DOCUMENTARY
Extremis: The weakest of this year’s crop of doc shorts, I’m going to borrow directly from Netflix’s own description of its entry to make a point here; “Witness the wrenching emotions that accompany end-of-life decisions as doctors, patients and families in a hospital ICU face harrowing choices.” And herein lies the problem with Extremis, it is neither harrowing nor wrenching. This film should require Kleenex, but it doesn’t. With no backstory about advances in medicine that are forcing these decisions in ways that didn’t happen twenty years ago, the viewer spends most of the film trying to understand the situation. There’s not enough backstory on the patients, and not enough explaining of their conditions to really engage in the story, Extremis arrives DOA.
4.1 Miles: An excellent snapshot of the tiny, idyllic Greek island of Lesbos and how its life has been disrupted by thousands of refugees being rescued at sea and coming ashore, 4.1 Miles follows a Greek Coast Guard as he pushes his training and his crew to the limit as they respond to harrowing situations. This film delivers everything that that the feature-length ‘Fire at Sea’ should have. Although the story focuses more on the Greeks trying to adapt to the situation and doesn’t do enough to humanize the refugees, (and the camera work at times is rough) it’s still a strong entry.
Joe’s Violin: From a storytelling and filmmaking perspective, Joe’s Violin is probably the strongest entry into the field this year, but it has the weakest subject matter. It follows a violin from its unlikely purchase by a Holocaust survivor in a street market post-war to its donation to a music program in the Bronx and its eventual reward to a young black girl who’s particularly gifted at playing. It’s easy to become teary when the survivor and the girl meet and form a bond over the love of violin. The film shows how music connects us in our common humanity. It’s simply lovely.
Watani: My Homeland: A film that follows a Syrian family in their daily tasks of life as bombs explode is difficult to watch. That young children can listen to explosions and decide what sort of bomb just detonated should be a call to action for us all. When the patriarch of the family who had been fighting for the Syrian Liberation Front is kidnapped and presumed killed by ISIS, the mother makes the decision to relocate her children to Germany and the story follows their integration there. An excellent film, but the point of shorts is to tell a story in short form; this entry feels as if it was a feature cut down too much. Still, well worth viewing.
The White Helmets: My personal favorite, the filmmakers follow the civilian rescuers who have taken on the excruciating job of rescue and recovery after bombings in war torn Syria. With little training and less protection, these men have saved the lives of thousands of Syrians while many of them have been killed in the process. Let me underscore something here: CIVILIANS. These are tailors and blacksmiths doing this… While the world sits back and watches. Few films have delivered a more damning critique of our global ethics than this one. A must watch.
ANIMATED
Blind Vaysha: Meh. With a voiceover to tell the story and animation more reminiscent of still illustration, Vaysha makes the viewer feel like they’re being read to from a storybook more than they are actually watching animation. It’s allegedly supposed to be a political reflection, as Vaysha is blind to the present, with one eye seeing the past and one eye seeing the future, but the film in its last minute breaks fourth wall to preach to the audience. Utterly underwhelming.
Borrowed Time: The first film that you see in the Oscar screening, the film delivers a direct punch to the chest that is not easily forgotten. In 7 minutes, Borrowed Time compresses a lifetime of guilt as a weathered sheriff revisits the scene of a devastating incident. The film perfectly captures the wavering on the brink of suicide and how guilt can crush a person, but hope can remain. Rare for me in the Shorts category, my only complaint is I would have liked to see a few more moments from the sheriff’s life. Otherwise, exceptional! Crisis response fiends should expect to see this film worked into my presenting in the near future.
Pear Cider and Cigarettes: Hated it. 35 minutes of film noir/graphic novel voiced over by a boring protagonist describing the death spiral of a self-indulgent and self-destructive friend who ends up in China waiting for a liver transplant, I just didn’t care about any of the characters portrayed here. Seriously, I had more fun cracking jokes about the film in the lobby of the Nuart with two friends afterwards (and entertaining those waiting in line for the ladies’ room) than I did watching the film. As the last film in the Oscar screening, there’s a warning to parents with children to leave due to language, drug use, sexual content, etc. Do yourself a favor, follow them. It’s not worth your time.
Pearl: A lovely 6-minute entry following a musician father chasing his dreams in a hatchback across the country and the daughter who eventually achieves those dreams, Pearl is a meditation on the relationship between a father and daughter, the passionate pursuit of music, and the sacrifices we make for love, all in 6 minutes with fun music to boot. Pearl is also technically interesting as the first nominee using Google 360 technology, which you won’t know or appreciate if you just see the screener in a theater. The film is “shot” from the perspective of the passenger seat of the hatchback. Watch it online and “look” around. It’s a cool entry no matter how you see it and anyone who’s ever been on the road chasing music will be particularly moved by it.
Piper: An absolutely gorgeous charmer!!! Pixar delivers this 6 minute story about a sandpiper afraid of the water after not fleeing a wave fast enough while foraging for food. After befriended some hermit crabs, she learns that weather the waves can lead to a different perspective. This film is PERFECT. Laugh out loud funny with endearingly anthropomorphized characters and stunningly animated, Piper delivers a cute story with a deeper meaning. Pixar at its absolute best!
COMMENDED
Asteria: Ick. Human astronauts and an alien race land on a distant planet moments apart and try to determine who can claim it. Seems like an interesting premise that quickly turns gruesome as the two simply destroy each other rather graphically, which seems inappropriate for the style of animation. Amongst the bodies arrives a third species and we learn that the now destroyed explorers were simply fighting over an intergalactic golf hole, I suppose the film is trying to deliver a political message, but it’s just gruesome.
