Can (2024) Short Film Review
This may sound like a cliché, but there’s only one thing I would question about Kailee McGee’s Can, and that’s the fact that it’s too short. At the same time, talking about “clichés” while discussing McGee’s weirdly original film is almost offensive, considering there’s nothing typical about the film and what McGee is aiming at. Celebrating art is one thing, but McGee goes further in her use of the medium, and she regards films as an inevitable channel through which she can express the most important part of her life. One in which it may end.
It’s impossible not to ask ourselves what part of Can is true and what has been manipulated, especially when the events depicted on the screen are undoubtedly real. However, when you come to understand the ultimate goal of this artistic piece, such questions become secondary. We have been witnesses to McGee’s reactionary and meticulous manner to let the world know blurring the lines is interesting and inevitable.
Kailee McGee was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. The filmmaker then tried her best to approach the illness from the perspective of tradition, life-changing mantras, and the remodeling of her thoughts. And as much as some of that may have worked, there was something brewing inside her creative mind. What better way to process the unthinkable than to hit back with a sincere approach to humor and drama?
Can is the result of such an analysis, one that couldn’t have been easy for McGee as she went through the painful process of fighting back. Can is a wonderful short film by McGee in which she plays herself, going through the common tropes of diagnosis and the following measures the world submits her to. Her partner supports her, but he treats her with unintentional contempt and doesn’t “touch” her. She gets convinced to participate in photo shoots, and she does so with joyful sarcasm. Her directing gig is solid, but she doesn’t see the world the same way she did before. Kailee talks and asks herself too many questions, and she doesn’t get many answers. The journey seems to go anywhere but down for her.
Many would criticize the artist for what she’s doing. Especially in today’s age of selective outrage, tolerance disguised as intolerance, and channeling through social media, Nevertheless, to call her endeavor courageous is to simply stay short. McGee has no intentions but to find some meaning through the hazardous process of making fun of herself and how the world saw her after her diagnosis. Should it have been different? Of course. But in today’s plastic society, the predictability of acts of kindness feels like empty escapism.
You’ve never seen such an intimate approach to something as intimate as going through cancer, as seen from the eyes of a filmmaker who found a way to cope through the unthinkable. McGee, now going through remission, has managed to celebrate not only life but her second shot at it. Can is an emotional and heartwarming journey that will make you laugh and cry, both out loud and both in an absurd manner, which clicks with a filmmaker’s groundbreaking ability to find her inner self in making a beautiful movie.
