The Kirkland family personify one of America's more popular political parties (there's no accounting for some people's tastes). Big chunks of the ceiling keep falling on their heads all through this 18-minute short, but they pretty much ignore this--like perverse reverse Chicken Littles--because they cannot be bothered with such down-to-earth concerns as maintaining infrastructure. More important than evacuating their crumbling apartment is the vicious game of musical money they play; every family member is trying to weasel cash out of the others for their own pet concerns. Those family members who have not inherited gobs of gold on silver spoons apparently believe the only other way to earn money in this world is to steal it. (No one suggests a reasonable solution like collecting a family tax from the more affluent relatives, because members of the Kirkland's party have "taken the pledge.") This short has two endings. In the first, realistic, climax, the family's youngest and poorest member perishes (which anyone with a brain in their head saw coming from a mile away). But members of the Kirkland party live in a state of constant denial (there's actual You Tube footage of 25 or 30 of them passing a little girl by after she's fatally injured by a speeding limo). So director Antonio Campos brings his allegorical savaging of the GOP to a close by showing the more affluent, surviving Kirklands mass-hynotizing themselves to believe that young David Kirkland is still alive; that their crass obliviousness toward their posterity did not lop off the most promising branch of their future from its rotted roots.
Review of The Last 15
