SNAPSHOT
The Last Dance by Chris Keller is a starkly beautiful, powerful short film that tells the visceral story of an older man named Hugo (Richard Syms). To quell his utter loneliness, Hugo becomes obsessed with building a machine that might someday allow him to relive a specific moment in time from his past. After receiving a drone-delivered letter for his dead wife, Hugo decides that the day and time has come to test out his machine. (synopsis (c) Laughing Squid)
The Last Dance is utterly, movingly, exquisitely beautiful.
The story of an old man who finds a way to relive the most precious memory of his life, that of the wedding dance with his deceased wife whose absence has plunged him into the most lonely of existences, is so heartbreakingly moving that you almost gasp for breath watching it.
All I can think about is what it might feel like to be without my soulmate and partner, and how his painful loss would impel to do what I could to be with him, even if it was only for a moment, one last time.
Frankly, that’s something I’d rather not think about for quite some time to come but Chris Keller’s transportive short film does a superlative job of imagining what it would be like to be with that special someone one last very special time and whether it would be more bitter than sweet.
It’s hard to know what the Hugo (Richard Syms) is really thinking at the end – is he happy? Sad? Disappointed? Somewhat satisfied but left feeling hollow?
I would wager there would be an element of both happiness that you were with them one last time and sadness that it is a recreation and nothing more, with Last Dance capturing both aspects of this impossibly touching moment.