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The annual showcase of the animated, live-action, and documentary short films nominated for the 2012 Academy Awards are currently underway at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village. Below is an overview of entries. Separate admission is required for each program.
Animation
The Oscar field for best animated short film has a distinctly Canadian flavor this year. After Cordell Barker’s delightful short-listed Runaway fell short of a nomination in 2010, the National Film Board of Canada returned to Academy Award contention this year, netting two nominations for their short animated productions, bringing their grand total nominations to 72 in 73 years of operation.
Photo from “Wild Life,” a film about a dapper young remittance man sent to Alberta from England in 1909, with disastrous results. (National Film Board of Canada)
While nature plays a role in Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby’s Wild Life, as well as Patrick Doyon’s Dimanche/Sunday, they also share a weird, off-kilter sensibility.
One of the strongest nominees, Wild Life is ostensibly a fish-out-of-water tale about one of the many British ne’er-do-well gentlemen who came to Western Canada to seek their fortunes as ranchers. Most of them made poor cowboys and the protagonist is no exception. While the culture clash themes are cleverly addressed, there is a subtle undercurrent of David Lynchian menace that really distinguishes the film.
Shifting regions, Quebecois Patrick Doyon tells a relatively simply tale of a young boy, once again enduring his family’s Sunday rituals in Dimanche. However, it takes a trippy detour involving a bear. It is strange and somewhat sad, just like childhood.
Perhaps the strongest nominee, coincidentally considered the frontrunner, also has a very strong sense of place, but in this case it is Louisiana. Produced entirely within the state, William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg’s The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore begins in New Orleans with a scene clearly inspired by the recent hurricanes that have wracked the state. Like many New Orleanians, Morris Lessmore takes refuge, finding a new home in a literal world of books.
Employing inventive fairy tale imagery, Flying Books is a sophisticated paean to literature, offering the greatest depth of the animated program.
In contrast, Grant Orchard’s A Morning Stroll is essentially a bit of hipster playfulness, but it is rather funny, depicting the changes wrought on New York City when a chicken takes its titular promenade in 1959, 2009, and 2059.
While pleasant, Enrico Casarosa’s La Luna, from Pixar, is a rather standard fable about a young’s boy’s discovery of the family’s fantastical business.
Ranging from nice enough to very good, the nominated animated shorts are a solid slate overall, with “Flying Books” and “Wild Life” ranking as standouts.
Live Action
If this year’s Oscar nominated short-form animation has a Canadian flavor, the live action shorts have a slight Irish disposition, at least according to some definitions. As it happens, one of the best contenders hails from Northern Ireland. Regardless of identity issues, Terry George’s The Shore is probably the film to beat.
It hardly hurts that George is a highly regarded filmmaker, already twice nominated in screenplay categories. The Shore also stars an actor viewers will recognize: Ciarán Hinds, currently seen in theaters as “Soldier” in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Yes, The Shore addresses the troubles, but not in a polarizing context. Twenty-five years ago, Jim Mahon’s grandfather was spooked by the escalating violence and trundled the young man off to the American relations. He has finally returned with his grown daughter to make peace with his former best friend and the woman he jilted.
Ciaran Hinds and Kerry Condon (R) in “The Shore,” a film about reunited friendship in Northern Ireland. (Terry George and Oorlagh George)
Although it is more of a drama than a comedy, The Shore has a wry, knowing sensibility that should appeal to popular audiences. Rather than dwell on Belfast’s battle scars, George captures the picturesque landscape of Northern Ireland. One of the great actors of our day, Hinds is perfect as the conflicted Mahon, and Kerry Condon is appealingly smart and down-to-earth as his daughter.
Unfortunately, the proper Irish contender is not nearly as rich. An incompetent choirboy is offered a chance to redeem himself in Peter McDonald’s slight “Pentecost. However, the big mass plays out as a childish rebellion fantasy at the expense of the Catholic Church.
