Nominated shorts open theatrically

A group of orphaned Italian schoolgirls have to find a way to save their Christmas celebration as the supply chain collapses during World War II in Alice Rohrwacher’s Oscar-nominated short film “Le Pupille.”
A group of orphaned Italian schoolgirls have to find a way to save their Christmas celebration as the supply chain collapses during World War II in Alice Rohrwacher’s Oscar-nominated short film “Le Pupille.”

Awards season can be stressful for a critic because countless people are trying to convince you that their latest offering deserves a little gold man. It gets tiresome digging through long films that often seem more ponderous than profound.

Following the competition for the Oscar-nominated short films can be a lot more rewarding even if the films themselves have heavy subject matter. The talent behind them may not be as familiar, but much of this year’s crop of shorter documentaries, animated films and live action shorts features filmmakers and performers who may be overdue for some serious time in the spotlight.

Programs of Oscar-nominated shorts have opened theatrically, giving moviegoers who aren’t besieged with “For Your Consideration” screeners a chance to make up their own mind and even prepare for any Oscar betting pools. I missed a dues payment for the Psychic Friends Club, so I won’t guess how the Academy will judge these nominees, but I will pick the one short movie in each category that left the biggest impression. I should add that most of these films deal with adult content, especially my favorite of the animated offerings.

Animated

“The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”— This film was not available before deadline, but will be featured as part of the presentation.

“An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It” — It takes about as much time to watch this Australian stop motion comedy as it does to read the title aloud. Writer-director Lachlan Pendragon also provides the voice of a struggling phone salesman named Neil, whose quota seems like an impossible dream. Unfortunately, if he doesn’t reach that goal by the next day, he’s out of his miserable job.

Oh, that’s where the Ostrich comes in. The large bird points out to Neil that both are merely stop motion puppets, so maybe it’s not so important if he doesn’t sell another unit. Pendragon manages to play up the meta themes without the self-referential story getting tiresome. Normally films like this try to hide the artifice, but Pendragon places the action on a monitor in the middle of the screen, as if he’s letting the audience know they’re joining Neil’s subconscious. It takes a good film to make viewers care about a puppet’s inner life.

“The Ice Merchants” — Portuguese filmmaker Joao Gonzalez follows a father and son, who make their living selling ice to villages. Harvesting it is a little tricky. The two live in a house on a high cliff and have to parachute down to sell their wares. “Ice Merchants” is both whimsical and scary. Ice sadly doesn’t accumulate in convenient places. Gonzales doesn’t waste screen time with dialogue, much less exposition, so part of the delight in this film is coming to discover the world his characters occupy.

“The Flying Sailor” — If you think that sailors rarely become airborne, you’re right. This short from previous nominees Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby follows the unfortunate title character as he finds out what happens when you stand too close to a pair of two steamships heading for a collision. One of them contains enough explosives to wipe out a town. Their film follows the sailor’s mental journey as he’s propelled into the air. This is a formidable narrative feat because there is no voice-over. Forbis and Tilby use flashbacks to give the sailor two stories happening at once. Believe it or not, they based the film on a real accident that happened in Halifax in 1917.

I should mention that the title character loses his uniform in the blast. If you think cartoons are simply for kids, you might be jolted by this one and the next choice.

And the Oscar should go to …

“My Year of D***s” — The ribald title, taken from Pamela Ribon’s memoir, is amusingly ironic because Pam (Brie Tilton) is a virgin. Living in the early ’90s, Pam would love to lose her virginity to a fellow who is “the one,” but a more mature eye can tell her candidates are often hilariously or frighteningly lacking. While many skateboarders have grown into functional adults, her potential beloved seems unlikely to reach that point.

Icelandic filmmaker Sara Gunnarsdottir juggles a variety of animation styles to set the mood for each of Pam’s dubious encounters. It’s fitting that the seemingly giddiest of the bunch is presented in an anime format.

Live Action

“Night Ride” — When a short, eccentric woman named Ebba (Sigrid Kandal Husjord) asks to rest inside a commuter train on a cold December night, the operator tells her to leave. Figuring hypothermia is worse than his rebuke, she hides inside and accidentally activates the train. She’s not exactly a natural at the gig, but she bravely figures out a way to stop two bullies from harassing a trans woman. This Norwegian film from Eirik Tveiten becomes oddly touching as we discover the caring soul hidden under Ebba’s enigmatic demeanor.

“Ivalu” — Danish director Anders Walter adapts a graphic novel about a Greenlandic girl named Pipaluk (Mila Heilmann Kreutzmann), who scrambles to find her missing sister Ivalu (Nivi Larsen). Everybody knows everyone else in their village, but the girl’s disappearance doesn’t seem to set off the alarm bells Pipaluk belies it should. Their dad seems curiously unmoved by Pipaluk’s concerns, and we soon discover why he won’t be winning any “father of the year” awards. Walter handles the traumatic subject matter with a remarkable and appropriate amount of restraint. The horror is mitigated by Greenland’s austere beauty and by Pipaluk’s deep appreciation of her sister’s beautiful soul.

