and exterior action, it evokes a portrait of a man hobbled with trauma, broken down and with nowhere to go, as he wades through traumatic memories and grief.

The film has an unusually dense visual approach, capturing the interplay between past and present. Beginning with archival footage of Keegan and Liverpool in their 1970s prime, young Jay and best friend Sean are captured in a faded, careworn cinematography that's reminiscent of the times, with muted, earthy colors and dusty light. Their adventures are reminiscent of a free-range childhood, roaming the city and the more desolate outlying areas, and Liverpool also emerges as a character in its own right, full of acerbic characters and fervor for its favorite sport.

These nostalgic memories are toggled with an older Jay's roaming about Liverpool, which in the present day is emptier and more run-down. Jay, too, reflects the ravages of time and struggle, and as he traces the path of his childhood memories, we see the contrast between his happier, sweeter childhood friendship with Sean and his present sadness. BAFTA-nominated actor Stephen Graham plays Jay with a palpable, compelling weight, and though he rarely interacts with anyone, each stop on his journey through Liverpool seems to stir up deeper sorrows, pulling him deeper into grief and guilt. The narrative gains propulsion as the audience learns the tragic event that cut Jay and Sean's childhood short -- and opens a mystery into what Jay will do next.

BEING KEEGAN goes deeper than most short films into how trauma and grief carry from childhood into adulthood, taking the time to portray Jay in his more troubled teens and early adulthood. The result is a psychologically immersive, empathetic examination of how crippling trauma can be, and how it seems to gain more force and weight when it is minimized or pushed aside. But luckily for Jay, there is hope. Even as he revisits the sights of his childhood, he also remembers the love, kindness and joy of his old friendship with Sean. Those memories, too, come to his rescue, and help him step back into the flow of life, just when he needs it most.

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