Every scene in Sean Durkin’s short film "Mary Last Seen" is eerily confining, beginning with the first shot. On a highway, surrounded by opaque forests and an imposing overcast sky, the main characters reveal themselves through a few lines of opening dialogue. Her boyfriend silences Mary’s childlike singing, a foreboding and foreshadowing rendition of the Beatles’ “Golden Slumber.” Immediately revealed as a controlling force, he uses affectionate language to obscure the rather intimidating nature of his speech: “Babe, that is very pretty but it’s a bit early for singing.” Her boyfriend’s exertion of control parallels the imprisoning effect of the cinematographer’s (Drew Innis) framing, both of which characterize Mary’s imminent fate.
The shots and dialogue continue to impose throughout the film on the passive and generally unresponsive Mary. Neither her body nor her voice is her own; she is told to take her clothes off, to speak, to walk. The camera often seems to rush her along; later in the film, when the couple walks through a field, most of the space is filled with the boyfriend and the landscape ahead. She follows too slowly to remain entirely in-frame. In an early sex scene, the boyfriend holds Mary against a truck-stop bathroom wall, and Durkin doesn’t allow us to see Mary’s face. Eclipsed by her hair, her boyfriend, and her environment, Mary becomes an object upon which these other dynamic forces act.
