Sometimes a film takes you exactly where you expect it to. You see the emotional beats coming, recognize what it wants you to feel, and find yourself happily going along anyway. Predictable? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t earned your affection.
Asa Bailey‘s short, Something Pointless, is one of those films. It left me smiling and thinking about my own daily, pointless things: the little habits that don’t need to accomplish anything to matter. There’s something generous about a film that makes room for that, and that suggests maybe, just maybe, every little thing we do matters.
The story, from a screenplay by Neil Graham and David Cormican, brings together two people at very different points in their lives. An unnamed young boy (Leo Harris) is being bullied at school. His principal worries that he never smiles. His parents insist he’s happy, though they struggle to point to anything that supports it. It’s a sad introduction: everyone is discussing his happiness, but no one seems sure where to find it.
Aldous Evans (Owen Teale) has a new theory. An older married man who is dying, he believes doing something useless every day helps us appreciate everything else a bit more. His chosen pursuit? Attaching painted eggshells to a bare wall he passes each day. The film’s title invites a challenge. Aldous insists on doing something pointless every day, but the longer the film spends with him, the harder it becomes to define what “pointless” actually means. The eggshells serve no practical purpose, yet they become a source of connection and memory. In a culture obsessed with productivity, the film quietly argues that meaning and usefulness are not always the same thing.
After the boy brings him an egg that rolls toward his feet, Aldous presses his tongue between his lips and blows a raspberry at him. It’s subtle and random, and it’s the film in miniature. Later, the boy returns that same raspberry to someone else, and suddenly those silly little moments become part of something larger. You may see where that leads well before it arrives, but it’s a reminder that the way each of us remembers someone has its own personal pull.
What won me over is how much I came to care about these characters with so little screen time. Harris gives a mature performance for a young actor, Sophie Thompson is tender as Aldous’s wife, Eleri, and Teale is the film’s guiding force. Their lives look nothing like mine, yet I saw myself in each of them, and that is how a 14-minute film earned its sentiment. I appreciated its willingness to be a little silly amid the tragedy. The eggshell ritual gives the heavier material room to breathe, and its randomness is part of what makes its eventual significance affecting.
One Egg at a Time
The score is light on its feet, with a whimsy that serves the story rather than overwhelming it. The interlocking editing weaves the two lives together, never shying away from both the sadness and curiosity in their eyes. It’s sharpest in a run of repeated cuts of the boy cleaning his shirt in the school washroom after each round of bullying, building until he screams in that same room. It’s the dark mirror of Aldous’s ritual: a daily habit with a purpose no child should need, set against one with no purpose at all.
The visuals draw a clear line between the film’s two worlds. The school is cold and gray, hazy in stretches, and the film opens to the sound of a ticking clock. Aldous’s world is warmer: golden light pours through the window as we first meet him, with a slow zoom in as he walks. The way he’s framed having his egg each morning speaks to another ritual. The clock returns as a recurring image. It isn’t subtle, but it works.
The AI animation, though, briefly took me out of it. After a story in which a handmade, imperfect pursuit becomes meaningful, that shift felt at odds with what had moved me. The magic was already there, and it didn’t need the embellishment.
Life is full of surprises, but sometimes I want a story to make a familiar sentiment feel worth sitting with again. This one did. By exploring the value of small rituals, Something Pointless transforms a simple premise into a heartfelt meditation on what gives life meaning. A pointless habit can become meaningful, and a predictable story can be genuinely touching. Two things can be true at once.
Something Pointless is currently on an Academy Award qualifying run.
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