Home Burial is a 1950's set adaptation of Robert Frost's 1914 poem of the same name. 
The story of the film follows a young married couple in the wake of losing their four year old son, confronting each other for the first time since while reflecting and looking back on the night they met at a school dance five years earlier. 

Plot Summary:
The film itself opens on a dance hall from the outside, quiet and still before the doors fly open and three boys run out, followed by a man chasing them out. The man watches them leave before turning back inside to check on the boy they'd just beaten, the first half of the story, Harry.  The man who chased them out is a doctor who has developed a relationship with Harry through his mothers battle with cancer and his fathers subsequent depression. The doctor pulls him aside and begins fixing him up, asking Harry to close his eyes as the lights fade out. When he opens them, the room is lit only by a spotlight cutting through the haze and crown of couples on the dance floor, a spotlight pointing at a girl, crying on the other side of the room. Harry stands and walks, almost floats toward her, reaching out to touch her shoulder.
We then cut to an exterior of the home, the young woman from before standing in the window, looking on with puffy eyes, slowly pulling out revealing Harry, digging a small grave.
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We're now upstairs with her, three weeks later. Monika looks out the window, quiet and cold as she her unbroken gaze flicks up at a small bird landing on a branch in front of the window. She starts to smile before getting cut off by Harry asking what she sees. They haven't talked in the three weeks since the burial, and he's coming out the gate swinging. He lumbers over to the window, peeking out and taking a little too long to realize that she's been looking out the window at the graveyard, where his both parents are now, by cancer and then suicide, leaving him this house. He gives a small monologue about the specifications of the plot before alluding to their sons mound, which Monika rejects and storms out transitioning us to...
It's that same night five years earlier. Monika is storming off the dance floor away from a boy who just let her go, three boys being chased by the doctor in the background. She sits down on the steps just below the dance hall behind a closet door, which rattles after a moment. Out comes a couple, the girl recognizing Monika and shooing the boy off to make sure she's okay. She hops down on the steps and the two girls talk about Monika's problem, the other girl taking an optimistic approach, ending the conversation by standing up and asking Monika to join her. They walk out, and as soon as they do Monika spots the boy she was rejected by dancing with another girl, and she begins to break down, the other girl attempting to comfort her. Her breakdown is interrupted by a boy tapping her on the shoulder. Harry tells her he saw her and couldn't help but ask her to dance in an awkward introduction that Monika is taken by. The other girl seems suspicious. Later, Monika walks out with Harry, followed by her friend who expresses concern, concern Monika quickly pushes aside before getting in his car and leaving her standing in the parking lot. She turns around and briskly walks back to the dance hall bringing us back to...
Harry stands at the window as Monika flees,  seething. He turns around and immediately makes the interaction about how he isn't allowed to talk about his own son, a criticism Monika brushes off in a hurry to leave. Before she can Harry asks if he can ask her something as he sits on the stairs, which leads to him again spouting his frustrations with how he can't say anything right, making a point that "a man must give up being a man with women," in a monologue that is very clearly thought out and that he clearly feels really good about.
We then flashback to the day their son died. Monika lays on the floor facing a wall, her eyes wide open and bloodshot. Behind her out of focus, Harry walks past the door way, followed by the doctor, who looks into the room with concern before being told that she's sleeping and should leave her alone. At the door as Harry goes to let him out, now out of her potential earshot the doctor gives Harry a warning about the dangers of grief and expresses concern about Monikas being able to handle it. 
Harry is sitting on the stairs, clearly feeling proud after essentially rewording and twisting what the doctor had told him. She looks at him a moment before calling him insane and grabbing the door handle, which Harry again protests to, giving up on being reasonable and criticizing her for grieving their loss so inconsolably. He stands and approaches her, expressing more anger for her before she cuts him off and begins critiquing him for how he's taken it, retelling the burial from her point of view which we see, along with small moments from the time after where she felt he was insensitive. She closes out the monologue by telling him he's not allowed to mourn because he doesn't know how, which he pauses at. He then pulls a complete 180, telling how good it must feel to have that off her chest. He completely missed the point. She looks at him, opens the door and bolts, in slow motion away from the house. Harry slams the door in rage and screams. The shot stays in position in the entry as we cut to the space decorated for Christmas as the couple walk in holding their newborn in a bundle of blankets, to Harry standing in the doorway in a black suit for their wedding, to them sneaking in after leaving the dance, to present day, later that night as Monika returns again sneaking into the house.
That night, we see Harry sitting at the dining table passed out with a bottle of liquor. Monika opens the door and steps into the room, seeing him. She takes off her jacket, sets it on the chair across from him and rests her head on the table, reaching out and just touching his hand. Under the table, a third set of small feet is swinging in the chair between them.
We then fade out, back to the hall they met in. Its day now, completely empty, as they stand in the middle of the room dancing, light pouring in through the windows.
CREDITS