The Head Vanishes: A lovely and thoughtful reflection into the nature of Alzheimer’s and dementia, this film follows the thinking of a woman as she carries her head around with her on a trip to the sea and can’t understand why she’s followed by a “lunatic” who insists on calling her mom. Any accurate description of the film will sound dark and gruesome, but it’s actually beautiful and poetic, an internalized and informative account of how reality begins to slip away from anyone with degenerative brain disease, but how they’re decisions seem to make sense when seen from their perspective. The Head Vanishes should have absolutely gotten an Oscar nod and is far more deserving than Pear Cider and Cigarettes or Blind Vaysha.
Once Upon A Line: A line drawing version of Disney’s ‘Inner Workings’, (Speaking of which, Disney didn’t get a nod for that?! Wow.) the film is a master’s thesis out of USC that doesn’t bring forward any new story material, which is a serious shortcoming for the animated category. Boy is having a hum drum life, boy meets girl, boy and girl become a couple, everything comes undone, boy is reminded that there’s more to life than the girl. The end. Eh. The animation style is interesting as all characters and movement come from the reshaping of a single line, but it’s just nothing that remarkable.
LIVE ACTION
Ennemis Interieurs (Enemies Within): Boring. A French immigration interview with an Arabic man turns accusatory. 27 minutes of that. What’s the message here? There’s racial profiling? Okay. Got it in the first 3 minutes. None of the characters are particularly compelling and when you finally get to some backstory on the Arabic man, you just want it over already. Moving on…
La Femme et le TGV (The Railroad Lady): Elise is a lonely woman in a small French town whose only joy in life seems to be waving at the express train that passes by her house every day. When a letter arrives from the train’s conductor, they begin a correspondence that reawakens Elise to the joys of life. There’s a nice subplot here with a young man in town who she harasses but ultimately hires and the cinematography of the dance studio across from Elise’s bakery is simply gorgeous. The film may jump the shark a bit when the conductor changes routes and Elise goes racing to find him, but La Femme, although not incredible, is a decent entry in a category filled mostly with duds.
Silent Nights: I. HATED. THIS. FILM. Not since Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me) have I actively hated a film so much. Does the Academy every few years now feel compelled to nominate something with the theme of “Oh, look at the poor, savage blacks, but they’re really not that bad, they just need angelic white people to save them.” This film is ridiculously racist and paternalistic and should probably be entitled something along the lines of, “WE’RE not racist! Some of our best friend is black!” Inger, a young Danish woman, meets Kwame, a homeless immigrant from Ghana, while she is volunteering at the local shelter. There’s zero character development here, so of course when he stares at her at moment longer from the pile of men on the floor and peels a potato, why wouldn’t she fall madly in love with him? And more obviously, all black men want to hook up with white women, so we certainly don’t need to develop her character anymore, sad, limpid looks ought do it. Wait, wait, let’s not forget to work in a group of Arabs attacking him to underscore that people of color can be racist too. Of course, after unnecessary close up’s of bedroom black on white skin (Oh! How shocking and progressive! An interracial relationship! I didn’t realize that was what this was about. Thanks for driving the point home, heavy-handed filmmaker!), they immediately in a wonderful meaningful relationship… You know, because that’s what happens after you go to Tivoli together. When he steals from the shelter to send money home to his wife and sick child (Oh! Didn’t you know? Of course, he’s cheating on his family without telling white girl, because, you know, black guys…), she mindlessly forgives him… And then decides to surprise introduce him to one-dimensional, alcoholic, super-racist mom on Christmas Eve with no warning to either party. Because why wouldn’t you? No matter, mom randomly apologizes and dies. Loose end tied up. Inger still wants to marry Kwame and have his baby now (Invariably she’s pregnant.) until she finds out about wife and kids and is furious and kicks him out. But wise and kindly Arab manager at the shelter comforts her with the thing that makes all of us feel better about painful life situations, a variation of, “There, there, these things happen.” Perfectly relieved, she finds Kwame because “he’s a good man,” gives him a huge chunk of her inheritance, and sends him home to Ghana to be with his wife and kids. At least she still has baby, who she can tell, “Daddy? Oh, he was some random married homeless guy from a different continent that I hooked up with and now have no idea where he is. Welcome to the world.” The end. This film reinforces every racist trope imaginable under the guise of progressivism. Absolutely terrible. Rant over.
Sing: A 25-minute Hungarian entry about a young girl at a new school who joins the award-winning choir only to be told she can’t sing by the director and that she should simply mouth the words. She plays along, heartbroken, until a new friend discovers her secret and confronts the director in front of all the schoolchildren, some of whom also haven’t been allowed to sing, we discover. This film is really a meditation on fairness and whether all the children should be allowed to participate in the spirit of inclusion or if exceptionalism, achievement, and recognition are more lofty ideals. Unfortunately, the film misses the mark by choosing one of the answers over the other and lecturing the audience that it’s right, ending with an embarrassed director and a chuckle worthy punchline, which is fine, but it could have been a meaningful mediation on value systems and instead went for an easy laugh. An overly inclusive, “everyone gets a trophy” American audience will be predictably charmed.
Timecode: In a crop of mostly duds, Timecode is an absolutely transcendent diamond in the rough. I absolutely LOVED this film. At 15 minutes, it’s everything a short should be. A Spanish entry, Timecode follows Diego and Luna, two security guards working opposite shifts at a parking garage. When a minor incident causes Luna to review security tape and discover a charming secret about Diego, the two begin an unexpected communication through security footage. A fantastic reflection on the shyness of people and the difficulty in making connections, Timecode shows how new electronic mediums can be used to overcome those barriers in a charming, surprising, and completely unexpected way. And the last scene of the short is laugh out loud funny. This film is an absolute gem.