Cinema Verdict Review: Oscar-Nominated Short Films 2011: Live Action

Oscar-Nominated Short Films 2011: Live Action

OPENING: 02/11/2011

STUDIO: Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures

RUN TIME: 102 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Official Site

The Charge
Film shorts are movies too.

Opening Statement
It’s Oscar time again, and in spite of what you might think The King’s Speech is not the only film up for Oscar consideration. There is a little category called Live Action Shorts, and this years contenders are a mix of varied styles that are bound to appeal to wide array of movie lovers. Take a gander at the five nominated shorts, and be prepared to give your emotional muscles quite a workout.

The Evidence

The Confession
(26 min)
The Confession is Tanel Toom’s exploration into the psyche of two children and the path they take just days before their first confession. For best friends Sam and Jacob, Saturday is a very big day. When Sam is unable to come up with a sufficient sin to confess, Jacob comes up with the “perfect” idea to pull off what he believes will be a harmless prank; one that Sam can use in the confessional. The prank however turns disastrous, causing Sam’s natural proclivity to feel guilt to go into overdrive. At the same time Jacob goes into a mode of self-defense as he tries to convince Sam and himself that they did nothing wrong because it was all an accident. Toom’s story challenges Catholicism’s idea that the only way to absolution is through a priest. It also shows the confusion that befalls a young mind pounded with religion but not taught the love and forgiveness of a God who sees the depths of our hearts and loves us regardless.

Toom shows in stark detail how we can never bear the weight of our own sin, and why we need Jesus to help us carry our burden. Without that understanding, we won’t know what it means to be forgiven and we’ll try, like Sam and Jacob, to absolve our own guilt without any success. Sam and Jacob didn’t realize that God loved them despite their many failings, yet there are still consequences to their actions that they can endure because He loves them. Both boys felt a sense of hopelessness; Sam turned that hopelessness into immense guilt, while Jacob turned his into a bravado that relinquished them of any responsibility.

Toom skillfully uses bluish/gray hues to show Sam’s home as a cold humorless place with a domineering father who doesn’t show love in his religiosity, but a legalism that stifles the boy’s own understanding of who God truly is. This explains why he feels such an immense amount of guilt for his part in the prank. But Sam has some sense of God’s omnipresence, telling Jacob that God is aware of what they had done. What he doesn’t say to Jacob and what he doesn’t comprehend himself is that God forgives them both. In the end Sam and Jacob’s ignorance results in more tragedy that leaves both boys irretrievably scarred.

The Crush
(15 min)
The Crush is a sweet story of love and chivalry involving 8-year-old Ardal Travis and the woman of his affection, his teacher Miss Purdy. Written and Directed by Michael Creagh who deftly shows us that we shouldn’t overlook what we can learn from our children, even as we raise and teach them ourselves. One day afterschool the love-struck Ardal gives his teacher an engagement ring, and asks her hand in marriage. When the young man finds out that his teacher is engaged to another, he is crushed, but the pain turns to anger when Ardal sees that his teacher’s betrothed is a selfish oaf who doesn’t deserve the beautiful Miss Purdy. Feeling he must defend her honor, Ardal challenges the fiancé to a duel to the death, a threat that the man doesn’t take seriously but should.

Creagh does a wonderful job of keeping a tension in the story by leaving us in the dark as to how far Ardal will take things. Oran Creagh who plays Ardal is the director’s young son, and he is a poised and mature young man, who has us wondering just what he will do when he confronts Miss Purdy’s boorish boyfriend. Ardal sees something in the fiancé that is obvious to us the viewer, but not to the love struck Miss Purdy who, when challenged by her young charge, makes a very important decision.

Wish 143
(24 min)
In Wish 143 David wants some human contact that doesn’t just consist of people checking his platelet count or taking his blood pressure. You see, David has cancer, a tumor, and it’s growing larger with each passing day. This is where the Dreamscape Foundation comes in; they want to give David his dying wish, the one thing he’d like to do before he assumes room temperature. And David knows exactly what it is that he wants, what every teenaged boy wants and dreams about; David wants to lose his virginity before he takes his final breath. Of course Dreamscape can not fulfill that request, so David sets about trying to accomplish his dream on his own.

