The 2019 Oscar Shorts: Quite a gut-punch

The 2019 Oscar Shorts (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Unrated, but the live-action entries are patently adult material
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.8.19

I have serious issues with the folks who selected this year’s nominees for live-action short films.

But let’s set that aside, for the moment.

The nominees for 2018’s animated shorts, as often is the case, reflect a delightful variety of subjects, approaches, tone and animation techniques: ranging from thoughtful to satiric or poignant; from traditional hand-drawn cels to the computer-rendered exquisiteness of the ubiquitous Pixar entry.

The latter, director Domee Shi’s Bao, likely will be familiar; it preceded screenings of last summer’s The Incredibles 2. It’s the touching story of an aging Chinese mother who, grieving during a devastating case of empty-nest syndrome, gets another chance at motherhood when one of her hand-rolled dumplings springs to life as a giggling infant boy … with a dumpling-shaped head.

It sounds bizarre, but Shi’s narrative approach is so gentle and heart-warming — so universal, in its depiction of the battle between protective parents and headstrong children — that we quickly fall under its spell. More to the point, Shi builds her film to a deliciously surprising and touching conclusion. Her rounded animation style — no hard edges — also perfectly suits this whimsical little tale.

One Small Step, the other CG entry, is an equally heartwarming little tale from co-directors Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas. The computer tools notwithstanding, their tender drama adopts the look of old-school, hand-painted cels to tell the story of Luna, an enthusiastic Chinese-American girl who dreams of becoming an astronaut. She lives in a big city with her doting father Chu, who supports them with the humble shoe repair business that he runs from his garage.

As Luna grows into teenager and then young adulthood, he’s always attentive to her footwear: even after she has forsaken the lovingly crafted “moon boots” of childhood, for casual flip-flops. This is a sweet tale of believing in dreams, and of parents who — behind the scenes — do their best to make such dreams come true.

Irish director Louise Bagnall’s warmly melancholy Late Afternoon, hand-painted in a watercolor style, is equally touching: the quiet depiction of Emily, an elderly woman who finds that long-ago memories comes to her more readily than awareness and comprehension of her whereabouts at a given moment. The film is a tender metaphor about the cruelty of Alzheimer’s, and the effect it has on both the afflicted, and those who bear witness while facilitating loving care.

Bagnall’s touch is delicate, her swirling imagery an ingenious means of conveying the jumbled thoughts and memories of an Alzheimer’s sufferer. And, most crucially, the elation experienced during moments of unexpected breakthrough.

Metaphor also is at the heart of director Trevor Jimenez’s Weekends, a frequently symbolic look at a young boy who — every weekend — shuffles between the homes of his recently divorced parents. Jimenez’s hand-painted style is disheveled and chaotic, reflecting the boy’s initial sense that he’s little more than a tennis ball being whacked back and forth by disgruntled opponents. Solace comes from flights of fancy, as the seasons change and the boy despairingly grows accustomed to this routine.

But Jimenez is a crafty and economical storyteller, and little details gradually reveal which of these adults is a true parent, and which merely goes through the motions. As we reach the conclusion, we understand that the boy has perceived the difference (as children of divorce often do).

Animal Behavior, from Canadian co-directors Alison Snowden and David Fine, employs a scratchy, child-like style in this comic study of half a dozen different animals forced to confront — and combat — their natural instincts and inner angst, during a group therapy session moderated by an insufferably calm canine. Bedlam is inevitable, but this is a one-joke premise that isn’t nearly as illuminating as the filmmakers probably intended. (And, frankly, the animation style is off-putting.)

As for the live-action entries … good Lord.

Let me clarify: All five films are solidly directed, thoughtfully scripted and — in several cases — scorchingly acted. These are highly polished efforts.

But three of these films — arguably, perhaps even a fourth — involve young children in dire peril. Embracing that once is horrific; tolerating it twice can’t help being annoying; enduring it a third time feels like sadistic, deliberately morbid overkill.

What the hell is wrong with this branch’s Academy voters? Are they all suicidal? 

I simply cannot believe, out of 140 qualifying short films, that the five strongest were limited to entries that focus on death, terror, murder, torture and bestial behavior … all involving little boys. That’s insane.

Parents be advised: Under no circumstances should young children be exposed to these films.

Frankly, I’m wary of recommending them to anybody.

While it’s true that, historically, live-action shorts often reflect grim current events — illuminating atrocities such as racism, despotism and political unrest — the field also has made room for the sort of warmly sensitive fare that characterizes this year’s animated entries.

