"Talk"

“Talk” is a short film that shows two days in the life of a young executive businessman, and the events that cause him to change his views on people with disabilities. At the opening of the film, he dismissed individuals with disabilities as a social and financial drain, but when he wakes up the next day, he quickly learns what it is like to be stigmatized. The young man has entered a world in which disability is the norm, and because of his able-bodiedness, he is treated callously and not taken seriously. Later, he feels romantic rejection as a beautiful young woman in a wheel chair explains, “It’s not that I don’t like you…”

Only when the young man wins his date over does this episode end, and he ‘wakes up’ in the business meeting from the beginning of the film. When the new disability bill comes up again, the young executive pauses before saying he doesn’t want to discuss it.

For a ten-minute film, “Talk” says a lot! It illustrates the difficulty of living in an often hostile world that is not always tailored to one’s needs. The film is unique in its method of showing the viewer these things; the viewer is not told these things through dialogue or narrative. Witty and succinct, “Talk” doesn’t try to show an audience how it feels to have a disability, but rather changes what it means to have the stigma of a label.

The title “Talk” has quite a bit of weight. The film opens with a lot of jabbering in a business meeting. Everyone is talking at once about a new disability bill that has been passed, and they are not pleased about it. It is interesting how this is portrayed in an instant as babble. Furthermore, throughout the film, the young man is spoken to frequently, and always like an unfortunate thing. Even phrases like, “How brave of you,” are really just babble, impeding true communication; no one listens to what the young man says in the second reality.

At the end of the film, back in this reality, the young executive has changed his mind. When asked his opinion on the bill, he says he doesn’t want to talk about it. This is an odd move by the film makers. It almost seems like a warning against babbling about or to individuals with disabilities. Or perhaps the scene, along with the title, is supposed to encourage the counterpart of ‘talk,’ which is to ‘listen.’