The Oscar-Nominated Short Films of 2017 - Animation

[StevePulaski]

The Nominees

Borrowed Time (2015)
Directed by: Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj

Rating: ★★★½

It's probably a good thing Pixar-affiliated directors Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj didn't have their Oscar-nominated short film Borrowed Time placed before any of Pixar's recent ventures; it likely would've upset viewers more-so than the climactic scenes of The Good Dinosaur or the more heartstring-tugging scenes in Finding Dory. Borrow Time concerns a worn sheriff, who returns to the site where he last saw his father after a freak accident. He has spent his entire life trying to forget those crucial yet traumatizing moments, but finds little closure when he repays the location, the edge of a steep cliff, a visit.

The animation here is a lovely, elegant cross between CGI and what looks to be stop motion animation despite the fact that it isn't. It gives off vibes of being meticulously calculated by hand, rather than by mouse, and its emotionally complex lead character feels like he has more put into him than countless hours of digital calibrating. However, Borrowed Time feels about two minutes shy of being complete, as if it was a mere two minutes away from really capitalizing upon its themes of loss and grief. Imagine the Oscar-nominated Manchester by the Sea had it ended twenty minutes or a few scenes too early and you might understand what I mean.

Directed by: Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj.

Pearl (2016)
Directed by: Patrick Osborne

A young girl and her father traverse the United States by car in Pearl.

Rating: ★★★½

Pearl uses both song and car-trips to articulate the passage of time, as it concerns a father and a daughter's relationship and how it progressively grows and is inevitably handicapped by the four doors of their midsize vehicle. The unique element is, via breakthrough virtual reality (VR) technology, our perspective as a viewer from the passenger seat of the father's hatchback can be manipulated via few mouseclicks. When I initially saw Pearl - via ShortsHD's video-on-demand collection of the Oscar-nominated/highly commended short films - I wasn't permitted to shift the camera, at least until I discovered that the function was freely available on the 360 Google Spotlight video for free online.

Director Patrick Osborne's (who directed the Oscar-winning Feast, which won the Oscar two years ago with the same animation style) gimmick is intriguing, nonetheless, as it toys with what we can view as an audience member. Rather than being confined to looking at a perspective that shows us the father in the driver's seat, and the daughter in the backseat, we can move around and see the open road ahead or focus our attention on one particular character. Pearl, thematically, shows us how teens go from idolizing our parents to dreading interactions with them as they age only to go back to idolizing them when they're older and dread the very thought of living without them.

Yes, it's a short that's predicated upon a gimmick, but even as I initially viewed Pearl without the aid of VR technology, I found a lot of authenticity in the way the relationship between the Pearl and her father was portrayed. It's slight and over in the blink of an eye, but it nonetheless pulls out the honesty in what a little song and confinement in a car can do for a person.

Directed by: Patrick Osborne.

Blind Vaysha (2016)
Directed by: Theodore Ushev

Rating: ★★★½

Theodore Ushev's short film Blind Vaysha was animated using a style known as "Linocut," which uses a linoleum sheet laid over a slab of wood as the basis for the animation. A design is then cut into the linoleum with a knife or a chisel, therein allowing the raised areas of the sheet to impact the wood itself. The sheet is then inked before being pressed into paper or something that will be able to successfully render what is being animated.

The end result is a vibrant and explosive animation style that features a sensory overload of textures and colors. Ushev uses it to tell the story of Vaysha, a woman born with a left eye that sees into the past and a right eye that sees into the future. Her left side provides her with images that comfort her, while the images her right eye sees fill her with fear and even contempt for the future. For example, when looking at a person, in her left eye, she sees a spry soul, full of life and a character that's a blank slate waiting to be developed, while in the right, she sees a frail, sickly old man, practically moments from knocking on death's door.

