Film Review: 2008 Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films

Every Friday I review a French (or very occasionally, a French-related) film. Like my book reviews, they merely represent what catches my eye at the local indie theater or my Netflix queue.

Originally, I had intended to review only the French short film, Meme les Pigeons Vont aus Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven, 2007), but after having seen the other four, I can’t help but mention all of them. Besides, Memes les Pigeons is only a few minutes long, so this review would be…a paragraph. And you know writers — we go insane if we can’t write for ages and ages and ages.

Memes les Pigeons is a snappy little story about an old man tempted by a priest to buy a machine that will supposedly take him to heaven. The man is understandably skeptical, so the conniving priest — after hemming and hawing convincingly — allows him to take a “test-drive.”

Now, I understand that this is the only CG-created short nominated this year, which surprises me not because of that fact alone, but rather because it’s CGI. For some reason I expected the French to pull out all the stops and put together a masterpiece based on painstakingly hand-painted or -drawn artwork, each line or brushstroke meticulously applied by a squinty-eyed and weary artist.

Not that I’ve anything against CGI, but their very slickness and polish has always felt a little too flat to me. It seems that, of late, studios have been so anxious to squeeze the very life out of animation that they’ll invest all their money into the technology and celebrity voice talent and very little into the actual story itself. Emotionally cold and very rarely funny, they’ve been constant disappointments at the theater for me.

Memes les pigeons is an interesting diversion from the usual Hollywood extravaganza, and its humorous dialogue and crafty characters are fun to watch. The animation, of course, is superb, crisp and very broad in its realism. It’s not the best in the bunch, but it delivers a satisfying moral tale in its brief running time. You can check out the entire film below (although depending on your connection, time of day, etc., it can be a frustrating stop-start experience):

Moya Lyubov (My Love, 2006) was a much better experience, both visually and viscerally. A young Russian teenager (wearing what looks vaguely like an old Prussian uniform) falls in love with two entirely different women: one of them is a young, cheerful servant girl and the other a quiet lady with a dubious reputation who lives nearby. It’s one of the longest of the shorts (that sounds funny when I say it out loud) at nearly half an hour, but a compelling story nonetheless.

The best part, however, is the technique: oil on glass. It’s as beautiful as it sounds, with scenes blending seamlessly into each other in a swirl of color. Features are only vaguely outlined, but Aleksander Petrov, who both directed and created the stunning animation, wields his brush with a very sure and gifted hand. Movements and gestures are fluid, the narrator’s voice perfect in its youthful hopefulness, the story very Russian in its blend of the bittersweet and the romantic. What would a Russian story be, after all, without unrequited love, bitterness, maybe a murder or two?

The film would be worth watching for the animation alone, which I gather is Petrov’s signature technique, one which has earned him a reputation of being one of the best animators in the world. Catch the first part of it here:

Here’s Part II:

And Part III:

Madame Tutli-Putli (2007, Canada) is my least favorite among the lot, but my dislike had little to do with the production values or animation technique or even story. It’s just that the film scared the freakin’ daylights out of me. I love stop-motion film — they harken back to a time when artists wielding real artist’s tools took weeks, months, maybe even years to create a single scene in a film. Not that I necessarily romanticize backbreaking labor, but there’s something to be said for art that flows directly from the human hand onto paper, without relying on a machine for manipulation.

Bug-eyed Madame Tutli-Putli boards a massive Night Train with what looks to be a houseful of possessions. Her cabinmates include a frowning Chinese boy reading a book entitled How to Handle Your Enemies; two rough-looking men playing chess in a berth above her; a sleeping old man; and a really sinister guy who looks like Qaddafi sitting opposite her. Qadaffi eyes her with such glittery malice, you practically squirm in your seat from the anticipation of sexual violence.

So basically, the lanky Madame is stuck with the kind of travelmates you’d encounter on a late night, cross-country trip on the Greyhound. Times a hundred.

The film made me decide to never again ride a train by myself. The animation is crude, not in its technique but rather in the way it suggests unspeakable evil and darkness. The lack of dialogue only adds to the suspense, and as Madame’s voyage through black darkness progresses into the night, you wonder how this woman could possibly escape what appears to be a fate worse than death.

Or is it death by metaphor? The ending is frustratingly ambiguous. B. theorizes that the entire story is an allegory of death, or perhaps a really bad nightmare the filmmaker had. Whatever the case may be, this isn’t a film you’ll forget anytime soon.