“An Irish Goodbye” — Losing a mother can be devastating, but the impact is even greater when one of his grown sons, Lorcan (James Martin) is incapable of taking care of himself. He has Down syndrome. His brother Turlough (Seamus O’Hara) tires of telling Lorcan that he must move in with his aunt. Fortunately, their mum left behind more than her ashes in an urn. A small sheet of paper has a series of final demands she has made for the two in order to reconcile them.

Because their village in rural Northern Ireland is small and has limited resources, the two find creative and often funny ways of meeting her demands. As with “Ivalu,” the scenery winds up being part of the story, and that’s a good thing.

“The Red Suitcase” — Set at an airport in Luxembourg, this offering from Iranian filmmaker Cyrus Neshvad has far more suspense than many of the feature-length thrillers I’ve seen. Nawelle Ewad stars as Ariane, a 16-year-old wandering through the airport with her red suitcase. We slowly learn that she’s wearing her hijab because she has just gotten off the plane from Iran and is having second thoughts about meeting the middle aged man who has been selected as her husband.

It’s obviously not a love match.

Ariane, who doesn’t speak any European languages, also has to contend with suspicious security guards and has difficulty admitting to her father that she doesn’t want to continue. Ewad gives an astonishingly assured performance, and Neshvad thankfully prevents making the adults around her from becoming caricatures.

And the Oscar should go to …

“Le Pupille” — Italian director Alice Rohrwacher’s tales of little girls, a cake and Christmas may seem light and cheery, but there are some undertones that prevent the tale from ever becoming sappy. While the young ladies are preparing for a pageant, their holiday feast seems wanting. While the radio announces Mussolini’s victories, the wartime supply chain is crumbling. As a reminder, Il Duce was incapable of running long-term combat operations or making any trains run on time.

The one bright spot seems to be a glorious cake that has been donated to the orphanage, but the mother superior wants to give it to the archbishop instead. What follows is delightful. Rohrwacher effortlessly infuses music and even a little animation into her examination of what doing the right thing really entails.

Documentaries

“How Do You Measure a Year?” — This film wasn’t accessible, so I won’t be able to measure its worth.

“The Elephant Whisperers” — Kartiki Gonsalves’ film about a couple who help take care of an orphaned pachyderm in southern India deserves a statuette simply for presenting the landscape. The Mudumalai Tiger Reserve has been around for nearly 150 years, and thanks to people like Bomman and Bellie, it’s breathtaking to behold. Oh, and I should mention the place is home to lots of elephants and their adorable babies. While their young are certainly cute, Bomman and Bellie work diligently so that the orphaned Roghu can reach maturity. Midnight feedings about enough for human offspring, and elephants provide challenges of their own. Gonsalves is from India and prevents Bomman and Bellie from being upstaged by their larger co-stars. The couple are often quite funny, and Bellie discusses how raising elephants has helped her deal with the loss of her own daughter.

“The Martha Mitchell Effect”

— Annie Alvergue’s brief but engrossing overview of Arkansas native Martha Mitchell profiles the irrepressible wife of John Mitchell, who served as Richard Nixon’s campaign manager and attorney general, “The Mouth from the South” instantly left an indelible impression on everyone around her. Nixon mentioned her in the Watergate tapes 100 times.

Although she was a founding member of CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President), Mitchell discovered that her husband, the law-and-order attorney general, was knee deep in the burglary that later ended Nixon’s presidency. Tricky Dick tried to pass her off as crazy, but Mitchell’s long calls to reporters like Helen Thomas kept Watergate from leaving the public consciousness. Her outspokenness is still refreshing in a Washington that often seems overrun with evasive spin. She’s also proof that what seems like madness is actually candor.

“Haulout” — Sibling filmmakers Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaeva hail from the Arctic regions of Siberia, and their film “Haulout” is powerful for its matter-of-fact approach. There’s no narrator telling us what to think of the austere landscape or what Maxim Chakilev is doing in a hut near an empty seaside.

Viewers barely get oriented before Chakilev opens his window revealing legions of walruses surrounding his house. If you think “this is not normal,” it isn’t. As Chakilev observes in his notes, the animals are there because the ice has melted where they normally live. Listening to him flatly describe how the herd is behaving and why it is frightening in a way no drama could ever be. Speaking of fear … And the Oscar should go to …

“Stranger at the Gate” — Joshua Seftel recounts how former U.S. Marine Richard “Mac” McKinney returned from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD, alcoholism and a desire to kill American Muslims. He entered the Islamic Community Center in Muncie, Ind., ready to kill the people inside, hopefully hundreds.

Before he could become a terrorist himself, the people of the center sensed his torment as he was casing the building he hoped to bomb. All involved are now friends. McKinney is now a Muslim and has found a community he lost when his tours ended. Seftel gets McKinney and others to talk forthrightly about what led to the fateful encounter and how love can be a better deterrent than force. Like “Haulout,” the tone is straightforward. Any embellishment in a story like this would seem phony. “Stranger at the Gate” leaves viewers with a sense of hope without insulting their intelligence. That’s why I want this one to win.

  photo  For 29 years, director Jay Rosenblatt asked his daughter Ella the same question on her birthday; her responses make up the Oscar-nominated short documentary “How Do You Measure a Year?”
 
 


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