Sentiment is strong in animated short films up for Oscar
Animation shorts can be little pieces of comedy or emotional gold — an amuse bouche often at the start of a film — presented to us in a stylized manner, that challenge our preconceptions about how to tell a story using traditionally drawn animation, stop-motion or computer generated images. But a strain of maudlin sentimentality has crept into several of this year’s nominees for best short film: animation.
In Daria Kashcheeva’s and Prague film school FAMU’s 15-minute portrait “Dcera”
(“Daughter”), the filmmaker examines the relationship between a stop-motion father and daughter in a drab inhospitable Czech Republic. Marvelously expressionistic, if also depressing, the film’s tale of a girl’s transformation into a bird remains a powerful metaphor and a magical piece of storytelling.
From Sony Pictures and directors Michael A. Cherry, Everett Downing Jr. and
Bruce D. Smith, along with star and narrator Issa Rae, comes the 2D animated
“Hair Love,” a breezy tale about a young African American father’s attempt to wrangle his young daughter’s long, luxuriant and hard-to-handle hair, which in one scene turns into a monster.
Rosana Sullivan and Pixar’s conventionally drawn, although impressionistic
“Kitbull” tells the tale of a independent urban kitty that fends for itself and lives in a box in a backyard, where a young man ties up a pit bull and proceeds to train the dog to fight. An offbeat David and Goliath friendship develops between the two animals with the weaker and smarter one taking care of the larger and more powerful of the two. The cat, which is not much more than a blob of a face with whiskers, wild eyes and a tail is an amazing creation.
Bruno Collet’s French-language, stop-motion effort
“Memorable” tells the story of Louis (Andre Wilms) a French painter with dementia. In addition to having trouble with names, he has become a living work of art, taking on the look of favorite canvases (Van Gogh to Picasso). Looking at the collection of portraits that he had done of his wife Michelle over the course of their marriage adds to his confusion about who these beautiful models are and how much he can flirt with them with Michelle “around.” “Memorable” is about art and loss and how art keeps us from forgetting.
In Siqi Song’s ChineseAmerican effort “Sister,” another stop-motion entry and the last of the five nominated films, a young mannarrator imagines his life if he had had a little sister growing up in China in the 1990s. While he has manufactured heartwarming memories of a little sister, she did not exist because of the laws barring couple from having more than one child in China at that time.
It’s great to see three of the nominees are stop-motion efforts, one of the cinema’s earliest animation techniques. I’d say the delightful 2D “Kitbull,” however, a product of Pixar’s experimental SparkShorts program, has the best chance to take the top prize.
(“Oscar-Nominated Short Films 2020: Animation” contains emotional anguish and weird imagery.)