Debut: 'Faulty Father' Has Its Faults
“It’s your turn, buddy,” begins Benjamin Welmond’s Faulty Father, a film tackling the interactions between technological advancement, personhood, and parenting. Woken up by his crying baby, young husband Leon (Stefan Dazil) finds a small puddle of blue slime on his kitchen floor. He follows strange mechanical sounds down his hallway, where he finds a closet with flashing lights and a duplicate version of himself. The duplicate shoots out from the closet, choking him against the wall until his wife Melissa (Allison Troech) rushes in, annoyed. “You didn’t take your Advil,” she mutters. Dumbfounded, Leon watches as his wife ushers in his duplicate, explaining that it’s the “backup version of him,” intended to protect the family in case he “just tries to take off,” or “just [doesn’t] step up a little bit.” When his wife turns her back to him and begrudgingly starts on the dishes, Leon moves in to comfort her. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promises. “I’m not great at this, but I’m not going anywhere.”
The audience watches as the original Leon, sparking and spurting blue blood, then short-circuits and falls to the floor while his wife nonchalantly scrubs away at the sink. Right on cue, yet another Leon enters the room, powers on, and heads to check on the baby. Welmond hints at Leon’s replaceability – each subsequent version is not only a physical duplicate, but has a similar disposition. Though frustrated, Melissa seems more exasperated than alarmed at the number of duplicate Leons she’s run through over the course of a single morning. It’s clear that this is a routine for her. She harps on the faults of each version of her husband, more concerned with his efficacy than his wellbeing.
“This is a fucking nightmare,” she says as she enters a closed-off mechanical room. Another Leon sits attached to a ventilator, tinkering away at a mechanical arm. They watch on a TV screen as one of Leon’s duplicates rocks the baby, commenting on his performance. “That last version was insecure, lazy, and selfish,” remarks ventilator-Leon, coughing up blood. Melissa and Leon sit together, watching the screen.
“I’m scared,” says Melissa, and Leon responds, “I’ll be here.” This reminds the audience i of what the first Leon said in the kitchen: “I’m not going anywhere.” With this conversation, Welmond emphasizes that Melissa and the “real” Leon are working towards a perfection that is simultaneously unattainable and already extant. Glimpses of the ideal Leon they seek are present in each version of him, but never does a version quite reach their ideal. As they kill off and regenerate version after version of him, the viewer wonders what it is that they are missing.
Welmond says in his filmmaker’s statement,
“The best science fiction is not about how our relationship to technology is evolving, but how it changes the way we treat each other. In making Faulty Father I ask the question: what if you could take the human error out of parenthood? Could you make a computer application that faultlessly raises a child?”
Though the film effectively asks its audience how far one should be willing to go in pursuit of personal and parental perfection, its execution falls short. Faulty Father is visually appealing, and its pacing keeps the viewer engaged, but a combination of Troech’s unconvincing performance and the film’s abbreviated length leaves something to be desired in the concept’s exploration. Over the course of its nine-minute run time, Faulty Father presents an interesting concept and thought-provoking plot devices. The idea of replacing humans with robots in pursuit of perfection is not unique, however, and the film misses its opportunity to offer something new. Despite the initial plot twist of ever-spawning Leons and another surprise of the “original” Leon as a behind-the-scenes mastermind, the viewer comes away from Faulty Father feeling disappointed.
The concept of infinite expendability, especially in relation to parenthood and evolving technology, is a compelling one. Absent from Faulty Father, however, is a clear goal in its treatment of these ideas. The film is driven by its visual effects, but there is little to propel the narrative or make the audience think. Behind the blue slime and good lighting are shallow characters whose motivations feel one-dimensional and whose traits feel forced. Welmond succeeds in presenting the viewer with the questions he asks in the filmmaker’s statement, but falls short of answering them. Though technically sound and aesthetically pleasing, the film feels more like a trailer for a larger concept than a thorough exploration of its conceit.