The Quintessentials: THE CRUSH

THE CRUSH

Directed and written by Michael Creagh

Ireland, 2010, 15 minutes

"The Crush" is a short about an elementary school (or "primm'ry school lad," as this is an Irish film) boy named Ardal who has a crush on his teacher. He buys her a ring, which she accepts, patronizing him kindly enough that he doesn't realize it. Later, we discover that Ardal's teacher has become engaged to her boyfriend who is something of a deadbeat who mistreats her (or at least doesn't treat her as well as Ardal thinks he could). Ardal pulls a gun on him and lets the teacher see her fiance's true colors, at which point the teacher thanks Ardal and Ardal decides he is over his crush.

Like Anastasia, who wrote the original post for "The Crush" on September 7, I first saw the film as part of a collection of Oscar nominated shorts at the E Street Cinema. I liked it at the time because I wasn't too impressed with the other four shorts. I liked two but disliked the others; this short was sandwiched between the two that I didn't like, and anything with some charm was going to win me over in that context. If you don't believe in the power of a well thought out curated sequence, watch shorts you've seen in a festival setting on their own.

I don't like it as much this time because the short is too invested in me agreeing with Ardal. I can't-- he pulls a real-looking weapon on a man because he doesn't deem him worthy of dating Ardal's teacher. And the teacher loves him for it. The short endorses Ardal. In this class we've watched one or two movies where the protagonist engages in questionable activities (i.e. Talk To Her), but the movie doesn't endorse the protagonist. In "The Crush," I can't help but feel like I'm being manipulated into liking it's young, psychopathic center, and for that reason I'm hesitant to like it.