I must admit that I disagree with the basic premise of writer/director Devin Scott's just shy of 25-minute doc short Long Live Xander the Great. In the short, narrator Jordan Jacobo looks back on his childhood and realizes, "as we all do," that his parents were not the heroes he imagined them to be. 

That's his experience, of course, and it's brought poignantly to life in this retro-vibed, honest look back at parents who were not the heroes he imagined them to be. 

Of course, this isn't something "we all do." In fact, sometimes it's quite the opposite. Having just lost my own father within the last 3-4 months, I've come to realize the ways in which I had caricaturized my father and defined him in a way that never fully described him. Maybe that's more the point here - as children, we grow up believing our parents are one thing before realizing in our adult years the reality of who they are. Sometimes, this means they're not the heroes we believed them to be. Other times, the childhood traumas we've assigned to them can't begin to describe the fullness of who they are. 

There's always more. Sometimes, it takes longer to discover it. 

In Long Live Xander the Great, Jordan wrestles with a father who was always present - until he wasn't. He wrestles with life's changes. In his case, these were lived out in ways big and small and that live on in his memory to this day. 

Ultimately, Long Live Xander the Great is a story about abandonment and the ever elusive "Why?" that we often seem to not discover. We don't know why parents leave us. We don't know why life changes. We don't understand the hidden motivations and the hopes and dreams that can set everything askew. 

Long Live Xander the Great is in many ways a simple, straightforward doc about one person's attempt to reconcile the "Why?" that will likely never be answered and what it all means for his life moving forward. 

Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic