Oscar Shorts

Perhaps no form of film is better suited to watching on a computer screen than a short subject. We spent three evenings engaged in that pursuit, independently ranking each entry from zero to five, and judged only a few to be less than a four. Now, two weeks later, some of them are a little hard to remember.

Among the animated shorts, both "Burrow" and "The Snail and the Whale" tell tales of animal adventure. The former probes cheerfully into the tunneling habits of several rodent and insect species by means of a colorful but blocky graphic style; the later, far longer and more sophisticated in technique, relates the adventures of a snail who, longing to see more of the world, hops a ride on—guess what?—a whale's tail. It's narrated by the late Diana Rigg, with Sally Hawkins voicing the snail. Both films are cute, both held my interest in a child-like way.

“If Anything Happens I Love You” is a mostly black-and-white piece about a couple whose daughter was involved in a school shooting, and it's highly effective, in so far as it makes you feel sad, sad, sad.

"Opera," from South Korea, was a misfire, I think. It depicts some sort of underground mining operation, but the triangular mountain that dominates the screen remains static and the characters moving back and forth are so small they lack individuality. There may have been a profound message here about tyranny or cooperation. If so, I missed it.

In my opinion, “Genius Loci” was the best of the bunch. I found the story incomprehensible and the tone sour, but the graphics were highly imaginative, almost as if they'd been made with construction paper cutouts and stop-action photography.

All of the live-action shorts were top-notch. The challenge here is to bring a little complexity to the story in a short span of time available.

 In Feeling Through a young homeless man, black, having failed to find a place to sleep among friends,  comes upon a middle-aged blind and deaf man, white, sitting on a bench in the middle of the night. The man needs some help getting on the right bus. He also needs some water. Adventures ensue, with irritation, self-interest, and compassion fighting for the upper hand at every step of the way. 

 In The Letter Room, a lowly prison guard (played by Oscar Isaac) aspires for something better and is happy to be put in charge of reading the letters that are exchanged between inmates and their contacts on the outside. Frustrated by the administration's lack of interest in his ideas for prison reform, and intrigued by the correspondence between one death-row inmate and his girlfriend,  the guard decides to do a little free lance counseling. Bad idea.  

 The Present offers a brief look at the daily challenges Palestinians face crossing back and forth from their territory into Israel proper. A simple tale involving a refrigerator, believable and well-acted.

In White Eye a young Israeli spots a bicycle parked in front of a fish warehouse that was stolen from him a few weeks earlier. He calls the cops and is told, "We can't do anything. You never filed a report." He asks a tradesman working nearby to help him cut off the lock. The man who now owns the bike, an African, arrives. He claims he bought it legally, and needs it to take his daughter to kindergarten every day. The cops show up, finally. And here comes the warehouse manager. It's getting messier all the time.   

But the best of the bunch, I think, was Two Distant Strangers, in which a sophisticated young black designer, leaving his girlfriend's New York apartment, encounters a feisty cop intent on hassling him. The encounter ends badly, like the ones we so often read about in the papers. But it was only a dream!

The man leaves the apartment again but does things differently, in the manner of Run Lola Run. Funny thing, the sequence of incidents is different but the end result is exactly the same, or worse. Ah, but it was only a dream! Once again, he leaves the apartment ...

It should come as no surprise to learn that the live action documentaries are mostly about bad things. Hunger Ward focuses on mass starvation in Yemen, though it offers not a shred of insight into the causes of the civil war or possible solutions to it. A Love Song for Latasha relates, from a mostly teenage and family perspective, the death in Los Angeles of a young black girl who was sent by her mother to but some orange juice at the local liquor store. Both are heartrending.

Collette offers a portrait of an elderly French woman who joined the resistance during WWII, and now, half a century and more later, has teamed up with a young German historian to seek out information about her brother's death in the death camps. A Concerto is a Conversation consists largely of a warm and gentle conversation between a young black Los Angeles composer and his Georgia-born grandfather about music and life, making great use of close-ups.   

But I found Do Not Split to be the most ambitious and enthralling of the five. It documents a few days of protest in Hong Kong against the encroachments of the Chinese government. Lots of chaos, tension, danger, excitement, courage, and youthful ardor.