One of my favorite categories the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences puts up every year is the category for Best Animated Short Film. One of the greatest parts of the Academy Awards is the consistent nod to international and independent artwork, something we hardly see in other awards shows. Documentaries, short films, and even new technology developed for the industry all get recognized every year. The animated short film category highlights filmmakers that would otherwise not have a large American audience, save those who attend film festivals such as Sundance and Tribeca. Here is my take on all five animated short films nominated this past season for an Oscar (appearing in order of preference from least to greatest):
Recommended for you
Sanjay's Super Team (Sanjay Patel, Pixar Animation Studios with Walt Disney Studios, USA)
This nomination was a sweet acknowledgment at Hindu culture by the Academy, but I could not help but feel that Lava was the more deserving film between 2015 Pixar shorts. Sanjay's Super Team made its appearance before The Good Dinosaur, a highly disappointing film following one of Pixar's greats, Inside Out. The quality between each short seems to have matched its respective feature-length film. While Sanjay's Super Team brought a unique computer-animation style of psychedelic, comic nature, the short lacked a meaningful message for me. It seemed as if Sanjay's father only really accepted him if he was true to his Hindu roots and I feel that this short got nominated for its diverse cultural setting rather than its substance, unfortunately. Lava, in my opinion, presented keen detail to an imaginative world of singing volcanos with a unique and catchy tune. Just check out that water rendering! Amidst the two, I would always elect to watch Lava. Sanjay's Super Team is worth the watch, but not the nomination.
Bear Story (Gabriel Osorio Vargas with Daniel Castro and Pato Escala Pierart, Chile)
The rest of the nominees in this category are all quite difficult to rank as they are all so exquisite. Bear Story, the first Chilean film to ever receive an Academy Award, poignantly animates the importance of storytelling as a coping mechanism. Vargas brings his audience to what we find as a lonesome papa bear with a family gone astray. Through a story told via his animatronics box, we find out what is presumably our bear's past. The only difference is that in this toy world our bear reunites with his wife and son who are, in reality, gone. The short is impressive with its animated interpretation of a mechanically operating show and does not fail in evoking emotion. It is amazing what Vargas and Castro accomplish with their script that contains no words. Our bear is content in standing at his street corner telling his story and handing out pinwheels to donating viewers. He sees the same passion in the little bear cub who views his tale that he saw in his own son. I can say, while I preferred other animated shorts from this season, Bear Story was well deserving of an Oscar.
We Can't Live Without Cosmos (Konstantin Bronzit with Alexander Boyarsky, Russia)
The farther we go in this list, the bleaker the stories become. Konstantin Bronzit presents us with his story of two childhood friends going through the testing trials of cosmonaut selection. 1203 and 1204, as they are designated by the selecting scientists, ardently face every task ahead of them with eager eyes. Both candidates emerge at the top of their class; the short does an amazing job of developing the relationship between the two characters. When 1203 is launched into space and his rocket explodes, 1204 goes mad and will not exit his spacesuit. The scientists are going through hell just trying to keep him put, even going so far as to confine him to a straitjacket. 1204 finds his way out through the roof and reunites with his best friend drifting in space endlessly. The short is both sincerely emotional at its core and stresses a vastly different point than I had expected after the first five minutes of viewing. The beginnings are humorous and the animation is quick. 1204's final reunion with 1203 is appropriate, though not realistic, in 1204's allegorical escape and death. The two are nothing without each other. This is a beautiful tale of friendship and loss and I cannot recommend it enough.
Prologue (Richard Williams, UK)
Richard Williams, the animation director behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) most notably, animates a visceral and violent scene sketched out with colored pencils. We see two Athenians and Spartans, bare in the flesh, armed only with their weapons of choice and some armor. They are shown as one with the fleeting landscape between them, stalking in the grass. The conflict censors no excruciating details. Swords are driven through gonads and spears through necks. A little girl, who witnesses the scene, runs to her grandmother who ominously appears similar to the men of the fight in the final frames. This short is morally ambiguous and extravagantly animated. I enjoy art that is wholly experiential with no apparent theme. Sometimes, you just get a scene thrown in your face with little to no indication of what is right. That is for you to decide. Williams' sketches play out like a flip-book. In fact, the short starts out with a live-action introduction to the hugely immense volume of sketched pages that make up this short. We see how Williams visualizes a scene and makes it come to life. The short is fast and unforgiving -- a truly great piece of film.
World of Tomorrow (Don Hertzfeldt, Bitter Films, USA)
Communication between the future and past, and the experienced and naive is where this short bases its plot. A future Emily reaches out to her toddler form from generations past to recover a core memory that will bring her comfort in her final days of existence. This is made possible through avenues of development in cloning that have enabled memories to be passed down from body to body as a host organism deteriorates (similar to Self/less of the same year, except that movie was terribly humorous). The only downfall is mental deterioration over generations because the tech was never perfected. Third generation Emily claims all is fine and dandy, but it becomes apparent over the short's development that the world has really all gone to hell. Third generation Emily's future (227 years ahead of time to be exact) is faced with ultimate destruction in part due to humanity's obsession with the past. There is, of course, a comet headed to Earth that dooms billions of lower class people to death presented quite darkly in bodies falling from orbit like shooting stars as a result of failed time travel. Third generation Emily's reality is littered with clones watching screens of clones watching screens of clones watching screens. The population of her generation are so entirely consumed by the past that they never quite experience human reality. There are even machines to experience any historical event that has ever occurred through the alteration of subatomic particles.The short satirizes science-fiction tropes of futuristic elitism, the notion that technology and people of the future will be indefinitely greater than what we have now. We see third gen. Emily fall in love with a moon rock, then a fuel pump, then a space monster called Simon, then a deteriorating clone on Earth who eventually drops dead. Her isolated moments of sadness for her lost loved ones make Emily feel human again, but it is very rare. She feels proud of her sadness for this reason. Emily of the present, or Emily prime, wanders around mostly just worried about colors and cool things that move around. The juxtaposition of these two characters pins logic against emotion, stoicism to mercurial aloofness. In many ways, the film advocates the latter. When Emily prime returns home, she is not sad for what she has discovered or been implanted with or, perhaps, for even the lack of either ever being understood. She arrives with the acknowledgment of "what a happy day it is" and goes about her business while third generation Emily is doomed with the knowledge of inevitable destruction and laments in her memories alone. The short is enhanced evermore by the voice acting given by Julia Pott (3rd Gen. Emily) and Winona Mae, Hertzfeldt's niece who voices Emily prime. Emily prime's dialogue is purely innocent with lines like "do you like my cars?" Pott gives a greatly monotone delivery that carries with her bland apathy evolved over generations. Strauss' operatic score also serves to enhance themes in this film. The music is played during the introduction and closing credits and are pulled from Act 2 of Strauss' opera, Der Rosenkavalier. The name of this act, "ohne Mich, ohne Mich, jeder Tag dir so bang", translates roughly to "without me, without me, every day you are so afraid," which harkens back to the motif of emotion as a key role in the human experience. This short is essential viewing for any 2015 film playlist. It presents unique sci-fi themes and explores key ideas of existentialism. It surely ranks as one of the great science fiction accomplishments of the yearright next to Ex Machina (2015) and is by far the best animated film of the year. It is one of those films that is so easy to return to and notice detailed grandeur in every frame.
