It’s that special time of year when movie theaters all over America start playing short films. Some places are hosting a total of 15 of them. Most of those participating, though, will be screening only 10. The shorts receiving this privileged exhibition are the Oscar nominees in the three categories devoted to the best in cinema of a length of 40 minutes or less. Thanks to ShortsHD, each category — live-action, animated and documentary — are showing separately (docs in fewer theaters), and all five contenders for each are included. You can find them in a theater near you (find one here) beginning this Friday.
Continuing our review and ranking of the 2016 Oscar-nominated shorts, below is my take on the live-action category. Unlike the animated group (see my take on those), these narrative live-action shorts are all pretty strong. Each one has little things for me to nitpick in order to put them in an order of worst to best, but all together they make for a theatrical program that I’m happy to endorse. All of the filmmakers are first-time nominees, with two of them recent Student Academy Award winners, and none of their shorts have movie stars, which I feel is rare these days. It wasn’t just a tough category to rank this year but it’s also tough to predict. Just go see them all and don’t worry about the Oscars.
5. Stutterer
The debut film of writer/director Benjamin Cleary gets the romance slot this year, and boy is it cute. Greenwood is a shy young typographer who is great with words and coming up with stories, but he’s a severe stutterer who is learning sign language just to communicate better in person, or at least use it as a mechanism to avoid talking. He’s in an online relationship with Ellie, and after six months of only chatting on Facebook Messenger they get a chance to meet in person. Of course Greenwood is hesitant to accept the date due to his speech impediment. Will Ellie still like him if she can’t have one of their great conversations off computer?
Let me get it out of the way that this 12-minute film is very, very predictable and moves towards an ironic conclusion that makes it a kind of punchline-driven short. Fortunately, it’s still a sweet story executed in clever ways. There’s a very effective use of voiceover to show how much clearer and more confident Greenwood is in his mind, whether he’s making up backstories of random strangers he watches on the way to work or he’s planning out what he’s going to say to people as he’s on the way to see them. The latter stuff should be relatable to a lot of viewers, even if they don’t stutter. Cleary also features a lot of online chat dialogue, which isn’t really avoidable, but it’s also never something that plays well cinematically.
Could it win? As likable as it is, Stutterer is not only the weakest of the five films, it’s also the least probable to win.
4. Shok
The first Albanian/Kosovan film nominated for an Oscar depicts a tragic tale based on a true story. An Albanian man in the present flashes back to his childhood during the Kosovo war, when he and his best friend got into a bit of trouble with Serbian soldiers. Petrit and Oki start off happy go lucky, riding around together on Oki’s new bicycle, and they even seem to get along okay with some of the armed Serbs. Until one of them decides he wants Oki’s bike. Written and directed by Jamie Donoughue, the 21-minute short is the latest in a long cinematic tradition of depicting horrible conflicts and bloodshed through the eyes of kids.
I won’t spoil the ending of Shok (which translates as “friend,” by the way), but it’s what almost ruined this film for me. It’s a big moment played as small, sudden, quick, without a satisfying dramatic response. I’m also not a fan of the cliche bookending device that does nothing for the actual story in between. As for what does work for me, the two kids are good enough, and I’m glad that there’s a film set during this little-remembered war, which was truly awful. Sadly (for humans, not the film), this a universal kind of story that would fit a lot of similar conflict settings and situations in recent history. You can easily picture it redone with Jewish kids and Nazis or Palestinian kids and Israeli soldiers or youths of any occupied and/or suppressed group and members of the occupying army.
Could it win? It’s believed to be the frontrunner by some, but that ending might be too dark and unexpected for voters.
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