From Omeleto.
A vet faces a crisis.
PUT TO SLEEP is used with permission from Eric C. Yang. Learn more at https://eric-c-yang.squarespace.com.
Anna is a veterinarian who capably addresses each patient and case with calm competence. She brings a high level of experience to her work, dealing with animal ailments, illnesses and medical crises.
Anna takes on an assistant, Jessie, who is just learning the ropes of veterinary medicine. Wide-eyed and idealistic, she is impressed by her mentor’s knowledge and experience. But when a sudden, high-stakes surgery comes in that offers unexpected challenges, Anna must lean on more than her professionalism to get through it.
Directed and written by Eric C. Yang, this short drama is a quietly intense study of the emotional underbelly of animal medicine and caregiving, a relatively unexplored subject matter in film. Through the story of one expected crisis faced by an experienced vet and her idealistic assistant, it explores the cost of care-work, the emotional labour implicit in these professions and the fissures that open when things don’t go according to plan.
The deft storytelling balances both the spaciousness of strong character-building and the compressive sharpness of building tension, employing a muted color palette, careful framing and a steady editing rhythm that nestles viewers intimately into Anna’s work and milieu. It weaves situations of high tension with moments of quiet stillness, as if to suggest that the gaps between procedures are where the real emotional wear-and-tear sets in.
We meet Anna as she works through a series of cases, revealing herself as competent, committed and gently compassionate of the pets entrusted to her care and their owners. But as the patients stream through, the lines between unperturbed professionalism and emotional coolness blur. Her patients can be raw and distressed, but Anna is always calm, though her poise can feel distant the more we see it in repetitive, accumulative action. As Anna, actor Caitlyn Marr conveys this fragile tension; we know she loves her work, but we can also sense that the weight of it all is piling up and potentially burning her out.
It’s in stark contrast to her new assistant Jessie, played by actor Kylee Jacoby with a fresh, wide-eyed energy. The two women have an instant, warm rapport, and fall into a rhythm of working well together. But when an emergency surgery comes up, the women find themselves at odds with one another, differing over how to address the patient’s course of treatment or amelioration — and the tension forces Anna to confront not only the clinical challenge, but the emotional and ethical weight of what she does.
Beautifully told, elegant in its simplicity and powerful in its emotional honesty, PUT TO SLEEP is much like Anna in tenor: calm, restrained, somewhat somber, but with an intense emotional undertow. When these currents come to the fore, they make for a moving cinematic experience, as well as a tribute to an often unheralded, underpaid profession. The narrative was inspired by the experiences of the writer-director’s wife, who is a veterinary medical professional, which may account for the authenticity and respect infused in its depiction of the profession. But most of all, it deeply cares for and understands the people who practice this kind of medicine. Rather than turning Anna into a superhero, the film honors her as human: skilled, but who can be bruised and battered by the care and services she gives. It asks for empathy and awareness for these caregivers, who often invest their heart and soul to save and help the animals we cherish.
