Stutterer

2015

Drama / Romance

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 88%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 88% · 100 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.6/10 10 3647 3.6K

disability short film

Plot summary

A lonely typographer with a cruel speech impediment but an eloquent inner voice must face his greatest fear.

Director

Benjamin Cleary Photo
Benjamin Cleary

Top cast

Matthew Needham Photo
Matthew Needham as Greenwood
Chloe Pirrie Photo
Chloe Pirrie as Ellie
Calum Sivyer Photo
Calum Sivyer as Teenage boy
Eric Richard Photo
Eric Richard as Greenwood's Dad
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
119.23 MB
1280*632
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
12 hr 12 min
Seeds 8
221.09 MB
1908*942
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
12 hr 12 min
Seeds 12

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by planktonrules 7 / 10

Good...but not among my favorite of the Oscar nominees

This film is about a young man who stutters. His stutter is not a minor stutter but debilitating. He often has difficulty even talking out loud to others and has even pretended to be deaf in order to prevent him having to talk out loud. However, he's had an online relationship with a girl for many months and when she tells him that she's coming to London and wants to see him, he's in a panic. What is he to do? She has no idea that he's a stutterer and he's very apprehensive to writer her back at all. What is he to do?As a father of a deaf daughter, I found it fascinating watching the main character practicing British Sign Language--a system that is surprisingly very little like American Sign Language. It appeared to be done well...which I appreciate. My biggest reason for not being so enthusiastic about this film isn't because the short is poorly made--it's quite good. But I saw another short this year that was very, very similar except that instead of struggling with stuttering, the main character struggled with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder when going out on a blind date.UPDATE: It really surprised me but this film took the Oscar.
Reviewed by StevePulaski 9 / 10

Light-hearted and slightly tragic - a winning blend

If Everything Will Be Okay is this year's most favorable Oscar-nominated live action short, then Stutterer is a close runner-up with its light-hearted, albeit slightly tragic, narrative about a man who's thoughts in his head are crystal-clear but the words out of his mouth are shaky and lack confidence. The short revolves around a lonely typographer named Greenwood (Matthew Needham), who has struggled with enunciation and basic communication all his life due to his stammer, to the point where it's easier to use sign language than to even try to muster up the strength to communicate - let alone have the other party be patient enough to hear him out. He makes the street-corner preacher in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing sound like a public speaker.Greenwood has spent most of his days on Facebook, communicating with a woman he's been in an online relationship with for six months. He desperately wants to meet her, but knows she'll be disappointed. In his head, his words flow perfectly, with a buttery consistency and melodic depth that makes his presence assertive. Despite this, it takes Greenwood a good forty-five seconds to get eight words out and we can see the mental hopscotch and exhaustion it takes just to get those eight words out of his mouth.Benjamin Cleary doesn't position Stutterer in a way that makes us sob or even tear up at Greenwood's situation, largely because he creates a character and not a vessel that demands manipulative sympathy. He wants us to see Greenwood as a person, with deep thoughts and ideas, rather than an empty soul manufactured so we can have someone to look down upon and feel sorry for. It's also arguably the most tonally consistent short film of the lot, largely because of its brevity and its very simplistic structure and makeup (very direct, straight-shot sequences with many close-ups and bust shots making for a very serviceable look).With that, Stutterer becomes a beautiful little romance, and actually has the weight and potential to turn into a charming, full-length feature similar to Shawn Christensen's Oscar-winning short Curfew and its eventually evolution into the terrific film Before I Disappear in 2013.
Reviewed by evbaby 9 / 10

This is why I love Short Films . . .

A man who loves words but can't speak them has to finally meet his on-line girlfriend.That's a set-up for a full length rom-com, yet it takes care of business in just 12 minutes (as I wish most modern rom-coms would). It's a fine example of story-telling with maximum economy. This is what the best of Short Films do and "Stutterer" is one of the best, among this year's Oscar nominees at least (I'd put it a close second to "Day One").Like a haiku or a sonnet, the short film can serve to distill a subject to it's essence. "Stutterer" is a fine example of the form. Bravo!
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