Well, in case you haven't noticed, the Oscar nominations were announced back on Tuesday, February 8, and that started a countdown as to when I can watch all of the nominees to be able to write this review. Ideally I'd be able to watch them all before I have to resort to going to the showings, but it's never a guarantee. I went into nomination day having seen two of the eventual nominees, with Robin Robin being on Netflix and Affairs of the Art being on YouTube courtesy of the New Yorker. It didn't take me long to watch Bestia, because I knew it was on Vimeo on Demand, but I wanted to make sure it was nominated before I paid money to watch it. But then I did a more expansive search, and found that The Windshield Wiper has been online through Short of the Week since around the middle of January. And then I later found out that Boxballet had been uploaded online through Vimeo as part of an animation series by the Thomas Edison Film Festival.
So that means that I have all five of this year's Best Animated Short nominees at my disposal. Of course, trying to find time to write the review is something else entirely. I don't know how many people actually take the time to read through my reviews, but it's not something I take lightly. I watch each film numerous times whenever possible, and then I also do some research about topics that come up as I'm writing the film. It's a very time-consuming process, which becomes increasingly more difficult when I have a day job to work with. Nevertheless sacrifices must be made, and so I'll have to put my progress in Pokémon Legends Arceus on pause until I get this done.
Affairs of the Art
Beryl is a middle-aged lady living in Wales who is going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. She works in a dead-end factory job while her husband keeps comparing her to women that are younger and skinnier than her. Her son Colin still lives at home despite nearing his 40th birthday and spends his time collecting screws while speaking in Dutch. The only person she can turn to is her older sister Beverly who lives in America with her own taxidermy business. As Beryl looked back at her adolescence while rediscovering her love of art, she realizes that there was one string that ties her with Beverly and Colin: obsessions. But could that epiphany get her out of her funk?
Affairs of the Art is the latest film by British animator Joanna Quinn. As I mentioned several times before, Quinn's previous nomination was for
Famous Fred, a children's film about a pair of brother and sister that found out their recently deceased cat lived a double life as a cat celebrity. Besides the Oscar nomination, she has accomplished much in her animation career that has stretched over 35 years. She directed the original
Charmin bears commercial, and has added several other commercials in that line. She also animated the Wife of Bath's tale in the Oscar-nominated anthology film
The Canterbury Tales. Yet her most enduring work is that of the short films involving Beryl, who has become somewhat of an animated alter-ego in addition to supplying the name of her production company. The character made her debut in
Girl's Night Out, a film that Quinn started while still in college before getting completed in 1987. She went on to star in
Body Beautiful in 1990, then made a cameo in
Famous Fred before starring in 2006's
Dreams and Desires: Family Ties. Dreams and Desires made it onto the Best Animated Short shortlist, although it fell short of a nomination. After that Beryl went through a bit of a hiatus during which she only appeared in a trailer for the
Bradford Animation Festival, but Quinn herself was focused on doing commercial work. At last she teamed up with frequent collaborator Les Mills to bring us
Affairs of the Art, which also marks the return of Beryl. While Beryl's previous films were largely focused on Beryl in the present time,
Affairs explores her childhood, as well as characters within her sphere, including Beverly who was featured but never seen in
Dreams and Desires as well as a brand new character in Colin, Beryl's adult son. This colorful trio is presented through their obsessions. Obsessions are thoughts or ideas that occupy one's minds. It is often seen in the psychiatric lens which refers to intrusive thoughts that cause distress, but in the cases of our trio these obsessions are intense interest and preoccupations that drive these characters. That is not to say that these obsessions are not strange. Beverly's intense fascination with death and decay and Colin's love for his pigeon Percy is certainly out of the ordinary, but it really helps drive the absurd black humor that is pervasive in
Affairs. Beryl's art obsession seems innocuous in comparison, but there is a sort of comedy in the way she expresses her newfound artistic side. Menna Trussler returns as the voice of Beryl, whom she has voiced since
Body Beautiful, and she supplies Beryl with a dose of desperation that drives the film's tone. Joanna Quinn has made a name for her animation style defined by a realistic-hand drawn look yet still leaving room for some exaggerated faces, and
Affairs of the Art is no different. It may lack some of the more inventive camera movements from
Body Beautiful or
Dreams and Desires, but it more than makes up for it with its far more lively facial expression. Quinn took the extra step in animating the realistic lip synching, and it shows with the work. There is a lot of risqué moments in
Affairs of the Art that may turn off some viewers, but I personally find it to be a rollicking piece of work that could serve as Joanna Quinn's masterpiece.
