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| Co-directors Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's Anomalisa is nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. |
Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.
Best Animated Feature
The nominees are:
Anomalisa
Boy & the World
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There
It is hard to believe this category has existed for only 15
years. Maybe it is because I am younger, but this category has always felt like
a part of the Oscars to me. It makes sense. Certainly before 2001, there were
not nearly enough feature-length animated films to justify a separate category.
But with the explosion in independent animation houses in the late 1990s and
early 2000s, a wealth of quality animated films flooded the market, and thus, a
category was born. Still, despite the growth on the margins of the industry and
the democratization of production, one very big company has ruled them all.
Pixar Animation Studio has earned 10 nominations in this
category in 15 years, missing out with only three eligible films. Of the 14 Best
Animated Feature Oscars so far handed out, Pixar films have won seven. No other
studio has more than two, while two different Pixar directors have two Animated
Feature awards. Each one of those numbers is set to be raised by one this year
as previous winner Pete Docter returns this year with a seemingly unbeatable frontrunner.
The nominees are universally fantastic, but it is a fool who bets against the
Pixar machine.
Surely, it is a wild, imaginative ride through the mind of a
preteen girl, showing us what it is like to experience the world as someone who
still understands so little of it. It is a literal depiction of depression –
which is tackled too rarely in film – for a target audience that is just
beginning to understand its feelings and how it fits into the culture as a
whole. It is also the work of parents, valiantly pleading with their children
to keep as much joy in their lives as possible.
Docter, Del Carmen, and co-writers Meg LeFauve and Josh
Cooley know how easy it is for the world to get you down, and they have created
a beautiful expression of youth and imagination that celebrates life above all
else. Docter won this award in 2009 for Up,
which showed how an old man can recapture the joy in his life by embracing what
it means to be young. Docter will likely win the award this year for the
opposite – for showing how a young girl does not have to give up joy just
because she is getting older.
Nothing much happens in Anomalisa.
A customer service expert arrives in Cincinnati to give a speech on, well,
customer service. While at the hotel, he meets a woman who is unlike anyone he
has ever met in his life. She is in fact the only other unique person in this
world, so far as he can tell. Their courtship and the fragile bond they form
makes up the bulk of the film, which ultimately is less about the story it
tells than the feelings that story inspires in the audience. There is pain,
fear, and regret, along with fleeting moments of happiness, and it all adds up
to one man’s not-so-special life, made momentarily whole by his meeting another
individual.
Kaufman is a previous Oscar winner for Original Screenplay
for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
while he was also previously nominated for co-writing Adaptation. and writing Being
John Malkovich. Each of those films, plus his brilliant directorial debut Synecdoche, NY, is exemplary of the kind
of insight and world building of which Kaufman is capable. No one else does
what he does. Johnson is a 37-year-old wunderkind animator working on his first
feature. His mix of stop-motion and puppetry on Anomalisa is what makes the film tick. Without Johnson’s technical
wizardry, they would be just amazing words on a page.
The stop-motion animation is simply flawless, and the script
hits on a number of interesting ideas about routine, taking our loved ones for
granted, and the importance of home and family. It is fairly deep stuff for a
movie about an intrepid sheep who leads his flock into the big city to find
their farmer who has accidentally become an icon of the hairstyling world. The
gags are great, the music is wonderful, and if you can allow yourself to be taken
in by its charms, Shaun the Sheep Movie
is a joyously realized, surprisingly tender little movie.
The film opens with simple line drawings over a white
background, depicting a boy who has never left the safety of his home. The more
he explores, the more complex the animation becomes, reflecting his fuller
understanding of the world around him. It is not a happy life he finds in the
larger world. In fact, it is damn hard – demoralizing and dehumanizing in equal
measure. He comes to understand how people must find small joys in moments or
actions that may seem meaningless but carry great emotional and symbolic weight
for them.
When Marnie Was There
is the story of a young orphan girl suffering from depression who meets another
young girl whose family is always away. Through their friendship, each learns
to cope with the pain and difficulties of life. It is rare to see such deep and
meaningful female friendships portrayed onscreen, and it is refreshing. To
watch Anna and Marnie interact is to watch the work of filmmakers who truly
understand what it is to be young, to feel lost and alone, and to discover
another soul that looks like yours.
The final analysis
Inside Out is one
of the biggest hits of the year, it is culturally ubiquitous, and many would
argue it is a new high-water mark for the standard-bearer of animation studios.
There is every likelihood more Academy members will have seen Inside Out than the other four nominees
combined. Its popularity and its quality will carry it to the win over a
remarkable field. Among these nominees, there is no wrong answer, but the
winner will be Inside Out.
Will win: Inside
Out
Should win:
Anomalisa
Should have been
here: Minions
Tomorrow: Best Picture
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