Directed by Ian Barns and written by Tom Bidwell, Wish 143 takes something dire, like a young man dying much too soon, and gives the story an air of hope and humor that belies its subject matter. With his family scarcely around and friends falling by the wayside, David develops a close bond with the hospital’s Chaplin, a father figure of sorts who makes David a priority in his life the way no other human being has. As his condition worsens David’s quest becomes more desperate, and we experience the desperation he feels as time runs out. The question is will David get the physical night that he desires, or will he learn the valuable lesson about relationships and what it means to truly care for and be cared for by another human being?

God of Love
(18 min)
Luke Matheny wrote, directed and stars as Raymond Goodfellow in the charming short God of Love. Ray is a lounge singer/dart champion in love, but the object of his affection, Kelly, is in love with Ray’s best friend Fozzie. The three are in a jazz quartet where Ray is their smooth voiced singer. One night Ray receives a mysterious package at one of the group’s gigs from a company called “The Olympus Foundation.” Inside he finds a box full of something called “Love darts 3000” and an instruction booklet on how to use the darts. It seems that if someone is hit by one of these 21st century versions of Cupid’s Arrow, they are susceptible for up to six hours to permanently falling in love with whoever the love object may be. Bingo! Ray’s prayers have been answered, he now has a way, or so he thinks, of getting Kelly to fall in love with him. Uh yeah, not a good idea.

Matheny’s script is both funny and engaging, we like the Ray character even though his methods to woo Kelly are suspect. The characters are quirky, including Matheny himself, and it’s easy to see yourself being friends with any one of these people. We see how Ray misinterprets the gift of the darts as his answer to prayer, God finally giving him a way to get Kelly to love him; in reality they were sent to him for a much higher purpose. Ray puts aside his own yearnings and learns that you can’t make people love you; true love may need a little nudge, but the manner in which it is achieved should never be so self serving.

Na Wewe
(19 min)
Na Wewe means “You too” in the Kirundi language; the film short takes place in Burundi around 1994 where there is a brutal civil war between the Hutus and Tutsis. A van full of people stop at the side of the road to help two men whose truck has broken down. They are invited to ride along in the van to their destination, but on the way the van is hijacked by Hutu rebels looking to kill any Tutsis on board. Ivan Goldschmidt directed and wrote this intense story of survival in a country at a time of tremendous turmoil. As the Hutus question the passengers to see if any of them are “Tutsi snakes” as they call them, each passenger tries to convince the “chief” that they are not one of the hated Tutsis.

As the viewer we aren’t sure who is and who isn’t a Tutsi, and neither are the guerillas for that matter, and they begin to get frustrated with the groups’ pleadings and decides to set the whole lot of them go. All of them except a young boy who had been hiding meekly behind the crowd hoping not to be spotted. But when he is discovered to be a Tutsi, the Hutu chief recognizes the boy’s name and is emotionally affected by who the boy’s family is, and allows him to go free even though he is the “enemy.” However the rest of the rebels have different ideas, and in order to prevent a mutiny, the chief callously allows his minions to do whatever they wish with the boy.

When death looks imminent, a strange case of irony regarding the Hutu name and one of the worlds most famous rock bands, U2, helps the young Tutsi boy when no help seemed forthcoming. Goldschmidt manages to keep us on edge, showing with great honesty the erratic and senseless nature of a civil war where individuals are killed simply because they are from a different tribe. Na Wewe gives us a sense of the precarious hold one had on life living in Berundi in the ‘90s.

Closing Statement
Short films don’t get the attention that bigger budget mega star movies get, but these releases could and should be the launching point for these movie makers. From the writing to the cinematography to the acting, all was first rate in each and every one of these wonderful films. With remakes of old ideas permeating Hollywood, and 3-D special effects taking precedent over good story ideas, it is a pleasure to witness movie making in its purest form. These films prove that there are still original ideas worth giving you’re entertainment dollars to; I have my favorite, but I can’t wait to see who takes home the Oscar.

The Verdict
8/10

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