Summary
Please Holdis a 2020 short film that combines the real injustices prisoners in America face with the almost surreal experience of trying to navigate modern society’s technological “advances”. Mexican American filmmaker K.D. Dávila made her directorial debut withPlease Holdafter spending the first part of her career as a writer, working on the 2017 movieThe Labyrinthand writing 13 episodes ofSalvation.Many major movie directors have made short filmsand if the success ofPlease Holdmeans anything, Dávila will likely have a feature film of her own soon.
The film was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the 94th Academy Awardsin 2022 but lost toThe Long Goodbyeby Aneil Karia and Riz Ahmed.Please Holdtakes place in the near future where drones and automated services have been put in charge of law enforcement. Mateo (Erick Lopez) is on his way to work when he’s wrongfully arrested. In his holding cell, Mateo is forced to deal with an automated court system à la “Clippy” from Microsoft, and finds himself falling deeper into debt and a surreal nightmare when he can’t reach a human.
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What Happens In The Please Hold Ending & Its Kafka Influence
Mateo Is Trapped In An Unending And Surreal Nightmare
At the end ofPlease Hold, Mateo has finally managed to get the money to hire an actual human lawyer, instead of the automated public defender whose voice recognition software isn’t working well and who cheerfully suggests Mateo plead guilty to a crime he is still unaware of. His human lawyer looks at his notes for only a couple of seconds before realizing there’s been a clerical error and Mateo is immediately set free. However, asMateo walks out to freedom after weeks in jail, he listens to voicemails saying he’s been fired, evicted, and more.
Instead, he’s the victim of an uncaring, disinterested, and bureaucratic artificial intelligence that humans have seemingly happily implemented.
The idea of the film came fully formed to Dávila, who had heard a story about a Latino man who was wrongfully imprisoned for weeks, and by the time he was released, he had lost his car and his job. Dávila toldIndieWire,
“That story really stuck with me. This idea came pretty fully formed of, ‘What if we took that and combined it with the universal experience of being stuck on the phone with customer service?’ Like an automated phone tree where you’re in a Kafka-esque hell.”
Please Holdis the type ofdystopian sci-fi film Franz Kafka would approve of. There are no evil forces at work targeting Mateo. Instead, he’s the victim of an uncaring, disinterested, and bureaucratic artificial intelligence that humans have seemingly happily implemented. He didn’t do anything wrong; his imprisonment and the catch-22 of having to pay his way out of a prison system that’s also draining him of money is very much in line with the nightmarish and oppressive stories Kafka created. The ending puts an exclamation point on this idea because, even though Mateo escapes, his life is unfairly altered.
The Real Meaning Of The Please Hold Ending
Please Hold Shows A Future That’s The Reality Of Many People Today
Dávila toldIndieWireabout her experiences with law enforcement and the Latino community,
“Right now, in-person visitation at prisons is something that a lot of prisons have been trying to phase out by putting in essentially Zoom that they charge tons of money for. And that burden goes to families. I’m Mexican-American. The Latino community is my community and our people are over-incarcerated, especially in the Los Angeles area. It was important to us that we show that it’s not just this one guy’s life that’s being ruined. It has a ripple effect throughout his entire. … His family is bearing the burden of this mistake. And that’s real.”
Please Holdis a speed run through what many fairly and wrongfully convicted people go throughin the United States. Instead of helping, an uncaring automated court system help desk only makes Mateo’s plight more helpless. He can’t even speak to a human to explain that he’s been wrongfully convicted. The moment a human finally helps him, he’s immediately exonerated. Of course, by then, his and his parents' lives have been affected, possibly even ruined.
WhatPlease Holdsuggests, however, and what Dávila’s comments point to, is that for many people, this system is already happening.
WhatPlease Holdsuggests, however, and what Dávila’s comments point to, is that for many people, this system is already a reality. Maybe it’s an uncaring public defender rather than a virtual lawyer in the shape of the scales of justice, and maybe it’s a police officer having a bad day instead of a police drone whose recognition is spotty, but either way, Mateo and people like him regularly have their lives destroyed by apathy, even if the mistake is officially “corrected”.
