Broken

I enjoyed watching Broken and come up short with the proper words to describe this rather genre defying endeavor. Firstly, the direction showed a very understated yet mature handling style that tells a story though chooses not to put its feet down on what we as the audience should ascertain from it. The film does not pander, as many other short films do, to the audience through shock or mock. Broken is a multifaceted and layered story that raises questions it does not seek to directly respond. We are left with a story about a man who was redempted from a "broken" experience, or was he? A seemingly harmless frolick south of the border turned into a life changing -- and shattering -- experience. All the principals players in that experience, the girlfriend, the jail guard, the sympathetic paramedic, were impacted by the "broken' experience in life altering ways, yet departed from the story as mysteriously as they entered it. In the closing scene, as the surfer heads off to another wave seemingly salvaged from this experience, what really happened to him, and all of them? That is one of the mysteries of this film, and indeed, of life itself. Was Broken the beginning, the end or a process? In that way, are we all broken?