Blind Vaysha may go a little too far in explaining its metaphor in the closing minutes of its eight minute runtime, however, the ideas it raises that work to dismantle the comfort nostalgia brings or question the inherent discontinuity life brings us works in a profound way only enhanced by the short's immaculate animation.

Directed by: Theodore Ushev.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes (2016)
Directed by: Robert Valley

Techno, the character we learn so much about, in Pear Cider and Cigarettes.

Rating: ★★★½

Robert Valley's Pear Cider and Cigarettes is an ode to that friend whose lifestyle you never entirely agreed with but most likely went on to casually embrace or simply accept as your friendship with that person grew deeper. You tried to help him or her the best you could, but you soon went on to realize that they couldn't be changed, so the only thing you could do is be there and let that person damn themselves. The only thing you could hope for in the meantime was that they had an amazing time doing what they loved and wholeheartedly embraced.

The short concerns Techno Stypes, who has been Robert's best friend since they were young. Robert narrates the entire short and the camera often assumes his perspective in a first person sense (where's Pearl's VR capabilities when you need them?). Since youths, Robert has been amazed with Techno's unbelievable abilities, be them throwing a ball the distance of a soccer field or allowing himself to get wrapped up in a gang of hard-partying twentysomethings that show both him and Robert a life they've never known to exist.

When the two finally move to China (Robert initially says he's going to be a Realtor but then mysteriously turns into an author, currently penning his second book), Techno becomes a drunk, ailing from Hepatitis C he got from a bad blood transfusion amidst worsening live failure that requires a transplant. Robert seems to be the only one who cares for him as he tries desperately to get Techno the medical help he needs. Techno loves to go on bouts of heavy-drinking, his favorite poison being pear cider aided with a couple of cigarettes. He's the complete representation of a friendship with someone that introduced you to a ton of things you never experienced before: sex, vulgarities, theft, the whole nine.

Techno represents the friends that we love that are nothing but trouble and even toxic energy for us, yet those whom we don't forget and maybe can't live without. "He loved life in fact," Robert affirms when talking about him, "he just had so much pain," he solemnly states as we watch Techno suffer through violent bouts of vomiting and nausea once diagnosed with Hepatitis C, something that doesn't even come near the end during his frequently painful existence. But make no mistake in remembering Techno for the free-spirit that he was, someone brave enough to persist on through all odds doing what he loved the most - drinking sweet alcoholic beverages and smoking like a chimney. Pear Cider and Cigarettes - using an animation style that recalls that of Richard Linklater's with A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life with its straight-edge composition - has us raise a toast to the problematic people in our lives while recognizing how we probably wouldn't be the same without their hassle, for better or for worse.

Directed by: Robert Valley.

Highly Commended

Indice 50 (2016)
Directed by: Sylvian Amblard

A profile of all three characters in Indice 50.

Rating: ★★½

Indice 50 is the first in the line of this year's "highly commended" animated short films, ShortsHD's series of shorts that were likely seriously considered for a Best Animated Short Film nomination but ultimately failed to garner enough votes to compete for the gold statue. The film features a father, mother, and their son, all of whom looking forward to a relaxing day at the beach only to be disturbed by a persistent mosquito. The three fight off the blood-sucking critter in three different ways, with the father using poison, the mother using blunt force, and the kid using tactics to simply shoo it away. Much like one's traditional encounter with a pesky rodent, the experience is momentarily satisfying - maybe even eye-opening in a whimsical manner - until you realize in the end how forgettable it actually was. Indice 50 needed a moment of clarity or circumvention when it came to recognizing how all three of these individuals tried to stop the bug in question and it simply never got that far in seven simple minutes.

Directed by: Sylvian Amblard.

Once Upon a Line (2016)
Directed by: Alicja Jasina

Our main character - a pair of eyes and occasional arms - in Once Upon a Line.