Home Burial features a cast of two main characters, Harry and Monika, a couple who met at a dance in their senior year of high school, an encounter that resulted in a child. And when the child turned four years old he came down with Influenza and died shortly after, leaving his parents in a marriage with little foundation. ​​​​​​​
The story finds Harry on the cusp of adulthood and independence, except theres a problem; his mother has been diagnosed with cancer, and while her condition has gotten worse and worse Harrys father has become worryingly distant.
When we meet him at the dance he's hit a low. He's been beaten by three boys for a reason he won't elaborate on other than insisting its his fault, his mother is barely able to talk to him anymore and he hasn't felt like his father has been in the picture for a while now. He looking for anything to keep him feeling alive, in maybe the most venerable position he's ever experienced, when he see's Monika from across the room. She's crying, and Harry immediately feels possessive, that he can somehow save her. His vision narrows as he walks through the dance floor full of dancing couples, walking, almost floating towards her. 
Five years have passed since the dance, now three weeks after the death of his very young son. His mother has succumbed to her illness and his father has committed suicide. He's living with his wife in the home he grew up in left to him by his parents, who are buried in the back yard. He's experienced enough tragedy to last several lifetimes and he's not going to let it consume him like it did his father, who he feels was weak, even if it means shutting the reality of what happened completely, which leaves his wife completely shut out, leading me to Monika...
We meet Monika at a sharp moment in her young life. Her mother whom she has a tumultuous relationship with has just kicked her out, and she came to the dance as a distraction. Something she is regretting as she sits on the stairs of the hall recovering from an anxiety attack she had as soon as she walked in. Her best friend Annette walks in on her and asks her what's wrong, offering to take her in at least until she leaves for college. Monika confesses that she has no idea she'll pay for it and doesn't see how it could feasibly happen for her. Annette changes the subject and convinces her to re-enter the dance floor. But as soon as she does she's immediately overwhelmed by the atmosphere of the space. And just before she fully blacks out, a boy taps her on the shoulder. And for the first time in a long time, she feels seen. 
In the five years that have passed since that night Monika has become a mother and for the first time found herself in new ways. Her entire world became her son, eventually eclipsing her relationship with Harry. From the start, she felt like she'd been miscast in the role Harry clearly saw her in. He lived his life like he was being watched, never stepping out of a line that slowly revealed itself under whatever path he took. It was an entirely imperfect relationship that was bearable thanks to her son. When her parents found out she was expecting it went about as poorly as it could've and they are no longer on speaking terms, which if she's honest is fine by her. She took raising him as an opportunity to raise the man she'd never met. 
When he passes, and when we meet her again she's in a perpetual state of shock. She hasn't left the house or hardly spoken a word in three weeks, and when the confrontation laid out in the source poem she's forced to face the reality of it for the first time.



They both also have a friend, Harrys being the doctor and Monikas being her childhood friend at the dance.
The look of the short will follow in the footsteps of films like Autumn Sonata, First Reformed, A Ghost Story and DP Łukasz Żal's visuals in Ida, Cold War and I'm Thinking of Ending Things. The scenes shot in the couple's home will also be shot in the historic home Kelly Reichardt shot her feature First Cow for A24 in 2019.
The scenes taking place at the party where the couple first met will take after the picturesque, gauzy aesthetic of vintage high school dance instructional videos from the 40s and 50s, with a rich and at times theatrical flair.

Home Burial as a whole is built to feel as though it was produced in another time, something I've done before in my 1930's set adaptation of The Invisible Man, though on a much smaller scale.
(very hypothetical estimates)

Could definitely be done with less but I wanted to put together an "ideal" situation and see how we could get there ei. Crowdfunding, sponsors etc.

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