Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.
Best Animated Short
The nominees are:
Letter to a Pig
Ninety-Five Senses
Our Uniform
Pachyderme
WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
Letter to a Pig
This is a fascinating film rendered in an absolutely stunning hand-drawn animation style. It started to lose me toward the back half as a dream logic took over the narrative and everything tipped into overly oblique abstraction, but that hardly takes away from the power of the overall story. Tal Kantor’s short centers on a Holocaust survivor telling his story to a classroom of preteens and the various reactions of the kids. It’s about as unique a take on generational trauma as you are likely to see, and though its message felt muddled, there is merit in the feelings this film evokes.
Ninety-Five Senses
Here’s a sentence I could never have predicted I would write: From Jared and Jerusha Hess, the husband-and-wife duo behind Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, we have a short animated film about capital punishment. That’s probably an unfairly glib way to put it. Ninety-FIve Senses is charming and witty in the way of much of their previous work and builds its power through the slow reveal of its true narrative intent. Using different animation styles to represent each of the five senses, as reflected on by an inmate awaiting a death sentence, this is a smart, impressive little short from two of the last people I would have expected.
Our Uniform
Based purely on animation style, this film was the most interesting of the bunch, using the fabric of clothing as a medium to tell the story of Iranian schoolgirls forced to dress in the most restrictive uniforms imaginable. There is perhaps too much restraint shown by director Yegane Moghaddam in the storytelling, but her point is well made. The film walks a fine line in attempting not to criticize a cultural and religious practice while also arguing that freedom of choice should be a part of any healthy society.
Pachyderme
A heartbreaking tale of child abuse and buried trauma, Stéphanie Clément’s short is the most powerful film of the bunch and the most gorgeous. Blending 2D and 3D animation, Clément crafts a disquieting atmosphere that leaves the viewer with a constant sense of unease. The images are beautiful, but in their framing and presentation, we sense that something is not right here. The story is impressionistic and dreamlike, in the way that childhood memories often are, and by the end, Clément has given us the tools to imagine a pain that borders on the unimaginable.
WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
I’m not typing out all of that every time. Boy, this film sure does have its heart in the right place. It’s also tremendously hokey, and if I’m being perfectly frank, I found the animation hideous. A lot of very talented people got behind this project to help push it over the finish line.
Peter Jackson, who seems to have a second career as champion of all things Beatles, produced and offered up the services of his Wētā FX to create the animation and visual effects. Director Dave Mullins is a former Pixar guy, who was previously nominated in this category for the clever Lou. Sean Ono Lennon co-wrote the script with Mullins and served as executive producer along with Yoko Ono. Hell, 15-time Academy Award nominee Thomas Newman did the score.
All of these brilliant artists came together to say, definitively, “War is bad. Peace is good.” I agree, but I didn’t need this movie to tell me that.
The final analysis
The category feels pretty wide open this year. Our Uniform is probably running in last place, through no fault of its own. Pachyderme may be too bleak to win over a plurality of voters. I could absolutely see any of the other three taking this award. WAR IS OVER! is probably the safe pick, given the pedigree of the people involved. It would be a mistake to sleep on Ninety-Five Senses as a potential spoiler here, given that film’s sneaky emotional resonance, but at the end of the day, Peter Jackson has employed a lot of people in this town. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
Will win: WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
Should win: Pachyderme
Should have been here: Wild Summon
A note about my favorite snub: What if salmon were people, this film dares to ask. The answer to that question results in a short that is part nature documentary and part body horror. Directors Karni Arieli and Saul Freed blend live action footage of rivers and streams in Iceland with computer-animated human-fish things to demonstrate the harmful effects of overfishing and pollution on the natural world. It’s incredibly effective and not just a little freaky.
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