Oscar-nominated Documentary Short Films Review

The Oscar-nominated documentary short program is an interesting crop of selections this year. Four of the five nominees are simply documents of a particular subject, be it place, character, or family. Only one has what could be construed as having an agenda, or attempting to call attention to an issue and even that example is a restrained portrait of the subject matter.

In White Earth, Christian Jensen goes to a small town in North Dakota where the population has swollen due to recent oil drilling. People are showing up from all over the country hoping for a better life for their families through more work. Rather than focus on the nefariousness of oil companies, or the blight on the land that the drills cause, Jensen talks to the children of oil workers about how they feel about the work, their town, and their future. It’s only twenty minutes, so it doesn’t go deep. The film presents a snapshot of a town and some of its people. The images are occasionally beautiful, scattered though they are throughout. The result is a simple document of family life, parenting, and the desire to see your children have a better life.

In Darkness Movie Review

I wonder if we’ve reached a saturation point where Holocaust films are concerned. Sure, there are millions of stories to be told from that travesty of human failure, but most would probably be fairly similar. Real eye-opening awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust came about in the 70s when documentaries and dramatic films began to crop up in Britain and the United States. In a cultural awareness sense this probably reached its pinnacle with Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List in 1993. Roman Polanski provided a new take on the subject by focusing not on anyone’s heroism or courage but on one man’s blind luck to come out alive in The Pianist. Given all that’s come before I really wonder what drove Polish director Agnieszka Holland to visit the Holocaust for a third time with In Darkness, adapted by David F. Shamoon from Robert Marshall’s book In the Sewers of Lvov which is itself based on a true story. That is generally the nail in the coffin for any criticism leveled at a Holocaust film.