Four stars. Unrated, but akin to a PG-13 for strong war themes and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.29.16
While the rest of the country
kvetches about racial disparity in the recently released Academy Award
nominations — a “problem” that has everything to do with what is and isn’t put
into production by Hollywood studios, and nothing at all to do with Academy
voters — those who anguish about such things will find solace in one direction.
The short subjects categories
are, and always have been, a richly international affair.
"Shok" |
That’s particularly true with the
2015 nominees, which come from Palestine, Germany, the United Kingdom, Chile,
France, Austria, Kosovo, Ireland and even Russia.
In terms of quality and
storytelling, the live-action nominees are uniformly excellent. They’re also
politically heavy and, in three cases, quite grim and emotionally upsetting: as
far as could be imagined from the cotton candy often found in Hollywood
features.
I’ve always been drawn to short
films, for the same reason that I seek out short stories: Bloated, 800-page
novels forgive considerable authorial excess, whereas every single word must be
perfect in an 12-page story.
Just as every frame must count,
in a 12-minute short film.
The jewel in this year’s live
action quintet is director Basil Khalil’s Ave Maria, which takes an
unexpectedly light-hearted look at one of the world’s worst geo-political hot
spots. The story opens on the silent routine of five Palestinian nuns who live
in a convent in the West Bank wilderness; their worship is interrupted by the
arrival of a nervous Israeli settler family, whose car breaks down just outside
the convent door.
A potentially tense situation —
the elder Israeli woman immediately fears being killed — is stressed further by
the Sabbath’s arrival, at which point the nuns are forbidden speech.
It’s difficult to imagine anybody
successfully mining a gentle comedy from this premise, but that’s precisely
what Khalil has accomplished. (He co-wrote the droll script with Daniel Yáñez
Khalil.) The narrative moves in a marvelous direction, in great part due to the
unexpectedly resourceful involvement of young Sister Marie (Maria Zriek).
It’s a perfect little package,
right up to the final scene. And, let it be said, richly enlightening.
War’s unforgiving horrors are
profiled in two tense and unsettling dramas. Jamie Donoughue’s Shok (Friend) gives an intimate view of the 1998-99 Kosovo war, as seen through the eyes of
two young Albanian boys: Petri and Oki (Lum Veseli and Andi Bajgora, both quite
good). The former is making pocket change by illegally selling goods to
“peacekeeping” Serbian soldiers, who — for the most part — are vicious, racist
thugs.
The situation makes Oki uneasy,
but Petri is his best friend. Donoughue’s story, based on events that actually
happened to co-producer Eshref Durmishi, unflinchingly delivers two morals:
that little acts can have major consequences, and that, ultimately, a creature
always behaves according to its nature.
Military brat-turned-combat
paratrooper-turned-filmmaker Henry Hughes’ Day One is a tautly suspenseful
depiction of new U.S. Army translator’s first day on the job in an Afghan hot
zone, as her unit searches for a local terrorist. Layla Alizada stars as Feda, a
newbie well aware that her gender is an issue not only with her compatriot
soldiers, but most particularly with the Afghan civilians they encounter.
A hair-trigger situation turns
even worse when the very pregnant wife (Alexia Pearl) of their suspect goes
into labor, in a village where strict religious barriers prohibit the
intervention of a male doctor. The next 10 minutes are both mesmerizing and
almost too brutal to endure, with Alizada handling her role quite persuasively.
Bill Zasadil also is quite good, as the compassionate Lt. Adams.
The setting of Patrick Vollrath’s Alles Wird Gut (Everything Will Be Okay) may be contemporary and deceptively
peaceful, but the unfolding emotional angst is just as unsettling. Divorced
father Michael Baumgartner (Simon Schwarz) collects his 8-year-old daughter Lea
(Julia Pointner) for their regular every-other-weekend visit, and initially the
little girl is spoiled by the usual blend of expensive toys and amusement park
rides.
But Michael has a bigger plan in
mind: something he obviously has crafted for awhile. Trouble is, Lea is old
enough to sense something amiss, and the power of Vollrath’s film comes from
the increasingly tense dynamic between father and daughter. Young Pointner is
terrific: one of the most convincingly naturalistic kid actors I’ve ever seen.
She carries the film, and then some; your heart will ache — and break — as this
scenario builds to its climax.
After so much trauma, Benjamin
Cleary’s Stutterer is a welcome relief. Greenwood (Matthew Needham) is a
lonely typographer with a vicious speech impediment; his inner voice is
eloquent, sensitive and darkly funny, but he’s barely able to force words
between his lips.
His only companion is his kind
and forever patient father (Eric Richard). That said, Greenwood also draws
solace from a lively online “relationship” with Ellie (Chloe Pirrie), with whom
he exchanges messages for hours every evening. This suits his comfort zone,
even as he laments the obvious limitations.