Bestia
Ingrid is a woman living in Chile in the 1970s. Despite living under the oppressive military junta that came into power in 1973, she the former top parachutist has managed to make a fairly good life for herself. She has a cushy pad, and also has a loving German Shepherd for a companion that she is allowed to bring with her to work, the results of which she keeps in her daily journal. Of course, it's not too difficult to have a good life when one works for the Chilean secret police. However, everything changes when she receives a letter informing her that she is being transferred to a desk job. As she struggles to deal with her new circumstances, the weight of all that she had experienced under her old job comes bearing down, until it all crashes down on her in an explosive climax.
Bestia is a film by Chilean animator Hugo Covarrubias. If the country Chine sounds familiar to longtime followers of the Best Animated Short Oscar, it may be because just six years ago
Bear Story was not only nominated in this category but also
won the Oscar. Americans may not be familiar with Chilean history, but the country was under military rule for almost 20 years from 1973 to 1990 led by the iron fist of general Augusto Pinochet. The regime was responsible for numerous human rights violations that eventually led to Pinochet's arrest.
Bear Story was a fable told using the perspective of one of those that had their lives upended by the Pinochet regime. Meanwhile
Bestia tells the story from the side of an individual that perpetrated the atrocities. Ingrid Olderöck was a real-life member of DINA, the Chilean secret police. She gained notoriety for her work in the torture center known as the Venda Sexy, or the Sexy Bandage. Survivors of the Venda Sexy allege that Olderöck had trained a German Shepherd to commit sexual acts against detainees. Naturally when a Chilean journalist caught up with Olderöck later in her life, she denied all of these allegations.
Bestia is the Spanish word for "beast," and while the word can be used to describe the German Shepherd, it perhaps better fits Ingrid Olderöck herself. Covarrubias explained in interviews that
Bestia is less of a straightforward retelling of Olderöck's story than it is an exploration into the psyche of such a monstrous character. It makes sense as there are numerous dream sequences that border on the surreal. The abstract nature of these sequences does serve to provide a little bit of distance between the viewer and the subject, but maybe that's not a bad thing considering Olderöck was depicted decapitating her adorable canine friend and in possession of Nazi paraphernalia. (After all, Olderöck was of German descent, and had spoken publicly of her admiration of the Nazi party.) Outside of the German Shepherd which was made with needle felting, the characters in this stop-motion animation were designed to have the appearance of porcelain dolls, which is a bold choice that isn't often seen. However, it clashes with the clearly cardboard appearance of the backgrounds, which was also a specific design choice by the production team. There is no dialogue, but the juxtaposition between the disco music that reportedly played during sexual torture and the recurring string theme gives the film an overall chilling vibe. I'm not sure how well
Bestia works as a character study, especially for an individual as dubious as Ingrid Olderöck, but it works fairly well as a work of art.
Boxballet
One early morning in the summer of 1991, a boxer stocky boxer Evgeny comes across lithe and pretty ballerina named Olga. He had previously seen her on the subway, but now she needed help to retrieve her cat who was stuck on a tree. He saves the cat, but suffers a few facial injuries in the process. She invites him over for tea. When Yevgeny finds that she was running low of sugar, he lugs a 50-kg bag to her. Eventually they spend more time together taking part in visiting art museums and going shooting. Yevgeny finally goes to watch Olga in a performance of Swan Lake. However, later that night Olga is faced with a difficult decision that could advance her career yet at the same time tear the fledgling couple apart.
