This year’s crop of Academy Award-nominated live-action short subjects is impressively robust.
The animated nominees are … impressively uneven.
Let’s start with the live-action entries, all of which (no surprise) are variations on the themes of racism and tolerance.
But his immediate problem — where to sleep — fades due to a chance encounter with Artie (Robert Tarango), an amiable deaf-blind man who needs an assist in finding the correct bus to take him home. (Why such a vulnerable individual would be wandering New York’s mean streets alone, late at night, is something we can’t worry about; this is a parable.)
As Roland develops this heartwarming tale, we’re reminded anew that — often — the best way to help yourself, is to help somebody else.
High-profile casting is the first thing noticed about writer/director Elvira Lind’s The Letter Room. Oscar Isaac — one of our newest Star Wars champions, among many other roles — stars as Richard, an empathetic corrections officer recently transferred to the mail room in a maximum security prison.
All incoming and outgoing letters must be scanned and scrutinized. Richard, who lives alone, soon becomes captivated by the warm and sensitive letters written by a woman (Alia Shawkat) to one of the prisoners on Death Row … who never writes her back. This seems grievously unfair to Richard, particularly since another of the Death Row prisoners pines for letters he never receives.
Isaac’s performance is a masterpiece of subtlety and silence, as this inherently kind and uncomplicated man struggles to make peace with his new role.
