SNAPSHOT
After a heartbreaking loss, a grandfather struggling to reclaim his passion for painting finds the inspiration to paint again. (synopsis vis Netflix)
Grief, more often that not, is accompanied by an almost palpable sense of limbo.
While the world might keep racing on around you, and all the things you love to do remain present and accounted for, it becomes almost impossible to resume anything approaching the life you had before, no matter how hard you try.
It feels almost wrong to pick up sticks again as if nothing emotionally catastrophic has torn your world into two fragmented halves, and so we stay stuck fast, mourning what has been lost but seemingly unable to move on.
Canvas, a short film by Frank E. Abney III, who reportedly spent six years working on it, inspired by his own family’s experiences with death and resultant grief, captures this feeling so heartbreakingly beautifully, while also offering hope that even the worst of times can find their way through to better days.
The catalyst in this instance is the man’s granddaughter whose discovery of a hidden-away painting brings back exquisitely rich and transcendent memories that are so powerfully redemptive that it inspires the moribund artist to take up his brush again.
Quite apart from its brilliantly evocative visuals, Canvas touches the soul with its insightfully rich, empathetic story, meeting you not just in your grief but in the places that lie beyond that, a deeply moving, poetic evocation of the rhythms of life and hope falling into the abyss of pain and loss does not have the end of all things.
Canvas is currently streaming on Netflix.