Though also relatively short, Andrew Bowler’s genre comedy Time Freak is easily the most entertaining live-action nominee. An obsessive scientist has developed a time machine, but his regular-guy best friend is alarmed by the self-defeating ways he has been applying his breakthrough. A very funny film, Time Freak is similar in tone to some of the original Twilight Zone episodes that played it strictly for laughs.
There are not a lot of laughs in Max Zähle’s Raju. There are not a lot of surprises where this international adoption morality play is headed either, but it is executed quite well, especially for a student film. Shortly after Jan and Sarah Fischer adopt the title character, he disappears under mysterious circumstances. However, as the German would-be father searches for Raju, he learns troubling facts about Raju’s circumstances. Filmed on the streets of Kolkata (aka Calcutta), it conveys a sense of the city’s teeming poverty and sets up the protagonists’ ethical dilemma rather effectively.
Another international award-winning student film, Hallvar Witzo’s Tuba Atlantic offers an Academy-friendly blend of quirk and heartstring pulling.
Given exactly six days to live, grouchy old Oskar Svenning sets out to contact his estranged brother in America via the monster tuba they constructed on the shore. Although Svenning stubbornly refuses help, a young Evangelical Christian insists on acting as his “angel of death.” While innocent Inger might sound like a hopeless caricature, Ingrid Viken plays her with a fair degree of innocent charm.
Granted, the film is unabashedly sentimental, but the unrestrained war Svenning wages against the pesky seagulls is frequently quite amusing.
Documentaries
Almost one year after the devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami rocked Japan, the documentary film industry still maintains nearly complete radio silence. However, filmmaker Lucy Walker recognized the magnitude of the tragic events in Japan, capturing the immediate aftermath and early rebuilding efforts in The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, the clear and overwhelming standout among the Oscar nominated short-form documentaries.
It opens with first-hand video footage that will make viewers forever foreswear Roland Emmerich disaster movies. From the relative safety of higher ground, residents watch as the tsunami slowly obliterates their town and all their neighbors left behind. Their audible anguish is haunting.
There are many stories from those who lost loved ones. Clearly, the pain remains understandably raw and immediate for them. Yet, there is no finger-pointing or ranting. Instead, they seek to remember and rebuild. Whether it is the beautiful young photographer recording the rebirth of the town destroyed in the initial scene, from that very same vantage point, or the relief worker who always stops to salvage family photos and tombstones, their efforts are profoundly moving.
Directed by Walker, a high-profile nonfiction filmmaker, whose perfectly nice and reasonably informative Waste Land was a feature documentary nominee last year, Blossom is considered the frontrunner in this category and rightly so.
Saving Face is also part of the program, but has separate publicity arrangements preventing my screening of the film, while God Is the Bigger Elvis is not included in the program due to licensing issues.
Photo from “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom,” a film about earthquake and tsunami survivors in Japan rebuilding their hardest hit regions as cherry blossom season begins. (Lucy Walker and Kira Carstensen)
The remaining contenders simply pale compared to the impact of Blossom. Gail Dolgin and Robin Fryday’s The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement is billed as a profile of the late James Armstrong. However, they show no real interest in their ostensive subject, using him only as a prop. All we learn about Mr. Armstrong himself is that he participated in many of the great Civil Rights marches and presided over a barbershop filled with artifacts from the era.
Likewise, James Spione’s Incident in New Baghdad is undermined by its ideological blind spots. Former Army Specialist Ethan McCord explains how a complicated skirmish publicized by WikiLeaks haunted him since his discharge. It seems an Army Apache helicopter group took out an enemy contingent armed with RPGs and AK-47s. Soon thereafter, a minivan pulled up and was bombarded in turn.
It turns out that a young boy and girl were seriously injured inside the vehicle, and their father was killed in the driver’s seat. Why he headed toward rather than away from the combat does not seem to intrigue McCord or Spione. However, the tremendous efforts the U.S. military made to successfully save both children ought to speak volumes about the moral superiority of our troops and their mission. McCord remains bitter and that is his right. As an indictment, though, Incident in New Baghdad just does not compute.
Joe Bendel writes about independent film and lives in New York. To read his most recent articles, please visit: jbspins.blogspot.com