Only two of this year’s live-action films have a point to make, and they do so quite persuasively. The others are no more than emotional torture-porn that fetishizes cruelty and suffering, as opposed to such unpleasantness being in service of something.

Let’s start with the better entries:

Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv’s Skin is a brilliantly executed depiction of race-hatred, with a gob-smackingly climax that Rod Serling would have loved. It’s also incredibly hard to watch, given that the story quite suddenly slides into the brutal beating of a black man by a gang of red-neck thugs, outside an average supermarket in an average blue-collar town.

Prior to this point, we’ve met the heavily tatted Jeffrey (Jonathan Tucker), as he gives his exuberant 9-year-old son Troy (Jackson Robert Scott) a haircut; mom Christa (Danielle Macdonald) watches indulgently. So, OK; they’re low-income, and they’re gun nuts. But Jeffrey’s true colors emerge — Tucker blossoming into the stuff of nightmares — when a fellow (black) shopper, Jaydee (Ashley Thomas), makes the mistake of smiling at Troy.

Nattiv, the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, has long been fascinated by why and how hate takes hold of the human heart. His approach here is quite audacious (and I suspect this one will take the category Oscar).

On a much gentler note, Canadian filmmaker Marianne Farley’s Marguerite is the quietly moving study of an elderly woman (Béatrice Picard) who lives alone, and relies on daily visits from a compassionate young caregiver (Sandrine Bisson, as Rachel). They’ve clearly known each other for awhile; the relationship is comfortable, but also mildly reserved, due to the unspoken divide that always separates client from service provider.

But on this particular day, Marguerite overhears a phone call between Rachel and her lover. Everything changes in a heartbeat: a shift that’s a deeply touching statement of our times, and of the power of spontaneous kindness.

Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s Madre (Mother) is a heart-stopper, and every parent’s nightmare. Single-mother Marta (Marta Nieto) gets a phone call from her 7-year-old son, vacationing with his father in French Basque country. Marta’s initial pleasure — at the unexpected call — quickly turns to terror, when the clearly frightened boy explains that he’s all alone on a deserted beach, and that his father left to get something from their distantly parked car … and hasn’t returned.

And, naturally, the boy’s cell phone is low on power.

Sorogoyen keeps us breathless, heart in mouth, during this 19-minute drama; the tension never flags, despite the fact that this phone call IS the film, and we never leave the apartment foyer where Marta stands. Nieto’s performance is note-perfect, and we — as witnesses — are equally terrified. (Why did this happen? Did the father abandon the boy? What will happen next?)

Which brings us to the two heinous entries, neither of which can justify its existence.

Canadian filmmaker Jeremy Comte’s Fauve opens on two young boys (Félix Grenier and Alexandre Perreault) horsing around in the great outdoors, playing silly one-upsmanship games with each other. The area isn’t particularly safe, with abandoned vehicles and other hazards; they eventually breach a fence and foolishly wander into an open surface mine.

What happens next is dreadful; what occurs thereafter is just weird. Attempting to extract symbolic significance from the final image of an injured fox hardly justifies the experience; it’s impossible to extract any sort of meaningful message from this film.

But Fauve is child’s play (no pun intended) next to Irish filmmaker Vincent Lambe’s Detainment, drawn from the shocking 1993 murder of 2-year-old James Bulger in Merseyside, England. This ghastly film is a dramatized depiction of the initial police interviews — all dialogue lifted precisely from transcripts — conducted with 10-year-old Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who capriciously abducted the toddler from a shopping center while his mother’s attention was elsewhere, and then tortured and killed him. Heinously. Unspeakably.

No question: The young actors playing Robert and Jon — Leon Hughes and Ely Solan — give amazing performances. But putting them through such an experience feels like child abuse, and to what end? Bulger’s parents have very publicly excoriated this film, insisting that it serves no purpose beyond rubbing salt in painful old wounds; as of late January, just shy of 100,000 people had signed a petition seeking the film’s removal from Academy Award consideration.

It’s hard to argue with them. At best, this repugnant drama’s mere existence can’t help adding a note of undeserved sympathy for Robert and Jon; at worst, it’ll give a sick buzz to child molesters. 

Lambe has offered no sensible defense of his work, aside from the mealy mouthed insistence that “the only way to prevent something similar happening in the future, is if we understand the cause of it.”

That’s crap. His film offers no such “cause” or “understanding.”

And the fact that Detainment climaxes the trifecta that includes Fauve and Madre (Mother), is indefensible.

Academy voters should be ashamed. And have their heads examined.

And you, gentle readers, have been warned.