The routine is shattered quite
suddenly, when Ellie commemorates their six-month “anniversary” by announcing
that she has traveled to London to surprise him, by meeting in person for the
first time. Greenwood, in a panic, can’t decide what to do.
Cleary’s solution to this
“crisis” is clever, warm and incredibly sweet.
We never know how these films
will be sequenced, when shown on the big screen (in our area at Sacramento’s
Crest Theater, as has become tradition). It would be nice to walk out after
this one or Ave Maria, rather than any of the other three. Cross your
fingers.
A few of the five animated 2015
nominees continue a disappointing trend that I’ve previously complained about:
a tendency to focus more on form than content. Beautiful animation doesn’t mean
a thing, if the so-called “story” is off-putting or simply bizarre; by the same
token, a clever script is ill-served by unappealing animation.
The latter is the case with
American animator Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow, which grants a little
girl a mind-bending glimpse of her own (quite distant) future. Hertzfeldt has
been making animated shorts since 1995, and this is his second Oscar nomination
in the same category.
The storyline is laden with
intriguing sci-fi concepts, and the young protagonist is cleverly voiced by
Hertzfeldt’s then-4-year-old niece, who was recorded while drawing and playing.
But the simplistic animation style is unappealing and — frankly — boring.
The opposite is true of Prologue, an anatomically meticulous, hand-drawn work by veteran animator
Richard Williams, a longtime filmmaker with three Oscars to his credit: two for
1988’s feature-length Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and one for his 1971 animated
adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
Prologue is set during the
Spartan-Athenian wars of 2,400 years ago, as a small girl bears witness while
four warriors battle to the death. The 6-minute film is lush and beautiful,
with faces and bodies morphing into and out of flowers and insects. Williams’
style is gorgeous; the honeybee that emerges from one flower is breathtaking.
But the snippet of story is
harsh, unpleasant, quite gory ... and thoroughly unsatisfying: hardly enough on
which to hang such luxurious pencil work.
Russian animator Konstantin
Bronzit was nominated previously in this category for 2007’s charming Lavatory
Lovestory, a delightful little romance that amply demonstrated his droll sense
of humor. That witty tone serves him equally well in We Can’t Live Without
Cosmos, the saga of two cosmonauts in training — also best friends — who share
the goal of being selected for a space mission.
The build-up is light-hearted, as
the two men ace all mental and physical tests, becoming the most qualified
candidates. Things then turn serious in the third act, which perhaps proves
that one should be careful what one wishes for.
But Bronzit’s limited-animation
style is the badly dated stuff of 1960s Saturday morning cartoons. Granted, it
“fits” the story’s time period, but it’s simply nothing special ... and hardly
deserves its nomination. (Then again, neither does World of Tomorrow.)
This brings us to the category’s
two stand-outs, the first from the ubiquitous Disney/Pixar empire.
(Back in the 1990s, the Academy
briefly created a new category — Best Comedy or Musical Score — in an effort to
break the lock that Disney then had on the Best Song and Best Original Score
categories. The same needs to be done now, with animated shorts: I mean,
really, who can compete with Pixar?)
Director Sanjay Patel’s Sanjay’s
Super Team is a loving anecdote drawn from his own childhood; it’s also the
one entry folks are likely to have seen already, as it was paired with the late
November release of Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur. The story concerns a young,
first-gen Indian-American boy whose fascination with Western pop culture
conflicts with his father’s Hindu traditions.
The generational divide
ultimately plays out in a fantasy realm, at which point the animation style
shifts accordingly (but not necessarily for the better). The bookending
segments are rich with expressive gestures, emotional detail and impeccable
timing: told without dialog, as often is the case with Pixar shorts.
"Bear Story" |
That film’s quality
notwithstanding, Chilean director Gabriel Osorio’s Bear Story is by far my
favorite: a poignant story-within-a-story also depicted in two distinct
animation styles. We begin with a fairly conventional CGI presentation of a
lonesome bear who glances wistfully about his otherwise empty home, pausing on
a telling photograph.
He creates the means to tell his
own back-story, by constructing an elaborate, coin-operated “mechanical
diorama”; he takes this down to the street and, in the manner of an
organ-grinder, activates it for a curious young bear ... and thus we get the
real story.
Heartbreaking. Also amazingly,
ferociously, cleverly animated. It’s a masterpiece: the only film in this
quintet that truly deserves the term.
And a fitting note on which to conclude this annual survey of short films. Aren’t we lucky, these days, that they’ve finally become an annual viewing tradition in mainstream theaters and on tablets, as opposed to no more than titles and fleeting clips during the Academy Awards broadcast?
And a fitting note on which to conclude this annual survey of short films. Aren’t we lucky, these days, that they’ve finally become an annual viewing tradition in mainstream theaters and on tablets, as opposed to no more than titles and fleeting clips during the Academy Awards broadcast?
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