Check out the trailer:

Josh Raskin’s I Met the Walrus (2007) was the most straightforward of the bunch. In 1969, fourteen-year-old Jerry Levitan sneaks into a Toronto hotel with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, intent on interviewing John Lennon. The musician readily agrees, and this film is a fantastical illustration of the conversation that follows, whose audio comprises the entire soundtrack of the film.

Okay, so shoot me, but while I love love me my Beatles, I’m not a big fan of John Lennon’s music. He comes across as an emotionally cold artist in his songs, with a drug-addled and tenuous grasp of the nuances of politics and peace. I realize that I’m in the distinct minority here, and maybe I’m just a cynic, but there you go. Nevertheless, I really wanted to see this film and listen to the interview, which I hoped would reveal some insight into the man’s mind that would — at the very least — allow me even a wee glimpse into his massive appeal.

Instead, what I get is a scratchy audio recording that muffles much of what the great man had to say. I’m sure the filmmakers did their best to upgrade the quality of the sound, but the strain of trying to understand what Lennon is saying made it difficult to appreciate the film in its entirety. The soundtrack is accompanied by fanciful illustrations of Lennon’s dialogue; like much of the Beatles’ song catalogue, the drawings are whimsical and shocking in their brutal truth about the reality of existence and suffering. Their stark simplicity of black-on-white serve as a marked contrast from the more advanced animation — and certainly more colorful — techniques employed by the other nominees, and for that alone the film deserves a second look (if not a second listen, as you’ll probably understand little of the soundtrack).

Here’s the trailer:

And last but not least, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (2006, UK/Norway/Poland). I once had a tape recording of this classical piece and played it often. I always wondered what story lay behind its sometimes-thundering, sometimes-sweet notes, and now I know.

Peter, a quiet boy with mesmerizing steel-blue eyes, lives with his grandfather in a remote cabin in the woods. Behind their home lies a dark and forbidding forest — or, at least his grandfather makes Peter believe. The fence separating their cozy abode from the mystery of the woods is double-locked, and Peter isn’t allowed to even peer at the world beyond through a hole in the fence, much less step outside their comfortable boundaries.

Well, you know how little boys are, especially those with steel-blue eyes and a goose for a best friend.

This is, far and away, my favorite of the lot. Peter reminds of me all the little boys I knew in school, the ones who hid their heartbreaking fragility behind a mask of indifference. In this story, Peter’s thin body and downcast eyes (don’t hide those gorgeous eyes!) mark him for an easy target by the neighborhood bullies. By the close of the film, however, you realize the depth of Peter’s bravery and soul. And yes, allow me just one final repeat of the quote: We can never be really safe; we can only be brave. It seems that, unbeknownst to everyone else in his life, Peter was apparently born with this knowledge.

I loved the animation (stop-motion and digital effects), the lack of dialogue, the flawless timing with Prokofiev’s memorable score. I loved the rare moments when Peter smiled, a reward to the audience for believing in this strange but haunting little boy. I loved the little, almost throwaway scenes that quietly celebrate the joy of freedom from a boy’s perspective, especially when Peter slides gleefully, almost reverently across the ice pond. And I loved that the story isn’t really all that simple and straightforward; modern fairy tales like to boast of their “challenging” themes, but really they just seem to be updated versions of tired tales. In this new twist to Prokofiev’s story, Peter’s confrontation with the wolf reveals more about the nature of the wild than of any simple separation between good and evil. Not everything ends well, and sometimes nature triumphs, despite our best efforts.

As it turned out, Peter and the Wolf ultimately won the Academy Award. Bravo!

Watch the entire 29-minute film here:

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Note: Except for the last film, all the videos above are from YouTube. If you’ve ever been on that site, you’ll know that many, many videos are removed daily because of copyright restrictions or whatever. I can’t guarantee that the above films will be available to watch tomorrow or six months from now. If they won’t upload above, you might want to go directly to YouTube, do a search based on the titles, and find another upload. Also, I saw all of these films at my local indie theater (during a screening of all five), which is definitely the best way to view them in all their fine glory. The quality of the films on YouTube leave a lot to be desired, and with animation part of the charm is the art. The video for Peter and the Wolf appears to have the best audio and video quality of the lot.

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