Omeleto | CYCLE VERITE | Omeleto @Omeleto | Uploaded September 2024 | Updated October 2024, 7 hours ago.
A man retrieves his stolen bike.
CYCLE VERITE is used with permission from Adam J. Graves. Learn more at https://cycleverite.com.
Don is a professor at a local college whose beloved vintage bike was stolen. The bike was a gift from his now-estranged father, and he's disconsolate at its loss, which has also thrown his life into chaos since he relies on it to get him to and from work.
But looking at used bikes online, he discovers his stolen bike is being sold, and he devises a strategy to get it back. But his scheme is complicated as he's drawn into a cycle of truth and deception, forcing him to confront old familial wounds as he grapples with an increasingly murky moral dilemma.
Directed by Adam J. Graves, this insightful and compassionate short drama explores how one man's past familial conflict comes rushing back to him in an unexpected situation. Through the seemingly simple journey of recovering his stolen bike, Don finds himself wrestling with unresolved feelings for the complicated father who gave it to him -- and is faced with a choice of whether or not to let go of that emotional baggage or let it direct his course of action.
The beautifully written narrative is shot and edited with a naturalistic lightness of touch that captures the ordinary textures of Don's life. But it also belies the heaviness of the emotional terrain that opens up as Don deals with the matter of his stolen bike. Tracking it down and retrieving it proves unexpectedly knotty, tangled as it is with his troubled history with his father, who gave him the bicycle. The loss of the bike knocks Don off his center, a loss of equilibrium recognized by Don's wife Claire, much to his dismay.
As Don discovers where his bike has gone and formulates a scheme to retrieve it, he pushes up against the boundaries of his ethics. As Don, actor James Patrick Nelson captures the tension and perspective of a man who lives in his head and can perfectly justify meeting one unethical action with another. His righteousness at seeing his stolen bike for sale online is understandable, and his anger propels him into a thorny strategy to get it back, one that even his wife disapproves of. But when it comes to enacting that plan, Don is confronted with his past and must decide whether or not to carry out his plan.
That scene is the heart of the film, and Nelson's performance gains compelling layers of vulnerability, hurt and even gentleness as he looks into himself and remembers the disappointments of his childhood and his complex feelings for his father. As the conversation unfurls between Don and the seller, the film gains a deeper emotional and philosophical resonance, as Don must decide whether or not to forgive the man who stole his bike and, in his way, help another caught in his own cycle of love and disappointment. In doing so, CYCLE VERITE becomes an object lesson in how all human beings come to situations bearing their own stories and burdens that we are often not privy to, as well as a moving meditation on the nature of forgiveness and what it means to let go.
A man retrieves his stolen bike.
CYCLE VERITE is used with permission from Adam J. Graves. Learn more at https://cycleverite.com.
Don is a professor at a local college whose beloved vintage bike was stolen. The bike was a gift from his now-estranged father, and he's disconsolate at its loss, which has also thrown his life into chaos since he relies on it to get him to and from work.
But looking at used bikes online, he discovers his stolen bike is being sold, and he devises a strategy to get it back. But his scheme is complicated as he's drawn into a cycle of truth and deception, forcing him to confront old familial wounds as he grapples with an increasingly murky moral dilemma.
Directed by Adam J. Graves, this insightful and compassionate short drama explores how one man's past familial conflict comes rushing back to him in an unexpected situation. Through the seemingly simple journey of recovering his stolen bike, Don finds himself wrestling with unresolved feelings for the complicated father who gave it to him -- and is faced with a choice of whether or not to let go of that emotional baggage or let it direct his course of action.
The beautifully written narrative is shot and edited with a naturalistic lightness of touch that captures the ordinary textures of Don's life. But it also belies the heaviness of the emotional terrain that opens up as Don deals with the matter of his stolen bike. Tracking it down and retrieving it proves unexpectedly knotty, tangled as it is with his troubled history with his father, who gave him the bicycle. The loss of the bike knocks Don off his center, a loss of equilibrium recognized by Don's wife Claire, much to his dismay.
As Don discovers where his bike has gone and formulates a scheme to retrieve it, he pushes up against the boundaries of his ethics. As Don, actor James Patrick Nelson captures the tension and perspective of a man who lives in his head and can perfectly justify meeting one unethical action with another. His righteousness at seeing his stolen bike for sale online is understandable, and his anger propels him into a thorny strategy to get it back, one that even his wife disapproves of. But when it comes to enacting that plan, Don is confronted with his past and must decide whether or not to carry out his plan.
That scene is the heart of the film, and Nelson's performance gains compelling layers of vulnerability, hurt and even gentleness as he looks into himself and remembers the disappointments of his childhood and his complex feelings for his father. As the conversation unfurls between Don and the seller, the film gains a deeper emotional and philosophical resonance, as Don must decide whether or not to forgive the man who stole his bike and, in his way, help another caught in his own cycle of love and disappointment. In doing so, CYCLE VERITE becomes an object lesson in how all human beings come to situations bearing their own stories and burdens that we are often not privy to, as well as a moving meditation on the nature of forgiveness and what it means to let go.