Boxballet is a film by the Russian animator Anton Dyakov. On the surface it is a love story between two characters that seem to have little in common, but at the same time it is also a film about a specific and turbulent time in Russian history. Mikhai Gorbachev had served as the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party since 1985, and had enacted the policies of
glasnost and
perestroika that warmed the Soviets to foreign leaders, yet were met negatively by more hard-liners of the party. That led them to attempt a coup d'etat in August 1991, when several leading administrators stormed Gorbachev's vacation home and tried to force him to resign. The coup ultimately ended in failure, but not before Soviet citizens were subject to continuous playing of Swan Lake. The geo-political firestorm was only on the film's periphery, but the decision to set it in that time was surely not a mere coincidence. It was an event that marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union, and what better way to tie in a film about a ballerina with an event that involves ballet? The decision to pair a boxer with a ballerina would surely seem to be rather arbitrary, but as director Dyakov describes it, the boxer and ballerina are both professions that require significant amount of personal dedication to reach the apex. And both Evgeny and Olga are seen making potentially dubious decisions that could help them reach the top at the expense of their personal integrity. The subplot between Olga and her troupe leader is extremely uncomfortable and serves as a reminder of the vicious misogyny that is present in the world today. Boxing and ballet are both intensely physical activities, and
Boxballet is exceptionally good at depicting movement, whether it's the punches from a boxer or the pirouette from a ballerina. Besides the profession-specific movement, the film also does well in showing other forms of dynamic motion, whether it's Olga roller skating or running in her ballet outfit as she does in the film's beginning. The film's character design is exaggerated almost to the point of caricature. The ballerinas are almost literally stick figures, while the lines on Evgeny's lumpy face stick out. Although the real memorable figures are the background characters. The film is dialogue free, but the musical choice, including the song Balance by the Russian band Kofe as well as a tune with a synth beat that has the feel of a song from the late 1980s/early 1990s adds a significant amount of gravitas to the film. Overall
Boxballet is an excellent film that works as a love story, and also works as an exploration of a specific time in Russian history, the latter of which may be important especially given Russia's presence in news stories such as the Olympics or the potential invasion of Ukraine.
Robin Robin
The Mouse family, a family of a single father and his four offspring, comes home from a foraging journey they call a "sneak" when they come across an unexpected sight: an egg lying in the middle of a lot. A robin hatches from the egg, and the family adopts the bird they name Robin. Robin grows up to be a part of the family, but complications arise when she turns to be a disruptive presence in her sneaks. She sneaks out one night to prove her mettle after a disastrous sneak, where she runs into a materialistic magpie with a broken wing. He tells her of a wishing star that can grant any wish. Robin plots to steal the star so she can wish herself into a mouse. However, there is a cat sneaking around, and she is hungry for mice or birds sneaking about, at least when she's not reminding Robin how she doesn't fit in.
Robin Robin is the latest film from Aardman Animations, one of the most respected animation studios in the industry, celebrated for their Wallace & Gromit film series. They have had plenty of success with the Academy over the years, with 12 nominations and four wins in both the Best Animated Feature and Best Animated Short categories. In fact for a while there was an interesting Oscar factoid that the only film to beat a Wallace & Gromit film in the Oscars was another Aardman film (
Creature Comforts over
A Grand Day Out). However, it has been 16 years since any Aardman film came out victorious (
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in the Best Animated Feature category), and the last win in Best Animated Short was ten years before that (
A Close Shave). Even Wallace & Gromit ended up losing to a non-Aardman film, when
Logorama triumphed over
A Matter of Loaf and Death. Aardman hopes that
Robin Robin has what it takes to reverse that drought. The film, distributed by Netflix, is stop-motion which has long been Aardman's specialty, yet it eschews the claymation that had been the trademark look. Instead, the characters are created with needle felting, and the animation is nothing less than stunning. The characters move with a fluidity that isn't often seen in stop-motion animation, and the sets are impressive as well. The film is seen through the eyes of some very small animals, and the scaling is done in a way that it highlights the characters' sizes.
Robin Robin was touted as Aardman's first musical, and the three songs (plus one reprise) are perfectly perfunctory. They are not memorable or catchy as the songs in a truly memorable musical like
Great, but they are also not the unmitigated disaster that is the "Donut Dunking Song" from
Jolly Little Elves. The film is full of dialogue, and the voice acting is solid with Gillian Anderson as the menacing cat and the Oscar nominated Richard E. Grant as the magpie being standouts. The story of
Robin Robin may be its weakest element. It's a nice little holiday tale and there is a lesson to be learned about family and fitting in versus embracing one's uniqueness. However, the film is lacking in subtlety. That is not to say it's without charm. There is plenty of humor to be found, including magpie's bumbling attempts at impersonating Robin in a sneak and the little mouse that has a strange fascination with cats. Of course,
Robin Robin isn't created to be a film that challenges a viewer, but a charming holiday special designed to warm the hearts of an entire family. It manages to fulfill the goal while also breaking new grounds for a venerable animation studio.
