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| Polish documentary short Joanna is one of the most beautiful films of the year. |
Each day as we make
our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take
an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows,
and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and
gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.
Best Documentary Short
The nominees are:
Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Joanna
Our Curse
The Reaper
White Earth
Worlds apart, two fathers return home
from work, one smelling of oil and the other of death. In Poland, a young
mother faces her coming death not with fear for herself but for what will
happen to her son and husband after she is gone, while another young mother
faces the reality that her son may not live through the night. In the U.S., one
staff of heroic men and women dedicates its days and nights to ensuring that
thousands of families remain intact in the face of a mental health crisis.
This year’s documentary shorts take on
big themes of family, death, loss, and hope, all in the span of 40 minutes or
less. Among them, one deals with the macro issue of veterans health care, while
another focuses on the micro issue of one woman’s death. Still others are more
impressionistic, philosophical, and open ended.
No approach is necessarily better, and
no topic is necessarily more important than any other. It is all about
perspective, and the great thing about the documentary shorts is how concisely
and elegantly the directors are able to share their perspectives. In less time
than it takes to watch an episode of television, these directors take us inside
the lives of people we may never meet but in whom we can recognize ourselves.
Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
(directed by Ellen Goosenberg Kent) – In a year in which
American Sniper has captured the zeitgeist to the tune of more than $300
million in box office receipts, six Academy Award nominations, and countless
media think pieces, it seems to me one of the most vital issues raised by the
film has been one of its least talked about aspects. I cannot speak to the rest
of the world’s successes or failures, but the U.S. has a shameful record when
it comes to veterans care.
A metaphor made plain in Crisis
Hotline, we have no problem paying to equip our soldiers for going to war,
but we balk at the necessary sacrifices to equip them for coming home. The call
center chronicled in Crisis Hotline is the only one of its kind in the
U.S., handling calls from veterans dealing with PTSD, depression, and thoughts
of suicide, among other mental health issues. The counselors who operate the
phones are as much heroes as the men and women of the armed services they try
to help.
Rather than give a general outline of
what they do and how, the film focuses on a handful of real calls – shown in
real time – from veterans contemplating suicide, intercut with brief interviews
with the counselors and their supervisors. The statistics flashed in the film
are staggering, but the point is driven home by listening to these counselors
interact with people who have reached the end of the line and see nothing but
darkness ahead of them.
Joanna (directed by Aneta Kopacz)
– Simple, beautiful, and life affirming, even as it confronts the tragedy of death,
Joanna is the story of a young wife and mother who is diagnosed with
cancer. Using no voiceover and just one opening and closing title card, the
film slowly reveals itself to be a meditation on what it is like to reach the
end of your life in the middle. Joanna has a 5-year-old son whom she dotes on
constantly and loves deeply, even in the times when he clearly irritates her,
as any young boy might annoy his weary mother.
Joanna has a blog, which she writes for
her son so that he may have something of her and a guide for living without her
when she is gone – an eventuality that seems to be coming sooner than anyone
thought. As she approaches the end, the simple things appeal to her most such
as taking the kayak out, picking mushrooms, and watching her son ride a bike
for the first time. She tells her husband she is not afraid to die. She is
afraid to leave him and her son by themselves.
Photographed by Lukasz Zal, who is
nominated this year for Best Cinematography for his work on Ida, the
film is the most beautiful of this group and one of the most beautifully shot
of the year. Scenes come in and go out of focus as Joanna and her family’s
attentions drift back and forth between the trivial matters of the day and the
inevitability of her fate.
As an assignment for school, her son
asks what her favorite thing to do is, and she says, “Spending time with you.”
He corrects her and says the assignment is to find out what she likes to do by
herself. She thinks a moment, then says she does not like to be alone. As
someone facing down the prospect of death, it is understandable now more than
ever why she would not want to be alone. Through one woman’s story, the film
serves as a potent reminder to all of us to enjoy the time we have and to try
to spend it with those we love.
