Since the 1990s, school shootings in the United States have become a recurring phenomenon. The impact on audiovisual media has been unavoidable. Patterns of behavior have emerged, resulting in recurring images: graduation photos of the slain students, distraught parents, flowers and stuffed animals at school gates, and a whole narrative, often morbid, surrounding the perpetrator of the massacre. These tragedies have inspired literary, cinematic, and documentary works. The viral campaign Back-To-School Essentials sarcastically depicted the new daily reality for students: the typical back-to-school supplies advertisements were replaced with ads for self-defense tools. A few weeks ago, we referred to Thoughts and prayers (HBO), a production that explores the business surrounding the prevention of these shootings and the new way of traumatizing generations of students.
Now, one of the short documentary films nominated for an Oscar is All the empty rooms (Netflix), born from the frustration of a journalist who, since 1997, had been covering these shootings. Steve Hartman, a CBS reporter, realized that the news cycle was causing these attacks to be forgotten ever more quickly. He was bothered by the narrative that pretended to extract a hopeful message from each tragedy. He couldn't stand the prominence given to the perpetrator of the massacre. Hartman wanted to offer a new perspective, one that would underscore the magnitude of the tragedy and shock society. Together with photographer Lou Bopp, he began documenting the bedrooms of the murdered children. All the empty rooms It covers the process of the last four cases that they have left to complete the project.
As they leave on their trip, we see Hartman and Bopp saying goodbye to their own children. The viewer understands that this detail carries a profound and poignant meaning. We understand that we will soon discover how this everyday life with their children has abruptly vanished in the new homes they enter. The documentary showcases the sensitivity and discretion with which the two journalists work. In the empty rooms, we find life suddenly frozen. The parents have kept them exactly as their children left them before going off to school. The photographs magnify the details and emotions: bracelets, pictures, mementos hidden under the bed, stuffed animals that seem to be waiting for someone who will never arrive. You might need a tissue while watching the documentary. Hartman and Bopp comment that, at times, it seems impossible that this experience is real. The photographs are interspersed with brief sequences of family videos where we see the children full of life, in stark contrast to the empty, silent rooms, transformed almost into sacred shrines. Hartman manages to alter the narrative, imbuing the tragedy with sensitivity and, above all, offering a new perspective that lingers in the memory. With each massacre, we will think of all the empty rooms.
