Following are my brief reactions to the five films
nominated this year for the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. The
wonderful thing about a short film is how it reminds you that not all stories
need to be told in two hours. To see a story presented in 20 or 30 minutes is
just a wonderful relief. You really get to see how much fat gets added into
feature films to pad their length. Any one of these five films could easily be
developed further, but what’s the point? They are all nearly perfect as they
are. However, I didn’t think this year’s lot were as strong as last year’s and
there’s nothing I feel very strongly about. They are in my rough order of
preference.
Asad is the one of the five that
best expresses zest for life and hope for the future. In war-torn Somalia,
where bands of rebels come passing through villages taking what they want and
killing when they please, a boy is stuck between the old world of fishing the
open seas, where all the villagers know he’s had no recent luck, and the new
world order of piracy. Asad longs to join his older friends on a pirate raid,
but luckily for him they don’t allow it. On his first solo fishing trip he
later makes a surprising discovery – one that sort of sums up the oddities of
life.
Death of a Shadow has Matthias
Schoenaerts starring in this dark and mysterious Belgian fantasy thriller about
a man photographing shadow images of death for a macabre collector. Schoenaerts
has been given the chance to return to life if he collects 10,000 shadows. He’s
motivated by love for a woman he met moments before being killed. I was most
amazed at how well this story tells a complex story in just 20 minutes. You can
easily see it expanded to feature length, but the brevity keeps it light and
intriguing rather than a dull slog.
Buzkashi Boys is the most
melodramatic entry this year. It’s about two young boys in Kabul, one is the
son of a blacksmith, the other a fatherless street urchin. Together they have
big dreams. Ahmard, the beggar, wants to become a Buzkashi rider, participating
in a sport that involves two team of riders on horseback moving a dead goat around
the playing area toward a goal. Ahmad is bold and impetuous. Without any
grounding in his life, he’s free to roam the city, climb to the top of an
abandoned castle, and steal the occasional horse. The films we see about
Afghanistan don’t often reveal much about the people, least of all the
children. With Buzkashi Boys I felt
like the emotional wallop at the end would have a deeper impact if it were
expanded to feature length so we could have more time to get to know these kids
so full of life.
Henry is a Canadian production in
French about an old man beginning to come apart at the seams when a strange
younger woman sits with him in a café and then he discovers that his wife has
gone missing. He begins having visions of himself as a young man falling in
love and making music with his wife. He is a pianist and she is an Italian
violinist. they met at the end of WWII in Italy. The central mystery is not
well concealed. You can see quickly what’s happening and who that woman is, but
that doesn’t take away from the deeply affecting story of the crisis of old
age, a crisis that sometimes takes a much bigger toll on those around us.
Curfew has the unpolished look and
feel of independent filmmaking with that rough finish, acting that doesn’t
always hit the mark, and sound mixing that, in comparison to Hollywood, sounds
cheap. I don’t mention these as detractors, but as descriptors of the
experience of watching this gritty little family drama about Richie, a man
whose suicide attempt is interrupted by a frantic call from his sister, who is desperate
for a sitter for her 9-year old girl. Richie is into drugs and who knows what?
He looks haggard and oily, reminding me of Vincent Gallo in Buffalo ’66. When a spontaneous and
dreamy dance number breaks out in a bowling alley, I knew it couldn’t be
coincidence. Curfew is mildly amusing
but the overall tone didn’t really work for me. The girl is too precocious (I
sort of can’t stand precocious kids in movies) and it’s all a little too
flippant about suicide.
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