Our Curse (directed by Tomasz
Sliwinski) – Obviously without meaning to be, the
other Polish short documentary in the lineup serves as a kind of mirror to Joanna.
The film concerns two parents – the father is also the film’s director – whose
son is born with a rare condition that causes him to stop breathing when he
falls asleep. Instead of staring down the end of a life, as in Joanna,
the parents in Our Curse are facing the beginning of a life that could
come to an end at any time.
With honesty, humor, and an unflinching
eye for detail, Sliwinski documents his and his wife’s daily struggle with a
child they could lose at any moment. The couple talks about their fears, their
doubts, and their hopes openly and without vanity. They set themselves up to be
judged when they feel bad for themselves and for their disabled child, but the
beauty of the film is how it makes the audience want to empathize with this
family rather than judge them. None of us can say for sure that faced with the
same situation, we would not react as they do. When the whole of the film is
revealed, it becomes clear we should hope to act as this family does –
adversity or not.
The Reaper (directed by Gabriel Serra)
– Efrain is known as The Reaper. He works in a slaughterhouse in Mexico and is
the man charged with putting the cattle to death. Truth be told, I was wary of
the prospect of another documentary about how my meat gets to my table. There
is nothing necessarily wrong with documenting the origins of our food, but it
feels like well trodden territory. However, The Reaper is not a story of
meat. It is a story of life and what it is like to take a life for a living.
If I have done the math correctly,
Efrain has killed more than 1.5 million bulls in a career he stumbled into by
accident. As the film asserts and Efrain confirms, you cannot be a party to
that much death without it staining your soul in some way. He has dreams of
cattle telling him it is his turn, and he says he knows these are not normal
dreams to have. Day in and day out, he brings death to animals he says he
recognizes feel the same pain and fear we do, as he would.
Efrain’s personal story is paired with
static shots of the process of the slaughter. We see hooks and chains, conveyor
belts and tunnels, and everywhere pools of blood. The images are striking, not
just for their evident brutality but for how commonplace it all seems. When
Serra shows us in great detail how the skin is pulled from the carcass of a
bull, it appears no more troublesome than peeling apart a Velcro strap. Death
is just part of the day here, nothing more, and that familiarity with death is
perhaps the most troubling thing of all.
White Earth (directed by Christian
Jensen) – It is no coincidence probably that White
Earth is the shortest of the nominees in this category – clocking in at
just 20 minutes – and also feels like the least developed. Jensen’s film
concerns the residents of White Earth, N.D., an oil boom town that we are told
was home to 60 people 60 years ago. Today, 500 people live there. Seen mostly
through eyes of oil rig workers’ children, White Earth is an intriguing
study of what life is like for people who feel as though they have no options
but those placed in front of them.
Few people are White Earth natives.
Most moved for the promise of jobs and money, and while the job part has mostly
worked out, the money has not flowed as they might have hoped. Many of the
children go through their lives with minimal contact with their fathers, who
may spend weeks or months in the oil fields without coming home. One child does
not even attend school and muses that he does not care about the oil industry
now, but when he turns 18 and it is time for him to take a job in the fields,
he will probably start to care. It is a town built on dreams that seems devoid
of hope.
The final analysis
Predicting the shorts categories is
always a fool’s errand, and predicting the Documentary Short winner is most
difficult of all. There is little to go off in the way of precursor awards, as
almost all of these had their premiers at small film festivals. So, guessing
what will win generally comes down to guessing voters’ emotional responses to
the nominated films.
Joanna
is the most openly emotional story, followed closely by Crisis Hotline. Crisis
Hotline benefits from being a topical American issue and added relevance
thanks to American Sniper. White Earth has proven popular but may
be too slight to win. Ditto Our Curse and The Reaper, though they
only seem slight if you are not paying attention. Ultimately, this is the most
wide-open race of Oscar evening, but I would say Crisis Hotline has a
slight edge.
Will win:
Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Should win:
Joanna
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