Ado
Rating: 5/5
By: Nathaniel Simpson
Director Sam Henderson opens his latest short film, Ado, with shots of a children interacting with one another in school. Whether they are having lunch together or learning together in music class, Henderson is presenting the viewer with the average experience of school in this day and age. Unfortunately, another average experience anymore in America is a gunman breaking into a school and gunning down everyone who stands in their path. That is the terrifying reality for Ms. Hopkins and her theater class who is rehearsing Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. As someone who's mother is a school teacher, and has had discussions with her about what she would do in the event of a school shooting, Henderson moves me with his incredibly powerful film, one that not only promotes a change in our society to prevent events like this, but also showing the love a teacher has for their students.
A majority of this movie consists of one scene, between Jenifer Lewis' Ms. Hopkins and the gunman, played by Zach Lane. When he breaks into her theater when her class is still there, the aging teacher must do everything she can to make sure her students get out of there alive. Like I mentioned earlier, my mom has been a teacher for longer than I have been alive. School shootings have unfortunately been a major topic in America for the last decade or so, and I've always worried that when my mom goes off to work, I may not see her again. Unfortunately, that is a sad reality we face, and my mom has always said she will put herself in front of her students. Henderson is crafting a story about a terrifying situation that happens too much in our country, and Lewis' performance is hands-down the best aspect of this film.
Lewis here is able to fully tap into this character of Ms. Hopkins, and it's an incredibly moving and harrowing performance. Not only is she terrified for her own self, but she is terrified for both her students hiding in the bathroom and the former student standing in front of her, pointing a gun at her. She is trying everything she can to not only get her and her class out of this situation, but to make the gunman think about what he is doing and how he doesn't need to do this. In my opinion, Lewis is perfect in this role, really taking the script that Henderson and Ryan Romine wrote and adding in so much of her own self into this role. There is no doubt that she is going to put herself in front of the gun, and Lewis embodies the everyday teacher so well.
I also adore the chemistry and the interactions between her and the gunman. To not spoil the movie, they do have a past together, and they are able to take this fascinating writing from our two screenwriters and brilliantly act it out on the screen. Their scene are so harrowing and keep the viewer on the edge of their seats, hesitant to see what is going to happen next. I also want to shout out Lane, as he brilliantly taps into this sort of haunted character, and his performance gave me chills as he is screaming at the defenseless and scared Ms. Hopkins. This entire movie relies perhaps solely on this interaction between former student and aging teacher, and they knock it out of the park here.
Ado hauntingly paints the picture of what thousands of people had to go through in schools throughout America, and the film really makes us think about how we can fix this as a society. From Henderson's masterful directing and the fantastic performances from Lewis and Lane, this film is perhaps one of the most important short films released this year. Ado needs to be seen by everyone, not only on its artistic merit, but for us as a collective society to analyze how society has failed these people and how a teacher's love could conquer all.
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