Tonight, we look at two of the most unpredictable and underappreciated categories of the Academy Awards: The short films. Specifically, the animated and live-action categories. Here are a bunch of short reviews for a bunch of short films. We start with the animated entries.
Pear Cider and Cigarettes: At just over half an hour long, this is the only nominee in the animated category in excess of 10 minutes. It comes to us from Passion Pictures, a company that definitely has more pull in the industry than most average short filmmakers, but nowhere near as much as Pixar, so take that for what you will.
This tells the true-life story of “Techno” Stypes, a notorious hard partier who goes to China for a liver transplant after years of living with alcoholism, drug abuse, and Hepatitis C. The hard-boiled, overly verbose voice-over starts to grate very quickly, and it’s hard to ignore all the recycled animation. The story is quite a ride when it gets going, but getting there takes a lot of droning and unstructured storytelling about this guy we have little reason to care for. The film has style to spare, though.
Borrowed Time: An Old West story about a man struggling with guilt over his father’s tragic death. It’s short and the story is thin, but the animation is phenomenal for how much emotion is conveyed in so little time, with virtually nothing in the way of dialogue or score. There are only two lines in the whole short, so unnecessary and so distracting that I wish the filmmakers had completely omitted the dialogue and let the visuals do the talking.
Piper: If it’s a Pixar short, it’s quality. The animation is dazzling, the characters are beautifully expressive, the music is adorable, and the story is a wonderfully novel one about coming of age, overcoming fears, finding independence, and so on. Great stuff.
Pearl: My own personal favorite of the animated bunch. Told almost entirely from inside a car, this is a father/daughter story that spans several years. We watch the two of them travel the country as the father plays for tips, the girl grows into a rebellious teenager, she hits the road with some friends to start a band of their own, and she finds success her father never dreamed of. The scope is tremendous for such a confined setting and so little running time, but the story is bursting with heart and it’s incredible how much plot the filmmakers were able to cram in. The animation is beautiful, the music is wonderful, and I love how the singers switch as the torch is passed from father to daughter. Absolutely lovely.
Blind Vaysha: A fable about a girl who sees the past with one eye and the future with another, but can’t see the present. It’s easily the most fascinating premise of the bunch, and one superbly suited to animation. The use of caterpillars and butterflies as an recurring motif is a great case in point. Alas, I really wasn’t taken with this style of animation, and the wonderful premise isn’t used for a coherent story. The limp non-ending lost a lot of points with me as well.
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Now we move on to the live-action nominees. Right off the bat, I appreciate how this crop was far more light-hearted and endearing than last year’s nominees. Sure, there was Stutterer (the quirky romantic comedy that actually won), but it seemed like the nominees last year were primarily doom and war and bloodshed. This year was a huge relief compared to that. Particularly…
The Woman and the TGV: Here’s a story about about older woman who steadfastly refuses to change for the world around her. To wit, after 32 years, she still goes out to the railroad tracks like clockwork to wave at the trains passing by. Then she improbably gets a missive from someone on the passing train, thus beginning a penpal relationship in a way that shakes up her life like never before. The whole film is heightened in a way that stands out against the more grounded and authentic nominees — for better and for worse. Still, there’s nothing wrong with a cute little trifle of a short film. Bonus points for brilliant use of color.
Sing: A shy girl arrives at a new school and joins its prestigious youth choir. This one is interesting in that our protagonist isn’t immediately hated by every other kid in school, and she isn’t exceptionally good or exceptionally awful at singing. Nice though it was to see a story of this genre buck the usual cliches, it sadly means that the story doesn’t go anywhere interesting until the big climactic twist. That one twist raises a lot of interesting ideas and its resolution is nicely satisfying, but getting to that point is kind of a slog.
Timecode: This one is about a couple of put-upon security guards who brighten up their otherwise boring workday through brilliant means that I don’t dare spoil here. I’d love to discuss it at length, but it’s so ingenious and beautifully executed that it really would be best if you discover it for yourself.
Enemies Within: This is the story of an Algerian native (born when Algeria was part of France) who’s applying for French citizenship after living on French soil his entire life. Trouble is, he’s also a Muslim and technically an immigrant. Put the two together, coupled with life inside a racist justice system, and one incident in his life led to another until it snowballed into a police record that currently holds him from citizenship. So now our protagonist is threatened with deportation unless he gives the names of some fellow Muslims in his neighborhood.
It’s a fascinating psychological thriller about xenophobia and how much trust can be afforded between governments and people. There’s a very real question about how far the government officials involved will go, and whether our protagonist really is hiding anything, so the tension is palpable throughout. It’s easily the sole “downer” of the nominees, but it’s still a wonderful piece of work.
Silent Nights: She’s a white girl living in Denmark, native to the area, volunteering for the Salvation Army while caring for an alcoholic racist mother. He’s a refugee from Ghana who was lucky enough to escape to Denmark, living on the streets and enduring horrible xenophobic abuse from strangers while his family back in Africa pleads for money he doesn’t have. The two of them meet after the male lead gets the shit beat out of him by xenophobic Arabs and they strike up a romance. Unfortunately, much as the two love each other, their relationship gets sorely tested by all the desperate shit that the male lead has to pull in light of his situation and his family problems back home.
This one has it all. Romance, comedy, heartbreak, incisive social commentary, wonderful acting, and a feature film’s worth of plot crammed into 30 minutes without feeling the least bit forced or rushed. This one is definitely my pick of the lot.
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I hope that helps your Oscar betting pool. Speaking of which, don’t forget to tune in here for my annual liveblog on the big night!