Many of the past several years’ worth of Academy Award-nominated live-action shorts have been grim and unbearably depressing.
Happily, this year’s voters have regained their senses of balance and humor, while still focusing on relatable real-world issues. Rest assured: Two of them still pack a gut-punch.
But let’s start on a happier animated note. Australian director Lachlan Pendragon’s An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake, and I Think I Believe It is a droll claymation riff on 1998’s The Truman Show (and further inspired, Pendragon explains, by the 1953 Chuck Jones Warner Bros. cartoon, “Duck Amuck”).
A young telemarketer has long focused on toaster sales in an office crowded with numerous phone-bank workers … until, quite unexpectedly, the large avian of this film’s title informs him of a much larger world beyond his office walls.
Suddenly made aware that he has no knowledge of his childhood or upbringing — as also is the case with all his co-workers — our hero’s disorientation shoots into hyperdrive after realizing that his actions are controlled by Something Out There.
Pendragon’s 11-minute film doesn’t really have a point, but it’s fun to watch.
That isn’t the case with Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby’s The Flying Sailor, a bizarre and clumsily animated depiction of an urban legend that emerged in the wake of the horrific 1917 Halifax Harbour explosion: the largest human-made explosion at the time, equivalent to 2.9 kilotons of TNT.
As the legend developed over time, an English sailor was sent skyward, blown out of his clothes, and landed — unharmed — two kilometers uphill. Canadians Forbis and Tilby intend their 7-minute short to be a parable on making peace with the moment, as one’s life flashes before panicked eyes … but the execution is too sloppy to be effective.
American filmmaker Sara Gunnarsdóttir’s My Year of Dicks, based on Pamela Ribon’s mortifying memoir Notes to Boys (And Other Things I Should Not Share in Public), is even more visually off-putting. Pam is an imaginative 15-year-old girl determined to lose her virginity, but the male pickings in 1990s small-town Texas are a decidedly sorry lot; over the course of five chapters, she shuffles from one loser to the next, amid much profanity and sexually explicit dialogue. (This one is not for children.)
Although the narrative is at times wincingly funny — women will relate far more easily than men — the erratically colored, quasi-rotoscoped animation style is difficult to watch, and seriously detracts from the story. At 25 minutes, it becomes a slog.
Fans of classic, hand-drawn animation will adore director Peter Baynton and Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, faithfully adapted from the latter’s best-selling 2019 children’s book of the same title. This is the category’s prestige entry: executive produced by (among others) J.J. Abrams and Woody Harrelson, with the characters voiced by young Jude Coward Nicoll (the Boy), Tom Hollander (the Mole), Gabriel Byrne (the Horse) and Idris Elba (the Fox).
The story concerns a little boy, lost in a wintry wilderness, who desperately wishes to find his home. As he encounters and befriends a trio of creatures, this focus takes a back seat to quietly meditative explorations of kindness, friendship, empathy, humanity and resilience. In the words of the Mole, “If at first you don’t succeed, have some cake.”
This was a UK Christmas special just a few months ago. It’s certainly charming, but the conclusion is a bit unsatisfying. I mean, seriously?
(Getting back to their house, each afternoon, is a droll study in engineering ingenuity.)
The slightly scratchy hand-drawn animation perfectly suits this fascinating 14-minute saga, which climaxes with a subtle nod to the devastating effects of global warming.
Moving to the live-action entries, all five are thoroughly engaging (although one, at 37 minutes, outstays its welcome).
But with this parent gone, Turlough wishes to sell the farm, much to Lorcan’s anger. He therefore extracts a promise that Turlough will remain long enough to complete the items on their mother’s bucket list of things she always wanted to do: a series of increasingly unlikely activities that must be accomplished in the company of their mother’s ashes, within an urn protectively carried by Lorcan.
Paddy Jenkins is a stitch as Father O’Shea, blessed with the gift of saying the worst possible thing at every opportunity.
The situation becomes more complicated when additional passengers embark, most notably a delicate young woman named Ariel (Ola Hoemsnes Sandum). Events threaten to turn ugly, but then … ah, but that would be telling.
Director Alice Rohrwacher’s Le Pupille, set in a girls’ Catholic school in 1940s Italy, is this category’s prestige entry, with Alfonso Cuarón among its many producers.
It’s Advent season, but food is scarce during these war years; even so, one cunning little girl (Melissa Falasconi) is determined to somehow snatch a piece of Christmas cake from the equally wily Mother Superior (Alba Rohrwacher).
All of the young actresses are adorable, and their efforts to bend and/or breaks the nuns’ strict rules are endearing … but, at 37 minutes, this slight story takes far too long to reach its conclusion.
Danish director Anders Walter’s Ivalu, based on a graphic novel by Morten Dürr and Lars Horneman, slides into more serious territory. The story, set among an Inuit village in the Greenlandic wilderness, flirts with magic realism as young Pipaluk (Mila Heilmann Kreutzmann) wakens one morning to discover that her older sister Ivalu (Nivi Larsen) is missing.
The girls live with their father (Angunnguaq Larsen), who seems oddly unconcerned about Ivalu’s disappearance. Pipaluk’s subsequent search for her sister, a quest seemingly guided by an overhead raven, takes place amid the towering mountains, glaciers, fjords and icy expanse of this hostile but gorgeous landscape; flashback memories show the sisters enjoying each other’s company during happier times.
We know where this is going, but that doesn’t make the outcome — a young girl rudely confronted, quite harshly, by adult concerns — any less powerful.
Best of all, though, is Luxembourg-based Iranian filmmaker Cyrus Neshvad’s The Red Suitcase, the most suspenseful, tension-laden 17 minutes I’ve spent in a long time. Dialogue is minimal; the story draws its power from the young star’s shattering performance, and Neshvad’s Hitchcockian finesse with set-up and viewer expectation.
Ariane (Nawelle Evad), a veiled 16-year-old Iranian girl, deplanes at the Luxembourg Airport late one night, her only luggage a small red suitcase. She’s clearly terrified of having to head into the concourse of arriving passengers.
Her concern becomes clear when we spot an impatient, middle-aged man, carrying an unlikely bouquet, apparently waiting for somebody.
What subsequently transpires is a riveting, creepy-crawly dive into the seamy world of child brides and human trafficking: Neshvad’s spot-on and impressively timely show of solidarity toward Iranian women currently fighting for their rights.
Advocacy cinema doesn’t get much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment