Welcome to another installment of SHORT FILM SPOTLIGHT, where we dive into the world, you guessed it, short films, good or bad, and give you our thoughts. This week we take a look at the 2014 documentary...BORN TO BE MILD.
Howdy fellow film freaks, Robert here. If you're tired of the obsessive search for the next big, new thing, take a moment to appreciate the little things in life. Born To Be Mild is a short documentary about a group of men who do just that; they're called the Dull Men's Club, an internet community for dull men, "and women who appreciate dull men", who like to discuss ordinary things.
And the things they like are certainly ordinary. One man interviewed in this film has a deep apprciation for traffic roundabouts. One collects bricks. Another collects milk bottles; he maintains a milk bottle museum and, though he can't say for sure for lack of empirical data, he suspects he has one of the largest milk bottle collections in England. My favorite interviewee, another England resident, enjoys photographing British mailboxes, and who can blame him? British mailboxes have a quaint aesthetic charm that's completely absent in their utilitarian American counterparts. Ahem.
It's always nice to hear people talk about the things that bring them joy, especially when they can communicate why they enjoy the things they do. The men interviewed in Born to be Mild can do that easily, and it was grand seeing these things that I would have otherwise overlooked through their eyes for a while. It's actually a variation on true nerdery, and their website (which is linked above) has even more to share. As of this writing, the top articles on the site include mathematical tips for picking the shortest line to stand in, an announcement of this year's World Championship Cardboard Boat Races (held in Heber Springs, Arkansas), and the "concern" in England raised by a shortage of qualified church bell ringers. In a world that doesn't seem care about anything more than the latest iterations of video game consoles (which will themselves be replaced in two years), current happenings with their favorite comic book superhero (which will just get rebooted - again - six months from now), or another flash in the pan TV show, the Dull Men's Club embraces the dependably mundane. "The Dull Men's Club is not a twelve-step program," our narrator (who has a fondness for escalators) tells us at the end of the film. "The Dull Men's Club is a two-step program. We admit that we're dull, and we're gonna keep it that way."
Born to be Mild may very well be a celebration of geekery as it was always meant to be. Take fifteen minutes to give this film a try, and learn a new appreciation for the little things in life. Don't let the boring trailer put you off; this is a surprisingly interesting little film.
Born to be Mild can be viewed on Shortoftheweek.com.
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