Helium

Plot synopsis:
Alfred is a young boy staying in a hospital who suffers from an undisclosed terminal illness. Enzo, a janitor at the hospital, meets Alfred while working and the two develop a friendship. Enzo tells Alfred of Helium, an attractive alternative to Heaven, because Alfred imagines Heaven is very boring. Enzo tells Alfred that to get to Helium, he will fly in an airship that will know to pick him up because of his red balloon dog, which Enzo has made for him.
Alfred's illness worsens, and he is moved to a unit to which Enzo doesn’t have access. Enzo sneaks onto the unit, but is caught by the head nurse and barred from seeing Alfred. As Alfred's condition worsens, Enzo wonders if he is making it worse for the boy. He voices these concerns to a nurse saying, “I’m feeding him lies.” She disagrees and tells Enzo “you’re giving him hope.”
Alfred gets worse, and having no access to him, Enzo writes out “the end of the story” to have the nurse read to him. As the nurse is about to read the ending to a dying Alfred, she changes her mind and, instead, sneaks Enzo onto the unit to tell the rest himself.
As he tells the story, the film switches to Alfred’s point of view. With no dialogue, he gets out of bed fully dressed and goes to the window. A giant airship is waiting for him. He walks across an extended ladder from the hospital to the airship. As the airship flies away, hospital windows full of red balloon dogs can be seen.

Tags: fantasy

Review:
If I was to guess, this is probably the odds-on favorite for the Oscar--but the field is very tight this year..
Today I went to a special showing of the Oscar-nominated Live Action films.
This was a very unusual year because I don't see any clear winner nor did I see any film I disliked.
Oddly, however, I didn't see any I loved either and picking the winner is amazingly difficult.
If I did pick one, I'd probably bet on "Helium".
This is because although there were three super-depressing films about important social issues (the sort of things the academy often like), "Helium" is clearly the most artistic and has a professional quality none of the other shorts can approach."Helium" is a depressing little film.
A new orderly is working at the hospital and strikes up a friendship with a scared little boy.
He's scared because he's dying--and to him, Heaven doesn't seem like a very fun place to go.
So, to ease his fears, the orderly makes up a story about a magical place called Helium--because the boy is so infatuated with balloons and dirigibles*.
However, before he's able to finish the story, the boy is moved to a critical care ward--one where this new employee is not allowed to go.
But he cannot live with himself knowing about this afraid little boy and he decides to sneak in and ease his mind with more stories about the magical land of Helium.The film is breathtaking with its artistry.
Very professional...but also very depressing.
A wonderfully made film and one worth seeing...provided you bring along some Kleenex.*It was interesting that the boy had a lot of models of these balloons and dirigibles in the hospital room.
More interesting to me was his Hindenburg model as the swastikas on its tail fins were whited out..
Poor boy, rich soul.
The special begins with Anders Walter's "Helium," a Danish short that follows the life of a young boy named Alfred (Pelle Falk Krusbæk), a terminally-ill young boy who is wasting away in a children's hospital.
Alfred, however, has his mind temporarily taken off his illness when he meets Enzo (Casper Crump), a janitor who tells him of a place called "Helium," an alternative place to go rather than Heaven.
The idea of Heaven is unexciting to Alfred, and the idea of "Helium" even owes itself to the fact that Alfred loves balloons, blimps, and all sort of objects that fly thanks to air.
Enzo makes him a red balloon dog, which he informs Alfred will allow the airship that will eventually pick him up to know where he is at and that he wants to go to "Helium" rather than Heaven.
This is a tender short, and another one in the Academy Awards' long history of finding and nominating ones that deal with death and the afterlife.
Explored in addition to dealing with death and a relationship that is brewed thanks to a poor circumstance is the constant struggle of being a nurse or someone who spends much of their life around sick people and children.
You become attached, and with many of these kids, the end is nigh and you also are one that needs to find a way to let go.
Aside from some mawkish tendencies and a short that deals a bit too heavily in the cuteness aspect, this is a fine short film.
If you have a soft heart, I foresee the last three shots of the film being something of a rough sit..
Change your mind,change your story,change your life.
when a little child boy who is suffering from an incurable disease and he is going to die in a few months,thinks "heaven looks like a boring place", how can you change the way he looks into the life after death?
how can you help to make this journey a little more comfort for him?
This is the story of Helium.
Sometimes I think to myself hopes are some kind of lies, but I guess sometimes it is crucial to change our mind, the way we look into the problems makes us, makes how we are going to live,and how we are going to die, or maybe how we are going to live after this life!
So I believe "Helium" which is another intent for Heaven-but it seems to be more fun,more fantastic and imaginable for a little kid who loves balloons and bored from a mental,abstract world called heaven- did a good job to make the audience rethink about the way they look into life and make them more precise about choosing their perspective to the life's events..
Absolute rubbish.
Bo-focking-hoo.
A young boy is dying.
It's so saaaad (not really).
Luckily, there's a dimwitted janitor there, to tell him stupid stories about a magical afterlife-place called Helium.
Unfortunately, the relationship between these two is so forced, and the stories about Helium are so meaningless and without reference, that the movie becomes an unfunny parody of itself.
And it doesn't take long before you're hoping the kid will just go ahead and croak already.Sad music is smeared thickly as the boy's condition is worsening, and the filmmakers begs the audience for sympathy.
Yet we're never given any reason to why we should care about this kid at all, other than him being a kid; which is just awful screen writing.
But even if the script had been written in a smoother fashion, the fact that anyone would make a film of such a terrible concept in the first place, is mind-boggling.
I mean, a dying kid?
Could you possibly be any less creative in your plea for emotions?The overdose of sap is so severely lacking a pinch of anything cute, quirky or fun, that the whole thing ends up as something sticky you want to wipe off your shoe.I feel dirty after having watched this crap..
Pure Oscar bait.
"Helium" is a Danish short film that runs slightly over 20 minutes and won an Academy Award last year.
Denmark actually has a really good record in the live action short film category and looking at the plot in here, it should come to nobody as a surprise that Anders Walter won the Oscar for this one.
I am actually surprised that people considered the Martin Freeman film the frontrunner.
"Helium" was his 3rd short film work in his career and by far his most successful.
I wonder if he is going to change to full feature films at some point just like Anders Thomas Jensen did a while ago.Anyway, this film is about a dying boy (Oscar bait!) and a man who does his best to make the boy's final days as bearable as possible.
Sometimes lying isn't all bad.
He invents a fictitious wonderful place named "Helium" and replaces the parents' story that the boy will fall into a long sleep similar to hibernation.
He tells the boy that he will soon go to "Helium".
This place is also depicted in the film, which certainly added a lot to this film.
Apart from that, we also see the man's struggles of dealing with grief and some interactions with a nurse who helps the man.
All in all, a good short movie, but sometimes I felt that it just was too in your face and over-the-top and some subtlety would not have hurt.
Not the best of the year for me, but worth a watch.
Make sure you get subtitles unless you speak Danish.