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Embers is a finely-crafted short that sensitively deals with issues in the immediate post-WWII era, issues that resonate in our present troubled times. Beth waits patiently for her husband to return from fighting the Japanese, all the while fighting her own battle with the nightmares that come to her, sparked by tales of Japanese torture and barbarity during the conflict. The film perfectly evokes the period through the use of library footage and 1940s music in the opening. Beth's state of mind is also brilliantly evoked in the stark setting of her humble, snow-flecked cottage, the exterior hues of chilling blue contrasting with the warm orange glows cast by the fireplace on the interiors. Beth's fragile state of mind could clearly be tipped one way or the other. And tipped it is, in the most dramatic and unexpected of ways in the film's climax.Few shorts manage such attention to period detail as Embers. Fewer still demand such an emotional journey of their protagonist. The cinematography, editing and performances are all spot on. Significantly, well before Clint Eastwood was to be lauded for his "ground-breaking" rendering of Allied cruelty and Japanese humanism in Letters from Iwo Jima, Embers shows that for the individuals involved, war can be a matter of personal tragedy and defeat regardless of outcomes on a national level. What does it mean to win a war but lose a husband, a son, a lover? This small film asks big questions and is a triumph on every level.
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