The Windshield Wiper
A middle-aged man sits in a bar filled with smoke and the chattering of other patrons. He adds to the ambiance by asking a question to nobody in particular: "What is Love?" Instead of giving the obvious answer (which is "Baby, don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more."), he proceeds to show us several instances of what love could be. It could be a man and a woman on a beach, sharing a cigarette. It could be a man running through a rainy street to bring flowers to a person that was not at home. It could be an old married couple just sitting on a beach. As the man ponders his answer, we are forced to make our own conclusions. The idea of love has been explored in art and literature for thousands of years. I'm sure the "Love is patient, love is kind" scripture from 1 Corinthians is well known by people that aren't Christians. Spanish artist and animator Alberto Mielgo is the latest to tackle this elusive concept. His career has taken him around the world from Spain to Hong Kong to the United States. Along the way he made numerous observations of people obviously and not-quite-so-obviously in love. He compiled them in a short film after finally securing the financing, and the end results became
The Windshield Wiper. Given the fact that
The Windshield Wiper is based on the director's own observations, it is structured as a series of vignettes that are not connected in any way other than the theme. As such,
The Windshield Wiper has the feel of many other films centered around vignettes, such as the shortlisted
Symphony No. 42. As with
Symphony No. 42, the film is only as strong as the vignettes themselves are, and unfortunately I personally feel like the vignettes are a mixed bag. Sure, there are some of them that are great such as the one with the homeless man mistaking a dress in a storefront for a former lover that left him. However, the majority are just not that interesting or downright cringe-worthy, such as an uncomfortable text exchange as seen from an orbiting satellite. The film definitely seems to be building itself up towards a conclusion, and while I've seen people say how profound it is, it personally falls flat for me. Perhaps I've become somewhat cynical about love but then again I'm the type of person that falls in love with fictional characters. While he was looking to secure financing for
The Windshield Wiper, Mielgo was hired by Sony Pictures Animations to serve as an art director for an upcoming project based on Marvel's Spider-Man. He created an animation test that would serve to be the visual foundation for the Oscar-winning masterpiece
Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. Unfortunately, Mielgo wasn't around to enjoy the fruits of his labor. However, he carried the lessons he learned into his future works, and
The Windshield Wiper benefits greatly from it. The film carries with it a photo-realistic feel, yet it manages to stay comfortable within the uncanny valley. Mielgo makes terrific use of bold lines and colors to create a specific feel. The film is light on dialogue, but it does have a lot of background lines that frankly sounds as though they're in a foreign language even though they're in English. Thankfully the actual dialogue is in a foreign language so there are subtitles available. The film does make good use of the song "We Might be Dead By Tomorrow" by Soko near the end when the vignettes become more like one-shot observations, and adds to the overall atmosphere. Overall
The Windshield Wiper is clearly not my favorite of the nominees, but it has enough artistic merit that it deserves a spot in the lineup.
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Well, here we go. Here's my review of the films nominated in this here the 90th year of the Best Animated Short. Given that it's the 90th year, it means it's time to do something I've done eight times before, but not in almost ten years: Rank the nominees from the past ten years by preference. It's something fun that I did once every ten reviews back when I was going backwards in time with my reviews, but it's finally gotten to the point where I have to do it again. It's going to take a few days because I haven't gone back and re-watched many of those films since their Oscar years, but I should be able to get it out in time for the Oscars.
Anyways, as far as this year's nominees go, I actually think it's a solid bunch, but I often think that mainly because I barely watch any of the shorts that don't make it to the shortlist. As for who has the best shot of winning, it's hard to bet against Netflix and their campaigning team, especially since they helped
If Anything Happens I Love You win in this category last year. Of course, I also thought that
If Anything Happens I Love You was the strongest of the nominees last year, while
Robin Robin...isn't. I'd personally be ecstatic if
Affair of the Art takes it. She does have the National Film Board of Canada behind her now, although NFB is still looking for their first win since
The Danish Poet 15 years ago. Anyways, we'll just wait and see.
My Rankings (by Quality)
Affairs of the Art > Boxballet > Bestia > The Windshield Wiper > Robin Robin
My Rankings (by Preference)
Affairs of the Art > Boxballet > Robin Robin > Bestia > The Windshield Wiper
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