Rating: ★★★

Alicja Jasina's Once Upon a Line focuses on a faceless, formless black and white outline who serves as our main character. He is an overworked, cubicle-dweller who spends his days going through the same routine until he finds another faceless soul, this time a woman with fluffy pink hair. The two fall in love following multiple encounters, and the thin line he walks his entire life is suddenly shifted, molded and adjusted following various different kinks in his path that leads to an existence that's much more unpredictable despite maybe not being as entirely pleasant.

Once Upon a Line addresses life's nonlinear quality that too often throws us all for a loop, and that metaphor is explored quite whimsically over the course of just a few minutes. Like its animation style, about halfway through, Jasina gets a bit too jumbled in her focus, to the point where we might lose sight or connection with the character in a defining sense, but such is life, I suppose, and such is a short that, like past, such as Paperman and Inner Workings, shows us that maybe love and freedom really are the answers.

Directed by: Alicja Jasina.

The Head Vanishes (2016)
Directed by: Franck Dion

The elderly woman in The Head Vanishes.

Rating: ★★★

Franck Dion's short film The Head Vanishes once again proves how the most simplistic and elegant shorts turn frequently turn out to be the most impacting. Dion's incredibly brief story showcases his grandmother's bout of dementia, metaphorically portrayed as an elderly woman who carries her head by her side. Her head is often rolling away from her, leaving her a headless figure ostensibly alone on a train. She sees a woman unknown to her on a semi-regular basis, one she shoos off as being a stranger, though that woman is only there to help her.

Dion takes a common (and frankly cloying) trope about mindlessness and uses it as something that is profoundly effective and not emotionally manipulative. It gives life to a debilitating disease in such a way that communicates it by what is, in turn, viewed as an empathy machine. Whether or not we fully understand it by the time the credits roll is a mystery, but The Head Vanishes makes sure we feel its message and naturally conveyed pathos nonetheless.

Happy End (2016)
Directed by: Jan Saska

Rating: ★★★

Happy End is a story told backwards, initially revolving around hunters in the Czech Republic before moving to a farmer on a tractor and then a preoccupied driver. All of the aforementioned souls come in contact with a corpse and the short manages to end on an uplifting note. With that explanation, you'd think Happy End was a creative writing exercise for college students, and it some ways, it definitely is. It's the kind of film you explain to people and then implore them to go watch it just to see how thoughtfully done and deceptively smart it truly is.

Its narrative structure is almost inherently intriguing, prompting a barrage of possibilities, and the sound design here is unexpectedly immaculate. Loud thuds and sudden bangs make up a great deal of the audio-track, almost scaring and freezing us into place when we hear them. There's not a lot to the animation, as it's mainly comprised of black and white drawings that appear as little more than free-form sketches. Happy End is a fascinating little venture, and one that surprises you by just how well it works.

Directed by: Jan Saska.

Asteria (2017)
Directed by: Alexandre Arpentinier, Mathieu Blanchys, Lola Grand, Tristan Lamarca, Thomas Lemaille, and Jean-Charles Lusseau

Rating: ★★★

Asteria revolves around a pair of astronauts who land on a newly discovered planet, just about the same time as a gaggle of aliens abruptly land nearby. The astronauts decide they cannot persist forward with their mission and amazing discovery until the aliens are eliminated, which prompts a violent battle that results in more than a few gruesome casualties.

Asteria appears as a metaphor for how America was "discovered," as history books would say, by Christopher Columbus, ignorantly and amazingly glossing over the fact that Native Americans discovered the land first. Its animation has the same kind of colorful, almost jelly-like quality to it that other animated films (like Monsters vs. Aliens) have in that even when the short is at its most violent it's still very entertaining and comfortable when watching. The four-minute short's ending suggests an interesting question - are we complacent with our history or ready to recognize it? Maybe that's the reason this concludes the entire batch of Oscar-nominated animated short films in the first place.

Directed by: Alexandre Arpentinier, Mathieu Blanchys, Lola Grand, Tristan Lamarca, Thomas Lemaille, and Jean-Charles Lusseau.