Salute Your Shorts: 2011 Oscar-nominated Live Action films

For the sixth year, Shorts International is releasing the Oscar-nominated short films into theaters, but for the first time, this includes documentary shorts in addition to animated and live-action. I’ve been complaining about the neglect of the category for years, as they’ve been almost completely unavailable to the public. And while the limiting factors of what can be accepted into the awards are still just as odd as ever, getting to actually see the films is the biggest improvement that could be made.

The Academy’s rules are basically that shorts must be less than 40-minutes long, including credits, and not have anything to do with television. That is to say they can’t be ads, unsold pilots, episodes, music videos, or anything else that’s in fact a short film but wouldn’t play in a short-film festival. This rule manages to rule out most of the better short films made every single year, but they are what they are. They also need to either be publicly exhibited for paid admission with weirdly specific rules about what frame rates and resolutions the films can be shot in, or they can win a best-in-category award at a film festival that the Academy deems good enough for them. I keep wondering what the Academy will say when a film uses a mixture of live-action and animation, but so far as I can tell that’s yet to happen.

The biggest surprise for me this year was how interesting the live-action nominees were. That’s not to say that they were amazing, but not one of them was something I’d seen before, even if that simply meant I’d rarely seen something so fascinatingly pandering in the case of “Na Wewe.” It’s a relatively strong category without an obvious winner, and although guessing the Academy’s taste in short films is always a mug’s game, I’d say that this is particularly difficult in 2011.

Tanel Toom’s “Confession” is kind of disappointing as a whole, without much of an idea about what it wants to say, but in parts it’s the best-acted, best-shot short of the whole set. It’s an absolutely gorgeous story of a boy’s first confession gone wrong, with quite a few twists and turns in its 26 minutes. Unfortunately Tanel doesn’t really know where he wants to take things, though, and the story just kind of peters out by its end. It’s the only short which could easily be expanded into an entire feature film, a good feature film, but as a short it just doesn’t quite work. Still, it’s a fine nominee and a very impressive short for a student filmmaker. It’s clear that Tanel just needs a much larger canvas to work on.

“The Crush,” on the other hand, is a pat little short film, ducking in and out with minimal development outside of its story of a prepubescent child’s crush on his teacher. Unfortunately, she’s getting married to someone else and he takes this the wrong way. But the short’s pretty grating by its end, since there’s just a couple of possible ways for this to turn out and every one of them is dumb. By its halfway point the film has telegraphed where it’s ready to go, making it feel weirdly long at only 16 minutes. There’s also a certain sadistic glee the film takes in taunting its viewers that’s unpleasant and cheap. For a few minutes, though, the director’s control of the framing and camera movement makes “The Crush” compelling, so it’s not nearly as bad as it should be.

In a sort of opposition to the polished nature of “Confession” in particular is “God of Love,” a fun little tale about a man given a set of love darts. He uses these on the girl he has a crush on, but unfortunately the darts only work for a few hours, after which whoever he hits with the dart goes back to normal. The sheer whimsy of “God of Love” is enjoyable, even if what’s under its surface is a pretty obvious case of hipster wish-fulfillment. The semi-unprofessional style of the short, coupled with the more fantastic elements at its core, make it pretty interesting. I doubt it has much of a chance with the Academy, but as far as making a strong calling-card short for first impressions, “God of Love” works wonders.

The one real disappointment of the category’s nominees is “Na Wewe,,” which seems to have snuck by as the token ethnic/politcally correct entry. A van of people is stopped in Burundi during the country’s 1994 civil war. They’re then asked to organize themselves by who is a Hutu and who is a Tutsi… except they can’t because ethnic lines are too blurred, so in the end everyone lives and it’s happily ever after. The film’s message is so obviously stated in its first couple minutes that it makes the next 15 a complete waste of time. It’s also a pandering lesson that seems ridiculous to show to Western adults. Yes, judging people by ethnic and racial groupings is stupid, but we already know that. There have been worse entries in previous years, but few that have gotten quite as under my skin as “Na Wewe.”

The category’s best picture also seems like the sort of Academy-pandering garbage as “Na Wewe,” but it rises above its genre. “Wish 143” focuses on a 15-year-old boy whose cancer leaves him with just a few months or weeks to live. When asked what he wants to do, his wish is simple: have sex before he dies. Unfortunately, this proves more difficult than he’d hoped, as his girlfriend is now dating someone else and even prostitutes reject him, not wanting to get in trouble for sleeping with a minor. Driven by an extremely strong performance by Jim Carter, the short is moving in a way that feels true to life. There’s a certain immaturity about it that fits the boy at its center and despite the topic, “Wish 143” doesn’t come off as manipulative. Instead it’s simply wistful about life and what’s important about being human.

Given its topic, the best film nominated in the category may actually win for once, but it’s impossible to tell. More importantly, though, the live-action program is extremely strong in comparison with the last couple years. If you can only make it to one of the three shorts programs this year, this is the one to see.

We’ll be back on Weds. to discuss what’s usually the most popular of the shorts catgories: animation.